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Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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In "Dependent" Study!
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"A new study links cell phone use to cancer"
"Danish study finds no link between cell phone use and cancer"
"Hyperactivity in young linked to smoking during pregnancy"
"Smoking in first four months of pregnancy 'does not harm the baby'"
"Study: Drinking Coffee Has Health Benefits"
"Coffee can kill your unborn child: Study"
Don't these studies drive you crazy sometimes? These are supposed to be 'independent' studies but I strongly feel they are very much 'dependent' on who conducts them and who backs them up. Even when someone conducting such a study tries to be fairness personified, the circumstances may result in a totally misleading outcome. Who to believe and who not to? What to believe and what not to?
Pretty much anything and everything can be interpreted and presented in different ways conveying different meaning without a need to distort the truth. Unfortunately this is what leads to multiple studies on the same subject conveying varied messages. It is not that fair and simple though. There definitely have been situations where the outcome of research was tailored to the advantage of the researcher / sponsor. One of the best examples, I know of, is the drug ecstacy. I got this information from one of the Discovery Channel's episodes on ecstacy. I won't be surprised if your immediate question is "why should we trust Discovery's study?". Well, first of all I don't think it was a study. Instead, they took the facts associated with the drug and presented them as a documentary. Assuming whatever Discovery Channel presented was true, there were a million contradictory statements about the drug. While one group finds it non-addictive and wanted to use as a genuine drug for patients, another group wanted to ban it. Eventually the drug was banned from legal use based on a 'study' that linked the drug use to cause neurotoxic damage to the central nervous system. According to the program, there was no substantial scientific proof for this though. So, who sponsored this research? Eventually a million other researches proved this wrong.
Without going that far back into history, one can look at the recent exposure of tobacco companies influencing the studies on smoking. All I want to say is that most of these independent studies may not really be 'independent'. Even if they are, they might not be self-sufficient. I mean, they might cover a very tiny portion of the big picture and hence can not be depended upon on their own.Labels: cancer, cell phone, cellphone, coffee, conservatives, democrats, ecstacy, health, independent, liberals, politics, polls, pregnancy, republicans, research, smoking, study, teenagers |
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posted by bachi
05:35
 
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
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Show Off
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Do you have the cool new iPhone or the iPod Touch? Do you have anything that is a little expensive and attractive? Hide it right now and do not use it in front of other people. Though you genuinely like it and have no evil intentions whatsoever, you hear everyone around you say you are trying to "show off".
It did not strike me till recently when I got my new iPod Touch. I also have a Blackberry 8830 World Edition and that also grabs a lot of people's attention. Everyone exclaims that it is an expensive phone and is curious to know how much my plan costs. How do they know that I have this phone/PDA? Well, they see it when I use it. This is my phone for god's sake and I use it when I have to. It has nothing to do with showing off, my friends. Say, I'm playing pool with my buddies and all of a sudden my phone rings. What do you want me to do? Run out into my car, close the doors and then try to whisper so that no one notices me? I should also bend down or else someone can see me through the window and say I'm trying to show off. The whole reason I have this device with a data plan is so that I can use it to check my e-mails when I'm on the go or access the Internet when needed. It is a convenience. Now one day, a couple of friends and I went to a sports complex to check out their membership details. Unfortunately they were closing for the day and there was no one to help us out. They just gave us their website information and asked us to try contacting them the next day. On the way to the car, I started to check out the website for membership details and got almost all the information I needed. What do I hear my friends say when they saw me do this? Show off! After that night, no one ever tried to either check out the website or call them. Everyday they keep asking one another if they contacted the the place but the unanimous answer is "no". "We got to check out their website today" would immediately follow. It has been a month and no one ever did anything about it. The five minutes I spent as soon as we came out of the complex was to avoid this forgetfulness and procrastination. No sir, it is nothing to do with showing off.
Coming to my iPod. I did not even buy it. I recently won it for a blog of mine. I love it and it is great. Now that I have it, of course I will use it. But whenever someone sees me listening to music on it, their immediate reaction is "show off". "What the hell!", I think to myself. "I'm trying to just enjoy what I have got. I don't want to hide it and use it in secrecy just because people like you think I'm showing off". But surprisingly it did have some affect on me. Even if I want to listen to music while I'm working, I'm thinking twice before I plug the phones into my ears as I'm afraid I will make my colleagues think I'm "showing off".Labels: blackberry 8830, blog, cell phone, e-mail on the go, grab attention, iPhone, ipod touch, pda, prize, showing off, unconfortable, win, world edition |
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posted by bachi
21:51
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