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The 90% divorce prediction that was never a prediction
The famous accuracy figures are real, and they measure something other than prediction. What happens when a divorce model is finally tested on data it has not already seen.
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Tech
Renting is not throwing money away, but the real argument is...
Housing’s celebrated 7% return is almost all rental yield. Real capital gains run about 1% a year — and the variable that decides the answer is whether you actually invest the difference.
Health
The 21-day habit rule came from a plastic surgeon’s book preface
Maxwell Maltz was describing how long patients took to get used to a new face. When researchers finally measured habit formation, the range ran from 18 days to 254.
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The 21-day habit rule came from a plastic surgeon’s book preface
Maxwell Maltz was describing how long patients took to get used to a new face. When researchers finally measured habit formation, the range ran from 18 days to 254.
The sleep chart everyone copies has a footnote nobody reads
The age-by-age sleep chart is a compromise document, and the panels that wrote it said so. What the primary sources actually show about how much sleep you need.
Sugar Does Not Make Children Hyperactive. The Study That Proved It Tested the Parents.
A 1995 meta-analysis of 23 controlled trials found no effect. A year earlier, a smaller study had already explained why everyone believes otherwise — by giving every child a placebo and lying to their mothers.
The Vitamin D Trials Nobody Talks About
Two of the largest supplement trials ever run found almost nothing. Then the Endocrine Society withdrew the threshold that made half the country deficient in the first place.
Sport news
Where the three-to-six-month emergency fund rule actually came from
The most repeated number in personal finance was set in 1996 by polling 156 advisers. Six million households of bank data suggest a very different answer.
No health authority has ever recommended 10,000 steps
Every official physical activity guideline is written in minutes, not steps. A 1965 pedometer brand name filled the gap — and it is aimed at exactly the wrong people.
Blue-Light Glasses: What the Cochrane Review Found
Seventeen randomised trials, and no reliable evidence that blue-filtering lenses reduce eye strain. The physics is the more interesting part: the lenses block roughly eight percent more blue light than the clear ones.
The eight-glasses rule is a sentence someone deleted
The 1945 document blamed for the rule said most of your water comes from food and that thirst is an adequate guide. Both sentences were cut. Here is what the evidence actually shows.
The Vitamin D Trials Nobody Talks About
Two of the largest supplement trials ever run found almost nothing. Then the Endocrine Society withdrew the threshold that made half the country deficient in the first place.
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The Vitamin D Trials Nobody Talks About
Two of the largest supplement trials ever run found almost nothing. Then the Endocrine Society withdrew the threshold that made half the country deficient in the first place.
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Blue-Light Glasses: What the Cochrane Review Found
Seventeen randomised trials, and no reliable evidence that blue-filtering lenses reduce eye strain. The physics is the more interesting part: the lenses block roughly eight percent more blue light than the clear ones.
Stretching Barely Prevents Injuries. Strength Training Cuts Them by Two Thirds.
A meta-analysis of 26,000 participants ranked the injury-prevention strategies head to head. The one everybody does came last. The one almost nobody does came first, by a mile.
Sugar Does Not Make Children Hyperactive. The Study That Proved It Tested the Parents.
A 1995 meta-analysis of 23 controlled trials found no effect. A year earlier, a smaller study had already explained why everyone believes otherwise — by giving every child a placebo and lying to their mothers.