MaD is BaD!

A few days ago your NCTCS blogger became a septuagenarian. If the Mayan doomsayers are right, this blogger has celebrated his last birthday.

The "weather forecast" at right, from a French site (Courtesy of Physicist and author John Droz Jr) shows an amazing result of global warming.

Obviously that is fantasy....er..at least NCTCS blog hopes so.

So what is happening with the "MAYAN" calendar? 

Here is the latest from the Canadian Medical Journal's Holiday Reading - (Link)

At this point I must note that the heading over everything else is   Unsubstantiated Theory.

The article is written by the good doctors: Paul Wheatley-Price MBChB MD, Brian Hutton MSc PhD, Mark Clemons MBBS MD.  (and H/t to Al Bradley for the link)

There is a great deal of speculation concerning the end of the world in December 2012, coinciding with the end of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar (the “Maya calendar”). Such an event would undoubtedly affect population survival and, thus, survival outcomes in clinical trials. Here, we discuss how the outcomes of clinical trials may be affected by the extinction of all mankind and recom- mend appropriate changes to their conduct. In addition, we use computer modelling to show the effect of the apocalypse on a sample clinical trial.

So our good Doctors (MDs) did some research:

Stuff we did
Using computer modelling (described elsewhere ad nauseum, ad infinitum), we have generated Kaplan–Meier curves for the overall population to compare normal life expectancy from standard actuary tables (control group) with population survival after MaD (obliteration group). These methods were then hypothetically applied to a standard clinical trial design.

And then our good MDs announced:

Stuff we found out
The difference in survival between the control and oblitera- tion groups is shown in Figure 1. For the control group, death occurs at a predictable and fairly uniform rate. However, MaD leads to a statistically significant, and clinically rele- vant, difference in survival between the control and oblitera- tion groups (we’re pretty sure that, were it calculated, p would definitely be something really significant, and cer- tainly less than 0.05). Oddly, despite censoring for major known sources of bias (e.g., astronauts currently aboard the international space station, as well as zombies, the undead, the Grateful Dead, Dungeons and Dragons players, men who have read Fifty Shades of Grey and other similar beings likely to be unaffected by the apocalypse), the obliteration group does not fall to 0. We have dubbed this slow rise in the obliteration curve the “zombie re-population.”

NOW here is there conclusion:  

Conclusion
MaD is bad.

Your NCTCS blogger says: "See you  on the 23rd!"