OVER THE HILL AT 24?

Unless they look at data comparing the skills of each person as they age, that finding sound pretty ridiculous to me. You can't say that an older person is getting slower by averaging his data with other younger people. You have to compare it to his own data from when he was young.

Just in case the total ridiculousness of the actual study weren't enough...

This is the study's official illustration:

Is this a real news site or is it like the Onion?

So I guess I have just over two years to make it big in competitive gaming.

Excuse me while I buy a PS3 and play Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for like 12 hours every day

Recent scientific studies find that the majority of scientific studies just make up whatever they want.

Yup, scientists are pretty lol sometimes quite a bit of the time. Social and Psychological sciences seem to be the most prone to lulzy BS.

Reminds me of some study I heard about a few years ago where they "found a connection between soda consumption and Potassium deficiency" by studying some Greek people who drank "between 4.5 and 9 liters of soda a day", or something like that. At that level of consumption, a potassium deficiency is probably the least of your worries...

I know I can't handle Yoshi's Story anymore. I used to be able to go one full story with that game without losing a single Yoshi. What's the deal?

author=Shinan
I thought it was sort of well-documented already that your reaction times are lower when you get older?

No doubt, but the way they "proved" that in the article seems unscientific. They didn't actually measure 1 person's reaction over time. All they can say for sure is that younger people have faster reaction times - not that the older people started declining at 24.

I facepalmed at work today when I was browsing CBC News.ca and saw that story x.x

author=Link_2112

author=Shinan
I thought it was sort of well-documented already that your reaction times are lower when you get older?

No doubt, but the way they "proved" that in the article seems unscientific. They didn't actually measure 1 person's reaction over time. All they can say for sure is that younger people have faster reaction times - not that the older people started declining at 24.

I facepalmed at work today when I was browsing CBC News.ca and saw that story x.x

Here, you can use this:

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author=Link_2112

author=Shinan
I thought it was sort of well-documented already that your reaction times are lower when you get older?

No doubt, but the way they "proved" that in the article seems unscientific. They didn't actually measure 1 person's reaction over time. All they can say for sure is that younger people have faster reaction times - not that the older people started declining at 24.

On the other hand is there a practical difference? The wording in the summary article might not be great but I do think that the science behind it is probably good. It was a big data statistical analysis and I guess you can make a bunch of conclusions from the data but I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to make based on the data.

Sure another study might come along and disprove the theory that reaction times get slower when you get older, by following a number of players for a while (and might find that, in fact, 24 is the magic number). Then this study actually gets a bit more interesting. Because if age is not the reason older players are slower at a game, what is then the reason? Is there some kind of generational shift where players above 24 are from a generation that don't appreciate actions per minute as a way of playing? (as the statistics that different tactics are employed to make up for the slower gameplay mig be an indication of) Or some other reason?


Essentially I'm just annoyed at people who thinks that every single scientific study is bullshit (or at least every single scientific study that either 1) disagrees with a person's worldview and thus must be false or 2) seems like such an obvious common sense thing that it must be useless.

There's a huuuuuge generational shift, as there is with every generation. Except this younger generation had a quantum leap forward thanks to advanced supercomputers. The problem with this study, as I see it, is that each generation of gamers had vastly different brain development growing up. So I feel that they can't be accurately compared, as they appear to have been in the study. It would be like comparing the life expectancies of past generations to current generations.

Kids have a huge head start on learning computers and complex strategies. They are going to reach the pro level much earlier in their brains development and are likely to out perform the previous generation at any given age. They developed those tools early and have many extra years to improve on them at a time where the brain is laying down a foundation of knowledge. Kids are playing photo realistic war games at 10 years old and mastering it.

Adults grew up with computers that struggled to show words and pictures in more than 256 colors. No internet, less knowledge overall. Most of us didn't even have serious online gaming until we were over 16+, and things were still slow and shitty looking. By the time we even had a chance to use all the advanced tools our brains reached a certain point in development. A point where things are already starting to max out. I was riding bikes, playing with dinky cars and playing NES mario bros at 10 years old. Mastering mario at 10 wouldn't seem like such an impressive feat now.

I will say though, that I personally rarely think studies are bogus. Mainly because I don't pay attention to them. Maybe if I read more of them I'd be like some of the others, but really there is no real criteria for doing a study and publishing the findings online. Anybody can do it, so its only natural that over time there will be a lot of poorly run studies with false info and findings. It used to be that only "experts" could publish studies so the results were "usually" more reliable. The internet has a tendency to ruin the integrity of everything.