Whats the difference between cause, correlation and coincidence?
Advertisers bowl us over with anecdotes and testimonials. They must be selling products using those tactics, but people are falling for the oldest trick in the book. Just because two things are linked in time (correlated), does not mean that one caused the other. The link may be a coincidence. Take an herbal remedy and your cold goes away. You could have taken Jell-O and your cold would still have gone away because your immune system is responsible for the miracle cure. The failure to adequately prove cause is the single worst problem with health studies. Q: Most people probably think they’re reasonably logical, able to rationally sort through issues when they want to. Yet you say when it comes to science, we all share some common weaknesses. What are they? A: Denying that we have quirks in logic makes it easier for stakeholders to manipulate us. We fail to think outside the box, overgeneralize, attribute cause incorrectly, think about numbers in funky ways and succumb to a wide range
