Bad Reporting, Not Email, Worse Than Marijuana 290
MoNickels writes "Turns out, those endless news reports and blog entries in April about "texting makes you stupid" were inaccurate. As linguist Mark Liberman at LanguageLog now reports by way of apologizing to Wilson, it wasn't Wilson's fault, but that of "rotten science journalism." Psychologist Glenn Wilson was reported to have done a study said that chat and email, as the Guardian put it, "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis." But Wilson says, "This...is a temporary distraction effect—not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 [subjects] somehow became '80 clinical trials.'" The original Slashdot story was covered back in April."
Re:really that bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Long story short: a study involving repeated IQ tests of nearly 1400 participants over a time period of 12 years showed absolutely no statistical correlation between marijuana use and cognitive ability.
Re:Worse than this? The horror.... (Score:0, Informative)
Mod this up (Score:2, Informative)
BTW I don't do any drugs, but I hate misinformation
Re:What's wrong with Pot? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't have any links to verify, because I read it in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader [bathroomreader.com]. But here's another link for you ( don't know how acurate it is ): http://www.cannabis.com/untoldstory/hemp_2.shtml [cannabis.com]
Re:Not only Carl Sagan (Score:4, Informative)
"Results: Current marijuana use was significantly correlated (p 0.05) in a dose- related fashion with a decline in IQ over the ages studied. The comparison of the IQ difference scores showed an average decrease of 4.1 points in current heavy users (p 0.05) compared to gains in IQ points for light current users (5.8), former users (3.5) and non-users (2.6)."
Re:What's wrong with Pot? (Score:5, Informative)
Point Of Order: The Nixon Report (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's wrong with Pot? (Score:3, Informative)
Coca leaves and Cocaine are not the same thing. Coca Leaves are a very mild drug - the South American Indian words for "tea" often come from their name for "Coca Leaf Tea," because of their comparable effect. It just isn't absorbed by the body in a way that gets one high like Cocaine. Cocaine is an organic chemical derived (but not extracted) from these coca leaves. Claiming the two are equivalent is BS.
Cocaine is illegal in Africa. Marijuana is illegal in Mexico. Opium is illegal in China. Is it because China is racist against Chinese people? Mexico is racist against Mexicans? It must be comforting for people to believe that all the evil forces of the world unite to fight pet issues - greedy anti-hemp lobbyists, racist Southern sheriffs, etc. But holding these views up to even the lighest analysis shows both history and obvious contradictions being willfully ignored.