> the average risk I expose myself to per mile is indeed higher, but this doesn't imply that driving to the grocery store is any more dangerous than it was bef

> the average risk I expose myself to per mile is indeed higher, but this doesn't imply that driving to the grocery store is any more dangerous than it was before. It doesn't mean it doesn't either. Someone would need to do the science to show it either way, and that hasn't happened. I don't see how you get from there (which you could have said in like 5% of the prose as "the variables aren't independent") to your point that the news media shouldn't ever report on scientific results if there is the possibility of a confounded variable. The standard you want applied would effectively mean that the media can't report on experimental science at all. So I'm going to go back to my original supposition that what you really WANT is for the media not to report on inconvenient facts, and you're hiding behind scientific pedantry to make the case.