Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/05/why-is-the-average-human-body.html
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I have a theory, total unproven, but it’s my theory.
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My theory is that it’s because we’re (as a species, not us as individuals) are becoming colder to each other…
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Anecdotally, my kid has always ran cold. If she was 98.6 odds are that was going to go higher.
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I’m cool with that.
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There are so many variables, and the amount of variation is tiny.
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I have a theory, it could be bunnies!
Srsly though, my normal temp isn’t 98.6 but 97.8. No clue why, I guess I’m just chill.
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Millennials are killing body temperature?
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And I’m all het up about it.
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I can almost see this conversation:
Climate Denier: “See?! This proves that the climate isn’t warming!!”
Other: “Au contraire. As the climate gets warmer, the body reacts by going cooler.”
Climate Denier: 
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Sounds like sampling bias to me:
From the article-
Age matters too. The older we get, generally, the colder we are
Western populations have generally being getting older on average during the time these studies have been happening. If you have a number of samples of people, each one reflecting the make-up of the population at the time it was taken, you’ll see a cooling effect if your later samples are “older” than your earlier ones. Then also, if we look at each sub-study, if they track a cohort of people over time, you will again see a cooling trend, as the cohort ages.
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I’m incorporating your theory into mine, let’s see what happens?
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I think it’s obvious and I’m not going to say it but I’m saying it’s definitely aliens.
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Unspoken theories are the best… otherwise, you’d see (more) fistfights outside of science conference venues.
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Harnessing human energy a la The Matrix?
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It’s interesting that the most likely set of causes for this are some of the exact same things that previously had been identified as influences that are probably making Americans more obese.
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My guess was that they’re beaming the stolen heat into Antarctica to melt Thwaites Glacier and create beachfront property for their summer homes, but the Matrix battery thing looks pretty plausible too.
Let’s wait and see what QAnon has to say about it.
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Given the current times… that sounds plausible. 
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Reptilian overlords actually
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Any chance that it’s, “All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.”?
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