Won't Somebody Please Think Of the Scientific Method!?

I came across this study on how napping at work lowers your odds of heart attacks and it bugged the crap out of me.

First off it's one of those "well no crap" things that scientists put out there like no one had ever heard it before. The link between health and stress has been well established.

Secondly, and more specifically, this "study" in particular drives me up a wall. There are tons of studies like this where someone sets out to prove something and throws out any variables except the one they want. the finding in this case was that napping during the work day will decrease your odds of a heart attack by 40%. The problem with this study in particular was that it didn't set up a control group, a group it told to never nap, and a group it told to nap 3 times a week. It was just a survey of about 6000 people.

So they just took 6000 people doing their normal routine, noted than the ones that napped lived longed, and concluded naps prolong life. The problem? It says a lot about your lifestyle, and more importantly your job, if you are allowed to nap during the work day. The guys doing manual factory labor for 10 hours a day aren't the ones getting nap time. It's the ones doing the cushy jobs, some of which are self employed.

Science just doesn't work this way. It's hard to prove things.

One of my favorite shows is Mythbusters, but it suffers from the same problem. Lets say someone tells you they knew a guy who fell off a building, but because he was holding a giant board glided safely to the floor below him .

You grab a board, run up to the top of a skyscraper, jump off, and glide safely to the ground, Myth confirmed.

You plummet to the earth and you didn't prove anything. There could have been 34209823 variables that went into the "maiden flight" and you will never be able to perfectly recreate the situation. You can use math to show that the updraft needed to provide the lift would need to be 30 times faster than any ever recorded, and that it you would need super human strength to hold onto the board under anything close to those conditions anyway. You still didn't prove it didn't happen. I give them a pass because the show is called "Mythbusters" not "Myth-Finder-Improbablers" but it still bugs we once in a while.