<story><title>I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss</title><url>http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hartator</author><text>Finally, the most accurate reactions come from the web itself: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;forum.bodybuilding.com&amp;#x2F;showthread.php?t=166912491&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;forum.bodybuilding.com&amp;#x2F;showthread.php?t=166912491&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; study invalid. no control for calories at all.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Why are calories not counted on any of the individuals?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Free reign is not a way to go about doing a study. They might very well have, we don&amp;#x27;t know. We all know cocoa has weight loss properties (Theobromine), but to do such a poorly constructed study was pointless.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss</title><url>http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>oconnor663</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;that-chocolate-study&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;that-chocolate-study&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For me, the takeaway from this affair is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to make statistics impossible to hack. Getting rid of p-values is appropriate sometimes, but not other times. Demanding large sample sizes is appropriate sometimes, but not other times. Not trusting silly conclusions like “chocolate causes weight loss” works sometimes but not other times. At the end of the day, you have to actually know what you’re doing. Also, &lt;i&gt;try to read more than one study.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>