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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

The Onion: California Man's Beach-Walking Hobby is Kinda-Sorta Validated by Science

"People used to laugh at me when they read on my online dating profile that I enjoy long walks on the beach. They thought it was some kind of joke," said Michael Anderson, a Southern California resident. "Well, who is laughing now?"

Seriously though, the therapeutic effects of nature exposure are well-documented, at least anecdotally. I'm glad someone took the effort to scientifically validate them (even though it is a non-double-blind experiment with only 12 subjects).

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It's "forest versus city" though, so it's not even a great non-double-blind. I would have been more interested in "forest versus museum" or "forest versus canal". I don't think anyone has ever claimed cities as having any kind of calming influence.

I'll claim it. When I'm stressed I love to go somewhere full of strangers and just see them all pass by, getting on with their lives. Train stations or the like are particularly good.

I wonder what your results will be compared to the forest.

You'll have to control for a major confounding factor: the number of people per unit area.

I would hate to take a walk in a forest that has a population density equal to a train station. On the other hand, a train station with a population density equal to a quiet forest might come across as creepy/unsafe.

Oddly enough, I find sitting in the food market in the centre of one of Europe's largest cities a calming experience. Large open space. Human scale activity. Elemental stuff going on (huge range of food on display, lots of people of all stages in life and backgrounds browsing and buying with cash). Has been going on for a 1000 years or so on same site although modern structures.

Not statistical though.

How about peaceful forest vs logging forest (with lots of noise)?

From the article: "In each experiment, 12 subjects (280 total; ages 21.7 ± 1.5 year)"

This would imply that each variable group was composed of 12 participants but overall there were 280 participants.

From the "Experiment Design" section of the paper, emphasis added:

"The subjects were randomly divided into two groups. On the first day of the experiments, six subjects were sent to a forest site, and the other six subjects to a city site. On the second day, the subjects were sent to the other type of site as a cross-check."

To me, that suggests 12 total subjects, and 280 "trials".

I believe the implication is that this is the procedure on a per-group basis (considering each group has 12 members).

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