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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Animals and Pets
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Pretty self explanatory. Post animals, post pets, post stuff about animals and pets!
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Way to confuse correlation and causation, jeez. We can't just conclude owning dogs causes reduced dementia risk from this, and even the study abstract makes this mistake.
For all we know, for example, it could be that elderly folks who are already doing worse get/are given cats because they require less constant personal attention and exercise (for the human).
And this is assuming the study was well conducted and there was no p-hacking or suchlike involved. I haven't really looked into the paper properly but the size of the reported effect and the weirdness of the claim makes me a bit wary.
The article is short, but it says that. It suggests that the increased physical and social activity that are associated with dog ownership are a likely cause.