Sunday 9 October 2011

Are you an optimist?

I simply can't believe this article on the BBC website -maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

Brain 'rejects negative thoughts'

According to the article "They rated 14 people for their level of optimism and tested them in a brain scanner." Incidentally, the link in the article goes nowhere either, it just tells me that the DOI I asked for can't be found in the Handle System, whatever that is.

Fourteen people? They can't be serious, surely? I'm optimistic that a mistake has been made by the BBC, but if not can you really do a medical study and make a conclusion based on such a small number? The article says that 80% of people are optimists but how on earth can you say that based on 14 people? There's something wrong here...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree. Drawing conclusions based on such a small sample is laughable!

Tom said...

I just think there's a mistake somewhere. I can't believe the conclusions that are being drawn from a study of 14 people. That's just not right. If I can find a copy of the actual research paper I'll let you know.