Causation vs Correlation: How tell when someone's trying to feed you baloney

Don't fall for people misusing evidence to
tell you what you're doing is wrong.
Credit: Arlette Cifuentes Meneses via Flickr CC BY 2.0 licence.

by Gaia Cantelli, PhD

Last time that somebody told you that what you were doing was bad, did they offer evidence - and did you believe it? 

In an age obsessed with fake facts, hopefully you have an armour of skepticism forming already. But here's a chink in the armour you may not have thought of: perfectly true facts can also be warped to manipulate people. One of the most common ways to do this is by mixing up causation and correlation.

Causation and correlation are both extremely boring statistical words that underlie very simple concepts. Two events are correlated if they happen at the same place, or at the same time. For example, in children, shoe size is most likely correlated with the number of books they have read – older children have both read more books and have bigger feet. The two things do not cause each other but do happen at the same time. Causation, on the other hand, means that one of the two events is happening because of the other. For example, students who do better in exams also have a higher acceptance rate into college - because grades are one of the things that college considers when evaluating an applicant.

What do coffee, ayahuasca, and being ill do to our brains? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of April 9-15 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

From South American psychedelic substances to coffee to sickness, many things in our world influence how we think and who we are. These and many other topics are among ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

This neutron star is glitching. Image credit:
NASA/CXC/University of Toronto/M. Durant, et al.

• Alien Signals We Discover Could Be The Echoes Of Dead Worlds by Brian Koberlein at Forbes
• Three years of staring lets scientists capture a neutron star “glitch” by John Timmer at Ars Technica
• Podcast of the week: Astrobiology and the Anthropocene by Alejandro Soto, Maeve Conran, Joel Parker and Adam Frank at How on Earth
• A quantum internet could revolutionise communication, computing and basic science, and it may be only 10 years away. But what is it? by Michael Lucy at Cosmos Magazine
• Caffeine causes widespread brain entropy (it's good, trust us we're scientists) by Christian Jarrett at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• Can Ayahuasca Prompt Neurogenesis? by Patrick Smith at The Psychedelic Scientist
• Why being sick can create anxiety at It Ain't Magic
• Drinking may have given me cancer. The alcohol industry has worked hard to bury the link by Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones
• The weekly alcohol limit still carries a risk of early death at New Scientist
• Hypothesized benefit from integrative treatments for veterans’ chronic pain fails to materialize by Jann Bellamy at Science-Based Medicine
• Engaging With Bad Science Episode 2 – What A Study Is And Why We Care by Gaia Cantelli
• Global warming may poison monarch butterflies, study finds by Morgan Erickson-Davis at  Mongabay
• The Hidden Coral Crisis: Loss of Fish Diversity After Bleaching Strikes by Todd Woody at Oceans Deeply
• Animal trainers are teaching wildlife to conserve themselves by Linda Lombardi at Mongabay
• A final dash across the United States: Updates from the 2018 March for Science at Science 
• Africa's unsung scientists finally get their own journal to spread research by Emmanuel Akinwotu at The Guardian
• 125-250 words, 15 minutes: Setting small writing goals to build an academic writing practice by Raul Pacheco-Vega

Check back next week for more great picks!

Towels or air driers after cleaning hands? Why are whales so big? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of April 2-8 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

Is who we think we are defined by the people around us? Or can behaviour like infidelity be determined by our genes? Or are both things true? These and many other topics are among ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

Whales are awesomely large - but why?
Image credit: Leigh Hilbert, used via Flickr
CC BY-SA 2.0 licence

• A swarm of black holes may be lurking in our galaxy’s heart by Sid Perkins at Science
• At 12, He Had a Viral Science Video. At 14, He Fears He Was Too Rude by Adrianne Jefferies at The New York Times
• Why you should get the new shingles vaccine by Jane E Brody at The New York Times 
• Hot-air dryers suck in nasty bathroom bacteria and shoot them at your hands by Beth Mole at Ars Technica
• Why Whales Got So Big by Ed Yong at The Atlantic
• Hear Bowhead whales in the Arctic sing hundreds of complex songs by by Shreya Dasgupta at Mongabay
• Frogs may be ‘fighting back’ against deadly pandemic by Morgan Erickson-Davis at Mongabay
• Microplastics may enter freshwater and soil via compost by Rachel Ehrenberg at Science News
• What makes a tree a tree? by Rachel Ehrenberg at Knowable
• Humans Are Still Evolving by Steven Novella at NeuroLogica Blog
• How fungi oxygenated the Earth by Nigel Chaffey at Botany One
• Viewpoint: Why the USDA decided not to over-regulate CRISPR crops—and what it means for agriculture's future by Val Giddings at The Genetic Literacy Project
• Will Gene Editing Be Suitable for Agriculture? at BOSS Magazine
• NIH completes in-depth genomic analysis of 33 cancer types at National Institutes of Health (NIH) 
• “Another nail in the coffin for learning styles” – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style by Christian Jarrett at British Psychological Society Research Digest
• Why It's Time to Rethink School Science Fairs by Daisy Yuhas at KQED News
• Podcast of the week: Is There a Gene for Infidelity? by Lauren Vogelbaum at BrainStuff
• The Self Is Other People by Brian Gallagher at Nautilus
• Reprogramming fear responses outside of conscious awareness by Deric Bownds at Deric's Mindblog
• arXiv Fool's! by David Zaslavsky at Ellipsix Informatics
• Getting into sloe business by Stuart Cantrill at Chemical Connections
• Scientists Describe Nanostructure, Mechanical Properties of Chicken Eggshell at Sci-News.com
• Proudly presenting: #SciCommChall – the science communication challenge! by Miriam S. Glessmer at Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Check back next week for more great picks!

How can you get involved in science? Why can vampires handle candles but not the sun? Find out in ScienceSeeker's picks of the best posts for the week of March 26-April 1 2018 #sciseekpicks #scicomm

How we do in school is less tied to our genes than has recently been suggested, which may be just as well as infertility treatments are removing one element of human evolution. These and many other topics are among ScienceSeeker editors' favourite posts within their respective areas of interest and expertise for the past seven days. Here is the full round-up of the ScienceSeeker Editors’ Selections:

Come on, smile, make my brain light up!
Credit: Natalie Holmes

• Smile! Your dog’s brain will light up in response by Virginia Morell at Science
• Blue's Clues Into How Children Watch Television by Eva Au at Dudley Describes
• Participating in science: a citizen’s guide by Kim Stephens at Dispatches from the Field
• Travel To India: Science of Mahendi (Henna) body art by Trina Espinoza at Ms. Beautyphile
• The Quantum Physics Of Vampires by Chad Orzel at Forbes
• Insulator or superconductor? Physicists find graphene is both by Jennifer Chu via at MIT Technology Review
• A Galaxy Without Dark Matter by Kendra Redmond at Physics Buzz
• Cancer Vaccine Found To Cure Lymphoma in 97% Of  Mice: To Begin Human Testing by Mohendra Shivnarain at Science Trends
• Science Is Getting Us Closer to the End of Infertility by Jason Pontin at Wired
• Much Ado About 3.7% of the Variation: Genes and Educational Attainment by Dan Graur at Judge Starling
• How your brain is wired to just say ‘yes’ to opioids by Paul R. Sanberg and Samantha Portis at The Conversation US 
• Bioengineered plants help defend against Ebola and other deadly diseases at National Science Foundation
• Engineered Fungus is a New Source for Polymer Building Blocks by Kevin Reed at Chembites
• Explainer: What’s behind the rabies outbreak in SA? at SciBraai
• Humans, the non-sleeping primates by Rosa García-Verdugo at Mapping Ignorance
• Why laughter in the lab can help your science by Amber Dance at Nature
• What is the impact of retractions in science? by Ivan Oransky at Elephant in the Lab 
• Along with the NIH budget hike comes a less welcome large hike in the budget for quackery for the NCCIH by Orac at Respectful Insolence
• The moral hazard of quantitative social science: Causal identification, statistical inference, and policy by Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Check back next week for more great picks!

Announcing the Winners of the Science Seeker Awards 2018!

No, it's not an April fool - we are announcing the winners of the return of the ScienceSeeker Awards! Thanks go out to everyone who entered.

As a reminder, there were nine categories, from each of which we selected winners We then picked the overall winner from among the winners from each category. Without further ado, the winners in each category were:

• General science posts and graphics: Including posts from sites that correspond to our art, photography, general science and science communication bundles. Winner: Darcia Schweitzer at Promega Connections for Knots: Friend or Foe? 
• Cells and molecules: Including posts from sites that correspond to our biotechnology, cell biology, chemistry, and microbiology bundles. Winner: Kate Bredbenner for 2017 Nobel Prize for Circadian Rhythm
• Humanities: Including posts from sites that correspond to our development, economics, ethics, gender, history, language, law, philosophy, policy, political science, religion and atheism, social science and sociology bundles. Winner: Philip Strange for A Cough Medicine That Really Worked, and it Contained Opium - The Story of Fudge's Firewater
• The environment and our place in it: Including posts from sites that correspond to our anthropology, archaeology, climate science, conservation, evolution, geography, geosciences, oceanography, palaeontology and oceanography bundles. Winner: Shreya Dasgupta at Mongabay for Experience or evidence: How do big conservation NGOs make decisions?
• Health, medicine and brain science: Including posts from sites that correspond to our clinical research, clinical psychology, health, medicine, neuroscience, nutrition, psychiatry, psychology, public health and veterinary medicine bundles. Winner: Maya Gosztyla at AlzScience for How Sleep “Cleans” Your Brain and Fends Off Alzheimer’s Disease
• Academia: Including posts from sites that correspond to our academic life, student life, grants, career, education, publishing and library science bundles. Winner: Pete Etchells at Head quarters for The human cost of the pressures of postdoctoral research
• Podcast: Including posts from sites that correspond to our podcast bundle. No overall winner. 
• Physical sciences and technology: Including posts from sites that correspond to our artificial intelligence, astronomy, computer science, energy, engineering, mathematics and physics bundles. Winner: Paula Rowinska at Certain about uncertainty for Simpson in: “Kidney Trouble”
• Big biology: Including posts from sites that correspond to our behavioural biology, biology, ecology, marine biology and plant science bundles. Winner: Bridget Menasche at Science Buffs for Field Study. 

And the overall winner is: Pete Etchells at Head quarters for The human cost of the pressures of postdoctoral research

Congratulations to all the winners! We'll be in touch shortly with badges to show that you won.

Thanks also to the judges, our editors: Shriyaa Mittal, Jesse Zondervan, Teodora Stoica, Thanassis Psaltis, Joana Neto, Natalie Holmes and Kayla Matz.