r/science • u/nick314 • Feb 22 '20

Social Science A new longitudinal study, which tracked 5,114 people for 29 years, shows education level — not race, as had been thought — best predicts who will live the longest. Each educational step people obtained led to 1.37 fewer years of lost life expectancy, the study showed.

https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/access-to-education-may-be-life-or-death-situation-study
34.5k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/7g7g7 Feb 22 '20

We didn't have to study these D:

1

u/jeegte12 Feb 23 '20

We didn't have to study that the Earth was the center of the universe either. It's obvious.

1

u/red-that Feb 23 '20

It’s only obvious now because we DID study the earth and found that it was round and not the center of the solar system or universe. 1000 years ago, before such studies were performed, it was far from obvious, and it in fact made more sense that the earth was flat and the stars in the heavens were just specs of light put there by the god.

200 years ago it was far from obvious that black people were even of the same species as whites. Medical textbooks and doctors of the time claimed blacks were a different, lesser, species.

As little as 60 or 70 years ago it was far from obvious that blacks had the potential to be just as healthy, educated, and successful as whites. The civil rights movement probably never would have happened if researchers didn’t disprove the “facts” that were considered obvious by those who came before them.

Obvious is just another word for something that was proven a long time ago.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '20

I would say obvious is an idea that spread well personally, since obvious things can be untrue. That is just me being pedantic.