• Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      22·
      5 days ago

      And pretty meaningless.

      Any study will specify the specific population used in the study, the variability of that population, and how that variability was adjusted for.

  • echo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    Are you asking if old findings are reconsidered based on the growth of population? Regardless of the size of the overall population, any study must take into account a large enough population to be statistically relevant. Once that has been achieved, the overall population size doesn’t matter, generally. For instance, studies that talk about the spread of polio and the efficacy of the polio vaccine should stay somewhat reliable. I’m assuming that some of the data on spread talks about different population densities. So, as the overall population size increases there may be more, higher density pockets of population which will result in even more people getting infected, but shouldn’t automatically change the prior findings. That said, other variables can and do change, so there could always be the need for newer studies to quantify the impact of those changes. Maybe climate change and deforestation have some impact on polio and/or it has mutated in some way.

    Studies that are very specific about a particular population and its size may well need to be reconsidered as that population changes both in makeup and size.

    I personally believe that ‘good science’ is always going to at least consider the impact of population growth/change even if it’s unlikely that it would have much, if any, impact.