Thank you for this. Personally, I would read books even if doing so resulted in diminishing my health and shortening my life. I am happy to know that the opposite is true.

That said, though I am not a professional writer, I would like to comment on the presentation of your article. I assume that your target audience is not limited to scientists and statisticians. I further assume your goal is to make the information accessible and understandable to your readers. If so, I have a couple of suggestions.

First, about technical words. I recommend you use words with the same meaning but which are in more common usage. If that is not possible, define the particular word on first use. “Covariates” is such a word. I am sure many readers of your article know this word well, but I did not. Wikipedia offers a couple of alternatives that may work better. I don’t presume to decide, but one of them may convey the intended meaning while being easier to understand for we non-scientific types.

Second, when you first spoke of “hazard ratios,” I didn’t know what that term meant, nor what the significance of the decimal was. I found the answer on Wikipedia again and from that I understood your point better. A brief introductory paragraph about hazard ratios in your piece would have helped anyone in my position understand better and feel less stupid.

One might say that these suggestions are silly. When you were writing it might have been assumed that readers who didn’t understand the terms would look them up as I did. The risk there, in my opinion is two fold.

First, you risk losing readers who might get a little way into the piece and think that it was too technical for them, and they stop reading.

Second, the risk is that you lose a level of control over your message. I did look these terms up, and I think I understand what you mean. Yet, I may not understand what you meant when you wrote them because it was left up to me.

I do appreciate your post, and I hope you receive my reply in the spirit in which I offer it.