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Missing controls and statistics

Posted by ebear on 16 Jul 2012 at 20:42 GMT

I was quite surprised by the lack of controls for alternative explanations for atrophy shown in prior research. As just one example, Valenzuela et al. (2008) show that mental activity is a key indicator of atrophy. In the study here, it could be that the those associated with "experiences" are of different socioeconomic status or other correlate that pursues less mental activity with age.

Also, there should be a correlation table included. I suspect that several of your born again and religious experiences variables are very highly correlated. This multicollinearity could be problematic and even lead to sign flipping.

Interesting that the atheist group had the second largest coefficient for atrophy......

No competing interests declared.
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