@Indignation @Tfmonkey
There are a lot of articles claiming coffee or caffeine boost cognitive performance if you do an online search for caffeine and cognitive performance
Why would getting caffeine from chewing gum but not swallowing it boosts performance more than from eating or drinking food with caffeine in it? If not what is so special about the gum?
@Indignation @Tfmonkey
What if cognitive performance only increases for a short time period while you are under the influence of caffeine and drops below where you started due to fatigue when the caffeine is no longer influencing you such that on average over a longer time period your cognitive performance is the same or worse even though it is better in a immediate time frame
@Indignation @Tfmonkey
I would not trust any claim based on statistical significance tests esoecially without a physical mechanism mentioned
Cognition and Brain Activation in Response to Various Doses of Caffeine: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01393/full
@Indignation @Tfmonkey
How was this conducted did people choose whether or not they use the gum or were they assigned to use or not use the gum?
A problem with smoking causing depression is unless you force people to smoke or not smoke, you can not know if smoking makes you depressed or if depressed people choose to smoke
Also do they test people immediately after using caffeine one time or after using caffeine every day for a period of multiple days?
How much time after use do they test?
@BowsacNoodle @Indignation @Tfmonkey
But that does not disprove that both smoking increases likelihood of depression and also depression or mental illness increases likelihood of smoking
My point is not about smoking that is just an example
My point is correlation shown in statistical signifucance tests does not support causation unless people are assigned to do an activity instead of looking at who chose to do an activity before the data was collected