A new study published in Scientific Reports indicates that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) have an extremely high geographic association, even after controlling for race, gender, wealth, latitude, and access to neurological health care.
"The results of the study are surprising because previous studies have typically concluded there was no evidence for a mechanistic or genetic link between the two diseases," explains study author Melissa Schilling, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business who specializes in analyzing large-scale datasets using econometrics.
The study also shows that the relationship between the two diseases has likely been overlooked until now because of a "Simpson's Paradox"—a statistical phenomenon whereby a trend appears in different groups of data but disappears or reverses when the groups are combined.
The photo in the article also doesn't display the heat maps legend. Clicking on it reveals a legend at the bottom but the word "quantiles" is AI-sloppy looking. Could be a compression artifact?
The legend is also just a handful of numbers. No description, no units. This has to be the worst heat map I've ever seen, I don't even know if blue is good or bad.