Yet another article about cycling and aging

[Owlie]

I'm trying to make clear that I don't think the study necessarily reaches poor conclusions (I've had a chance to read it now), but it's not exactly new and exciting--"exercise is good for you." It does, however, raise a lot of questions. (Hey, taking scientific studies apart is part of my job description.)

Also, this is from the paper regarding their break points:

In the absence of clear evidence defining the amount of exercise necessary to combat the negative effects of inactivity, we pragmatically set standards for acceptance into the study. For men this was the ability to cycle 100 km in 6.5 h while for women the standard was set at the ability to regularly cycle 60 km in 5.5 h. The difference between sexes was necessary because of the paucity of women cyclists aged >55 years who regularly cycle 100 km.

[OakLeaf]

That still doesn't make sense to me. If they couldn't find enough women cyclists who ride 100k, and if 60k is enough for there to be a correlation with the health metrics they were looking at, why not look at men cyclists who ride 60k?

And yeah, me too, I'm not trying to argue that sweating and getting your heart rate up aren't good for you. But the way most scientific studies pretend women don't even exist, this is supposed to be so much better to compare women who ride shorter AND slower, and it just ticks me off.

[Owlie]

That still doesn't make sense to me. If they couldn't find enough women cyclists who ride 100k, and if 60k is enough for there to be a correlation with the health metrics they were looking at, why not look at men cyclists who ride 60k?

And yeah, me too, I'm not trying to argue that sweating and getting your heart rate up aren't good for you. But the way most scientific studies pretend women don't even exist, this is supposed to be so much better to compare women who ride shorter AND slower, and it just ticks me off.

Hell, many animal studies are done with male rats, unless for some reason you specifically need females. Supposedly males are less bitey than females, so it makes handling easier, or something.

It really sounds like they just asked the local bike club if they'd like to make $20 by participating in the study and took what they got, and those points happened to be where neat clusters formed.