October 5, 2015

"Health Benefits of Tea? Here’s What the Evidence Says."

I'm linking to this (in the NYT) because I love the illustration.

Meade said: "I hope it doesn't give people seizures."

IN THE COMMENTS:  Adam said:
That illustration is of the world's most famous teapot!
Wow! That blew my mind. The link goes to "Utah Teapot":
The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D computer model that has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community. It is a mathematical model of an ordinary teapot of fairly simple shape, that appears solid, cylindrical and partially convex. A teapot primitive is considered the equivalent of a "hello, world" program, as a way to create an easy 3D scene with a somewhat complex model acting as a basic geometry reference for scene and light setup. Many programming libraries even have functions dedicated to drawing teapots.
On clicking the link, Meade — who used to make teapots — said: "That's an ugly teapot." Then: "The 'actual Melitta teapot' is actually pretty good. It's a good form."

27 comments:

YoungHegelian said...

I'll tell you one thing there's a correlation between: drinking your tea (or soup) boiling hot & stomach cancer.

Some folks like the Russians & the Japanese, drink their tea unbelievably hot for the Western palate (in this case, the literal Western hard & soft palates). It's a fine art to learned how to slurp the tea into the back in the mouth without scalding the front.

It is for this reason that the Japanese have, among first world countries, paradoxically the lowest rate of intestinal cancer & the highest rate of stomach cancer.

Bob Ellison said...

Are we talking real tea, or the lawn clippings that many new-world tea believers swill?

Static Ping said...

When I was in college, one of the professors would discuss health studies. We quickly learned that most of the studies were useless due to tiny samples, lack of control groups, self-selected samples, oddball statistical population surveys often with dubious validity, short-term results extrapolated into long-term results, statistically insignificant results that looked impressive, self-reported results that were clearly false (even if the person providing said results truly believed them to be true), and many other reasons why most of it was a combination of quackery and hokum. Later on in statistics class I would learn the joys of margin of error and confidence intervals that made a single study on anything of no value until additional studies were done to corroborate it.

Yes, the cigarette/cancer links studies were brought up. The studies on those repeatedly kept coming up with large obvious links that were impossible to ignore, and each study would reinforce the next one. People keep trying to find the next cigarette statistical breakthrough, but there are few subjects where the statistical linkage is so pronounced and the public at large is not already aware of it. Yet they keep trying. Have to find funding somehow.

Sadly, I suspect that the media class was too busy taking Physical Education 102 and Sociology 203 to understand such things, which is why they get duped into publishing the latest press release without a second thought. In his defense, Mr. Carroll does seem to understand this, but then relies on meta-analysis. Getting good results by averaging out dubious studies does not average out the dubious.

YoungHegelian said...

@Bob E.

or the lawn clippings that many new-world tea believers swill?

You got that right. Even brands like Tazo & Kingdom of Tea, which pretend to be hoity-toity, are floor sweepings. Tear open a tea bag of either brand sometime & look at what pulverized garbage the tea inside is.

Robert Cook said...

As a long-time chronic tea-drinker, I am happy to read these results.

Anonymous said...

That illustration is of the world's most famous teapot!

Marc in Eugene said...

No tea dust in bags here in Eugene! although this is also why I drink tea only on Sundays and holidays and Mexican instant espresso during the rest of the week; very pricey.

Nichevo said...

Google Ten Ren. Thank me later.

The Bergall said...

The author lost me after the third paragraph..........what is his point?

Dad said...

Static Ping, thanks for that excellent summary. I'm glad to see your college years weren't wasted.

Dave in Tucson said...

The teapot model is actually somewhat famous in 3D modeling circles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot

Fred Drinkwater said...

(Teapot - fond memories...)
I don't have the patience to wade through all those studies and meta-studies, but the NYT article raises numerous big red flags about the science and statistics.
Quick intro:
xkcd.com/1574
xkcd.com/1478
xkcd.com/882
And I suggest looking in Derek Lowe's archives for discussions on the statistical perils of multiple targets, especially adding new ones in during the study.

Fred Drinkwater said...

and after plowing through the comment thread with Ann's excruciatingly in-depth analysis of the history of the wording of the 10th amendment, I know she will appreciate the absolute necessity of accuracy and precision in science as well as law.

Fred Drinkwater said...

and the phrase "accuracy and precision" does not contain a redundancy.
(Boy am I in a touchy mood this PM.)

MadisonMan said...

From the Article:

Most of the studies don’t have the rigor of randomized control trials and don’t prove causality.

....but I'm going to comment on the summaries of these no-causality-proof studies as if there were.

In other words, just another typical day of (mis)understanding Science at the NYTimes.

Fred Drinkwater said...

MadisonMan:
Feynman describes this well with the story of how to know the length of the nose of the Emperor of China (who nobody has ever seen). Go ask 10,000 people what it is, then average the answers. (This process, by the way, in some sense gives you excellent precision, but essentially zero accuracy.)

Fernandinande said...

Fred Drinkwater said...
I don't have the patience to wade through all those studies and meta-studies,


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Ann Althouse said...

Adam, Dave... Thanks!,,

Fred Drinkwater said...

Re: the teapot
Just to give people a flavor of how far computer graphics has come:
Back in about 1979, I watched a UCB masters student generating images for his thesis. He was building a very short movie, about 100 frames, showing a "flyby" of a model supersonic transport. The model was wireframe (look it up) with about 100 elements. There was no color and no background at all. It took about 30 minutes for the largest computer (a CDC 6400, IIRC) he had access to, to render each frame. Then he photographed each screen image with a single-shot 16mm film movie camera. Many days later, VIOLA! a 4-second movie!

BN said...

Ok, didn't read this, no interest, but one of the comments got me (sorry, too lazy to cite):

"We quickly learned that most of the studies were useless due to tiny samples, lack of control groups, self-selected samples, oddball statistical population surveys often with dubious validity, short-term results extrapolated into long-term results, statistically insignificant results that looked impressive, self-reported results that were clearly false (even if the person providing said results truly believed them to be true), and many other reasons why most of it was a combination of quackery and hokum. Later on in statistics class I would learn the joys of margin of error and confidence intervals that made a single study on anything of no value until additional studies were done to corroborate it."

I confess, I'm a Sociology major. The science is settled: it's pretty much all pretend. What did Twain say? Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Even things with math are "models" these days. But we so want to believe how smart we moderns are, don't we?

Who said, "The problem with Smart People is that they aren't"?

Oh yeah. Me.

BN said...

BTW, Static Ping, that was a great comment, wonderfully put.

ddh said...

The Utah teapot illustrated at the link looks as if it ought to be avocado green. It may also be available in harvest gold.

Bill said...

Just the sight of a teapot lowers my blood pressure several points.

Fred Drinkwater said...

ddh: Google images is your friend. I also found it in stainless steel, rainbow, glass,...
In practice, this thing used to be the "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." of graphics programming.

amba said...

Why was the illustration spinning when I first looked at it but not when I looked back at it?

Was I having a seizure?

BN said...

One question: has anyone ever eaten marshmallow pies?

rhhardin said...

Pottery classes were more into ashtrays than teapots. Who knows what they do today.