More On That Most Important Study

I wanted to follow up on my post from yesterday about that study on middle aged white mortality rates. The study generated a great deal of attention when it was first released earlier this fall. And it also generated a small methodological controversy. Andrew Gelman, a Professor of Statistics at Columbia University, was one of the principal critics and published a set of revised numbers that control for the size of population groups passing through the 45-54 year age bracket over the course the years between 1998 and 2014. Before digging into the numbers, I think the overall gist is that Gelman's findings/revisions do not challenge the overall findings of the study - a conclusion Gelman himself seems to agree with. But they change the details significantly.