> The only thing we know about them is some of them drink some artificially sweetened drinks. We don't know anything else about their diet or their lifestyle age 20-40.
Yes, we don't! And that's perfectly acceptable.
When you're studying a cohort aged 40 to 60, you don't try to reconstruct their exact diet or lifestyle from two decades earlier. You don't rely on their memories from age 20 and treat that as reliable data. It simply isn't.
It's okay not to know what cannot be known, and still move forward with meaningful research. If scientific studies were only allowed to proceed after accounting for every possible confounding variable, then no health research would ever be conducted. None. Zero. Because it's impossible to identify and control for every unknown factor.
What researchers do is control for the known variables, publish their findings, and invite scrutiny. Other researchers then explore new confounding factors, conduct follow-up studies, and expand or refine the conclusions. That's the essence of scientific progress. That's how human knowledge evolves.
It is, frankly, lazy and armchair critiquing to dismiss a study simply because it didn't account for your favorite confounding variable. You know what's not lazy and armchair? Actually conducting research that investigates that variable. And that's when you come to appreciate just how difficult or outright infeasible some of these variables are to measure or control for.
Yes, we don't! And that's perfectly acceptable.
When you're studying a cohort aged 40 to 60, you don't try to reconstruct their exact diet or lifestyle from two decades earlier. You don't rely on their memories from age 20 and treat that as reliable data. It simply isn't.
It's okay not to know what cannot be known, and still move forward with meaningful research. If scientific studies were only allowed to proceed after accounting for every possible confounding variable, then no health research would ever be conducted. None. Zero. Because it's impossible to identify and control for every unknown factor.
What researchers do is control for the known variables, publish their findings, and invite scrutiny. Other researchers then explore new confounding factors, conduct follow-up studies, and expand or refine the conclusions. That's the essence of scientific progress. That's how human knowledge evolves.
It is, frankly, lazy and armchair critiquing to dismiss a study simply because it didn't account for your favorite confounding variable. You know what's not lazy and armchair? Actually conducting research that investigates that variable. And that's when you come to appreciate just how difficult or outright infeasible some of these variables are to measure or control for.