The study is still 'correlation-digging'. Bonferroni won't fix the problem that these kinds of studies will throw up statistically significant associations that provide no insight into anything meaningful, due to confounders, biases, poor design etc. There is no equivalent xkcd however.
There's more to it than just the things you mentioned, and I'd argue that it's an even bigger problem. The fact studies are adaptively chosen and performed based on the results of past studies on the same (or related) data leads to increased instances of false discovery. This is something that is directly addressed in some very recent recent work (not uncoincidentally making reference to this exact XKCD comic):
Freedman's paradox refers to adaptive data analysis within one dataset. The reusable holdout is designed to permit adaptive analysis on the same dataset without inflating the false discovery rate. The problem doesn't apply if you are collecting new data and testing the hypothesis, that's the ideal scenario.
Yeah, Freedman's paradox is definitely part of what I'm alluding to. The other aspect is that for widely studied phenomena, some groups are likely to come to wrong conclusions just due to statistical error. E.g., if 100 groups independently investigating whether "Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function" (and we'll assume it's false, just to make my point), a few are likely going to come to the conclusion that it's true. Even worse, some studies with "expected" results may not be published (either by choice of the investigator or by the reviewers); instead, the "interesting" or "exciting" results will get published.
I don't think that anyone would take the results of this article as a statement of absolute fact. In the discussion they mentioned some more (better controlled) studies investigating the role of cocoa flavanols in "cognitive tasks". Doing any longitudinal study with humans suffer from confounders, biases, and poor design because we can't do controlled, long-term research on humans. You just have to take these limitations into account when you are interpreting the results and use any findings as areas for possible further investigation.
Yes, that's fine, I was pointing out that correcting for multiple hypothesis testing does not deal with the issue cited (albeit rather abruptly) by yxitcti.
Correlation-digging studies absurd or otherwise have led to an awful lot of peer-reviewed literature detailing a raft of <<molecular mechanisms>> by which flavonoids may be implicated in improved brain function.
To pick one at random: "Flavonoids exert a multiplicity of neuroprotective actions within the brain, including a potential to protect neurons against injury induced by neurotoxins, an ability to suppress neuroinflammation, and the potential to promote memory, learning and cognitive function. These effects appear to be underpinned by two common processes . . ."
Coinbase has an interest to increase the block size so that the protocol can be further centralized, making people more reliant on their centralized bitcoin as a service business.
Honestly, the whole bitcoin ecosystem is a sinking ship at this point. The protocol is broken and there are too many vested interests to properly fix it. It's time to move over to Ethereum.
I'm really not sure where people are getting this. All companies with the exception of Blockstream want Bitcoin to scale so that it can aquire more users. More users is instrumental to the growth of new companies. Not scaling the network means we will cease to aquire active users, and the entire ecosystem will possibly stall. While that happens we will have capital outflow to other coins.
Ethereum has been a beneficiary of that outflow, but is a significantly less tested code base, with much less hashing power, and significantly fewer users. Its still a very early product with its own vested interests. The two networks aren't even comparable at the moment in terms of capability and ecosystem.
Why is it a sinking ship? I can still send money to anyone anywhere in the world for a very low fee relatively fast, without any restrictions, long forms or questions asked. I don't know what do you think Bitcoin's value is to people, but I surely know what value it has for me personally.
Sinking doesn't imply fully sunk. Yes, bitcoin is still semi-useable but it's becoming less and less so. Meanwhile businesses are chomping at the bit to bring it fully under their control so they can profit more from it. There are much better alternatives.
Semi-usable? How so? I regularly buy things with Bitcoin and I haven't noticed any decline in products and services being offered for Bitcoin. Expedia still accepts it. Cheapair still accepts it. Dell still accepts it. Many other large and small businesses accept it. Yes, it's not the same level of penetration as credit cards, but CC have been around since when? And Bitcoin? Have a sense of proportion.
1) What are the "much better alternatives"?
2) I've made 4 transactions in bitcoin this week, none of which had any problem being confirmed.
3) If people switch to alternatives, don't you think people will be incentivized to decentralize them for their own benefit just like bitcoin?
It seems to me that you have it completely backwards.
Smaller block sizes are better for Coinbase, all else equal, because that means transactions on the blockchain are more expensive. Which makes sending payments on third party services more attractive, and long term they can flip bits around in their database while taking a cut, ala PayPal. Except the backing currency is BTC, not USD et al.
I think that Coinbase is primarily interested here in shepherding the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole towards success, because it doesn't want the pool it's swimming in to dry up. Sometimes selfless and selfish motivations align.
I suspect you have a horse in this race, but it is certainly true that a lot of investors -- both in the currency and in the companies -- are now in too deep, and they know it. That goes for all your alternatives as well.
> Coinbase has an interest to increase the block size so that the protocol can be further centralized, making people more reliant on their centralized bitcoin as a service business.
This is fundamentally not at all how bitcoin works. Nobody relies on coinbase to actually use bitcoin. A bigger -maximum- block size won't increase centralization since 1 MB every 10 minutes is so far from stressing even modest resources. Anyone who can watch netflix can download at least 200 times faster than they need to keep up with the blockchain.
So, I looked up Ethereum hoping to find a dencentralized digital cryptocurrency with transaction times comparable to credit/debit card transactions, but instead I found..I found..what did I find? WTH is Ethereum?
Even if this was corporatism (which it might be, but corporatism is more complex than that), not all corporatism is fascism -- Mussolini has a quote equating them, but that was trying to piggy-back fascism on corporatism, which had been supported in many non-fascist forms by many institutions (notably, the Catholic Church) long before fascism exist.
Fascism combines corporatism with militaristic nationalism and other features.
Mere business-government entanglement, even when it becomes corporatism, is not sufficient for fascism.
It seems pretty generous to say she "discovered a new theorem."