"Studies have shown"

How much authority do we give a statement when it is prefaced by the phrase "studies have shown?" Anyone can say "studies have shown" something and no one really doubts what they say. Usually when someone says that, there are no actual studies that are referred to. If there was a study, who conducted the study? What control group did they use? What were their methods for conducting the study? What presuppositions might they have personally that would taint their results? What was the purpose of the study? Very importantly, who funded the study? Where was the study done, and did it have enough variables to achieve accurate results? I no longer lend much credit to someone who says "studies have shown" (I am referring mostly to people in the media) because when someone refers to a "study" they are usually using that study to enforce something that they already believe. Next time you hear someone say "studies have shown," think about what their reason is for quoting the study and see if they mention anything about the actual study, or just mention the results.

Nature Shows

So Michelle and I are watching this nature show miniseries on the Discovery Channel and I recommend that everyone watch it. Its called Planet Earth and its on Sunday nights for the next couple weeks or so and it is literally breathtaking. There are some awesome shots that you might not ever see anywhere else. For instance, there was a scene in one of the episodes where a snow leopard (one of the most rarely seen animals on Earth by the way) snuggling its kids and then hunting a mountain goat. It was pretty amazing to see. Each episode has a theme and we watched the "under-water" themed one last night. It seriously blew my mind!! I was sitting there for 45 minutes in some hypnotic trance not being able to turn my eyes from all of the stuff that I was seeing. For those of you who know me, you would know that it took me a little bit ot get over some whale shots, but once they were done with that they went deeper in the ocean and showed some of the most bizarre looking, bioluminescent, blobs of goo that somehow had the intelligence to look for food. Then they showed a time-lapse shot (I think it was over a few days) of a sperm whale that had died and sunk two miles to the ocean floor and all of the scavengers coming to eat the carcass. Anyways, if you like to see all of the most beautiful things about this planet that we live on, then you should definitely check this show out.