Decreasing human body temperature in the United States

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Sciolus
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Re: Decreasing human body temperature in the United States

Post by Sciolus » Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:57 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sun Jan 12, 2020 2:48 am
There's no possible context in which that statement is meaningful and correct.
You could talk about percentage differences in temperatures if you were interested in heating/cooling (e.g. Newton's law) and your ambient was normalised to zero, but even then it would be better to talk about delta-temperatures or something, so I'm not sure if anyone does. And that isn't relevant to the present topic.

cvb
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Re: Decreasing human body temperature in the United States

Post by cvb » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:42 am

GeenDienst wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 5:01 pm
JQH wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 4:26 pm
GeenDienst wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 11:50 am

And there''s nothing wrong with that "1.6% lower" statement.
It's every bit as wrong as a tabloid story asserting that 30 degrees Celcius is twice as hot as 15 degrees Celcius.
These authors haven't done that. They talk about mean body temperature, using the standard SI unit for temperature, and they found it Their measurement was 1.6% lower over time. This is perfectly correct.
The SI unit of temperature is the Kelvin

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Martin Y
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Re: Decreasing human body temperature in the United States

Post by Martin Y » Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:20 am

Fishnut wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:45 pm
Martin Y wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 1:35 pm
There was a More Or Less podcast last year about body temperature and whether Wunderlich's 37°C was accurate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswk3g
Thank you for this! When I read the paper it reminded me of something I heard about body temperature being "different" now to when it was first determined and I couldn't for the life of me remember where. It was More or Less.
Yeah, me too. I knew I'd heard it, decided it must have been a Tim Harford programme, but that doesn't narrow it down much as I hear him on so many podcasts. But as it turned out it was his show but not actually him.

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