This seems to be a trend with toxo papers - take a too-small sample, do no power or Bayesian analysis, find all bad correlations, but declare evidence of safety anyway.
This seems to be a trend with toxo papers - take a too-small sample, do no power or Bayesian analysis, find all bad correlations, but declare evidence of safety anyway.
The abstract as written is simply wrong from a statistical point of view:
our study strongly indicates that cat ownership in pregnancy or early childhood does not confer an increased risk of later adolescent PEs [2]
If you instead adopt Bayesian reasoning, then the direction of the measured effect is weak evidence that cats cause illness later in life. Either way you cut it, the study author's interpretation fails to coincide with the actual data they collected.
[1] https://liesandstats.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/accept-the-nul...
[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...
Edit: Source: Neuroscientist, multi-term dean, honorary doctor, and I would keep going but it would end up personally identifiable. Let's just say I have this on extremely good authority. There's a reason why "Most science research findings are false. " https://qz.com/530064/most-science-research-findings-are-fal...