[Continuation] The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread Part 5

Thread continued from here.

Posted By:Agatha

Quote:

Originally Posted by jt512 (Post 14140069) He's right. It's p-hacking 101. The probability of a false positive conventional significance test is 0.05. He's provided a succinct explanation of the essence of the reproducibility crisis.

Then why did at least one of the controls, nail biting, not show the same correlation?

Quote:

We did not find an association between nail biting and the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This might be explained by the protective effects of salivary proteins which were recently demonstrated to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binding to the ACE2 receptor [30], making the mouth merely an exit rather than an entrance route for viral transmission [24].

In addition the study is supported by the hypothesis the nose is a portal of entry, especially if directly inoculated.

And multiple past studies have shown doctors don't was their hands as often as infection control guidelines require. Here's one of many found with an easy search:
Why don't doctors wash their hands? A correlational study of thinking styles and hand hygiene.

One might find, however that the correlation is explained by hand hygiene rather than nose picking. And, I agree like all of these studies, it needs to be repeated, something we never do enough of.

Dismissing the results with casual handwaving suggests the researchers were stupid and I doubt they were.

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