4 ms·
In other news, the number of sociology graduates strongly correlates with the number of non-commercial space launches in a given year! https://www.tylervigen.co
by phreeza 3y ago
In other news, the number of sociology graduates strongly correlates with the number of non-commercial space launches in a given year! https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
In all seriousness though, it is pretty easy to find such correlations and I would take them with a huge grain of salt. For example there was a long-running theory that sunspots had a causal relationship to influenza epidemics, which turns out to be probably purely spurious: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28847318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28847318/
- fractallyte 3y ago"Probably" It's in that sliver of doubt that the big scientific discoveries lie...
- 0xr0kk3r 3y agoThe article points out that the researchers have a premise grounded in science for their correlation. That's the difference between shouting "correlation doesn't equal causation" and actually understanding how correlation is applied.
- phreeza 3y agoI would say the crucial thing is actually making a falsifiable prediction, not having a scientific grounding. There are also many "just so" stories that make sense at face value but are not really falsifiable (e.g. Evo psych is full of them). I think the theory here does make some falsifiable predictions, which is great, so guess we will see. But I'm not holding my breath.
- 0xr0kk3r 3y agoGood point. I don't understand their claims, and I don't have a horse in this race, but I'm really interested to understand the mechanism in more detail if it turns out to be correct because it sounds so bizarre.