[ExI] please analyze this article

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting sjatkins via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>:

> Would someone more well-versed in the statistical argument presented  
> please critically examine the argument in this article. It looks  
> quite suspicious to me to go from a meta-analysis of other articles  
> that did not explicitly find a link between asthma and gas stoves to  
> a the number of gas stoves in existence and the rate of asthma plus  
> a bit of mathematical jargon to conclude 12.1% correlation between  
> asthma (much less) correlation and gas stoves in the home. Yet this  
> suspicious article is being widely referred to in MSM as support  
> from "the Science" for banning gas stoves.
>
> https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75
>
> And of course those that question this latest bit of trumpeted  
> "wisdom" are being called "deniers" and worse as per quite sad usual  
> today.

I would point out a few things. First this was a meta-analysis which  
included a previously published meta-analysis published in 2013. So  
there has been no new data on this in over a decade. Furthermore none  
of the original studies could find a correlation, so the 2013  
meta-analysis is the only evidence for any causal link. I would also  
point out that the authors disclosed that part of their funding came  
from RMI, which is a non-profit dedicated to a zero-carbon energy  
infrastructure. https://rmi.org/

So yeah, this paper is pretty suspicious and is not based on any new  
data. Generally, one can get a really good idea of the political bias  
of any scientific work by following the money.

Stuart LaForge