this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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One was a preprint and the other a completed study from PubMed which doesn't even say it's covid, but the timing sure is coincidental. A preprint still has relevant data. When we everyday people see patterns, we then make deductions from them that tend to be accurate. The preprint is full of great data and shouldn't be discounted because of what it is. Let people see evidence and make their own deductions. It being a "preprint" wasn't hidden.
The context was is the data in the links. They were directly relevant being one study is about decline in conception and the other a decline in sperm motility, by significant numbers too.
...no? as humans, our pattern recognition, while well refined, often still causes us to make completely incorrect inferences from nothing. even restricted to the realm of the medical: you need only look at what people think made them sick versus what actually does; most people will blame food poisoning on the last thing they ate, or their sickness on the last person they encountered, even when there are many other possible reasons for their sickness.
also: a pre-print by definition has not been subject to rigorous peer review--it's roughly analogous to a draft--so i would be exceedingly hesitant to even assert something like it having "good data." even if you're the author you wouldn't definitively know that at this stage.
I said tend to be accurate. It's one way of starting to figure out what's true. We can't throw out that evidence as it just adds to other evidence. Also, peer review is not end all be all. It's a system that can be gamed and also used to discredit other studies
So you're saying you personally made a correlation without any evidence, just a hunch
The evidence of the topic in the paper. The timing is a correlation