Most of the examples are of false generalization, not of correlation implies causation. How’s this: propensity to get lung cancer leads people to smoke.
Here’s one I am very suspicious of. There are stats that show that people who are overweight (but NOT obese) live longer than people of normal weight. But it is entirely possible that various diseases, especially cancer, cause weight loss, so that the causal arrow goes in the opposite direction.
Old joke. A researcher goes partying, and keeps a log of his reactions. “Thursday night: Got drunk on scotch and water. Friday night: Got drunk on gin and water. Saturday night: Got drunk on bourbon and water. What caused my drunkenness? Obviously the common factor: the water.”
Similar old joke:
Researcher takes a frog. Yells “Jump!” Frog jumps 4 feet.
Researcher cuts one leg off of frog. Yells “Jump!” Frog jumps 3 feet.
Researcher cuts off another leg. Yells “Jump!” Frog jumps 2 feet.
Researcher cuts off another leg. Yells “Jump!” Frog jumps 1 foot.
Researcher cuts off the last leg. Yells “Jump!” Frog remains still. Yells “Jump!” again. Frog remains still.
Researcher reports conclusion. “Frog with no legs becomes deaf.”
1 in 12,000 arrests results in someone getting dead therefore all police are murdering thugs looking for any opportunity to shoot someone.
It could be worse. My father believed, in all seriousness, that homosexuality caused abortions.
His definition of “homosexual”, apparently, was “person who wants to have sex without having children”.
:dubious:
I was diagnosed with cancer a ways back (I got better). After getting this news, my wife said I should stop exercising and stop eating fruit, since these were things I’d started doing (or doing more of) shortly before the diagnosis.
That reminds me of a (slightly similar case): someone I know had an accident and received burns over something like 70% of of her body. As part of the healing, she had to massage the scars to help deal with them. While doing that she noticed a lump (which turned out to be cancer) in her breast. Her husband told me that plenty of people told him (and her) that the burns and/or subsequent surgeries/grafts caused the cancer. Citing something about her body being ‘open’ which made her susceptible to cancer. He spent a lot of time explaining to people that cancer isn’t something you can ‘catch’ like, say, a staph infection. It sucks that she had cancer on top of everything else, but ‘everything else’ didn’t cause the cancer.
The rise in autism correlates with an increased usage of vaccines.
Obligatory link to the Spurious Correlations site:
Annie-Xmas:
Well, I suppose there are some women who, if they wish to avoid pregnancies that they’d feel a need to abort, might turn to lesbian sex for pregnancy-free satisfaction.
Really? How many people who have or cause an abortion become gay?
In his book “Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions” Randy Alcorn belives that abortion has led to an increase in child abuse.
Annie Xmas:
I really meant the remark tongue-in-cheek. I don’t think anyone would “become gay”, although it’s certainly possible that a bisexual woman who’s gone through a pregnancy (aborted or otherwise) and didn’t enjoy it (or its outcome) might rectify the problem by going exclusively with other woman.
Something about goats and the Chicago Cubs…
My roommate in university said he would never own a 4 door car because a four door car he had blew an engine.
There’s a goat sex joke in there somewhere…
My mother is convinced the reason I’m an atheist is because of those godless liberal professors I had in a state college brainwashing me. Nevermind that I was always skeptical of religion as a kid and I gave up on church at 16. Nevermind that as an architecture major I really had no classes dealing with religious beliefs and have absolutely no idea what beliefs any of my professors held. They could have all been baptists as far as I knew.
Nope. If your kid goes to a state college they are destined to be brainwashed by the staff.
An actual conversation I heard at work several years ago:
Guy1: “What makes the wind blow?”
Guy2: “Trees swaying.”
Guy1: “Trees?”
Guy2: “Yeah, have you ever felt the wind blowing when the trees weren’t swaying?”
Guy1: “Hmm…”
Years ago when I was in college I happened to be spending some time helping around my mom’s office. She was an insurance agent, so small office of 2 or 3 agents and a receptionist. On this day my mom and the receptionists were the only ones there (besides me). Mom asked me to take a look at one of the other agents computer keyboard because it had a sticky key. I went and looked and decided to take it into my mom’s office to sit and clean it because the light was better there. Just as I walked out of the agent’s office, keyboard in hand, the receptionist angrily accused me of disconnecting her phone call. :smack:
There’s the old joke about the guy who’s looking for his glasses. He’s looking in the wrong place but at least the lighting’s better.