[Previous] book intros vs movie intros | Home | [Next] Comments on Political Justice, Book 2, Chapter 2

Correlation Study

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-marriage/MH00108

lol. the study talks about the health benefits of marriage. live longer, blah blah. correlation does not imply causation! for example:

maybe screwed up people have a harder time finding a spouse, *and* die younger. marriage and better health could really really easily be effects of an underlying cause, instead of one causing the other.

they don't even say it was a correlation study, or cite a source. they just try to say it's the scientific consensus, you can take it for granted that it is correct. that's disgraceful.

btw, you may be wondering: if they don't cite the study, or say how they reached the conclusion, then maybe it wasn't a correlation study? well, what else would it be? did they do a double blind trial where people don't know if they are married? :) what they will say they did is "take into account other factors" so that the only factor left is marriage/no-marriage. but how did they do that? they could control for people with similar diets, similar drug use, similar dangerous habits (sky diving, etc), and so on. but only the ones they think of. and have the budget for. not all possible things. no matter how many they control for, it still remains that they could have missed something subtle, and that correlation doesn't imply causation.

Elliot Temple on November 11, 2007

Messages

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

(Due to multi-year, sustained harassment from David Deutsch and his fans, commenting here requires an account. Accounts are not publicly available. Discussion info.)