Does Anyone Know What The Mann-Whitney Test is Who is Watching? You Will See Why I  Ask.
Channel: jharekcarnelian
Date: 2024-04-06

This morning we learnt that the lack of Vitamin D is to blame for:

'The Chronic lack of achievement both academic and social of
people living in Western Europe who are of Subsaharan African ancestry. This includes of course most
Caribbeans.'

This was another Simon Webb proposition for which he used two academic papers. The reason why I've asked about knowing what the Mann-Whitney test is that it is referenced directly in one of those papers. I've included links to the same two papers Webb used below. Here is a brief definition of the Mann-Whitney test:

Mann–Whitney  test (also called the Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon (MWW/MWU), Wilcoxon rank-sum test, or Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test) is a nonparametric test of the null hypothesis that, for randomly selected values X and Y from two populations, the probability of X being greater than Y is equal to the probability of Y being greater than X.

Here's some further info on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann%E2%80%93Whitney_U_test

The authors describe using it as part of their methodology in one section in one of the papers Webb gave as links. As you can see we are already getting into quite specialized territory there. Yet we find these commentators, and Webb is certainly not alone in chucking up these academic papers as though they somehow lend sweeping statements about entire ethnic groups a spurious degree of respectability. I'd feel quite annoyed if I was the person who had written this material originally. In any case, here are the links to the documents below:

https://www.elsevier.es/en-revista-revista-paulista-pediatria-english-edition--409-pdf-S2359348215300361

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8620024/pdf/nutrients-13-04104.pdf