No Critical Thinking Required
On Twitter, a popular health advocate makes this observation:
From 1997-2007, the first 10 years of GMOs, there was a 265% increase in ER visits due to food allergic reactions http://t.co/U1PlwBvpU5
— Robyn O’Brien (@foodawakenings) May 21, 2014
Pretty incredible, isn’t it?
Here’s another correlation that will blow your mind.
You can check out all manner of “spurious correlations” at this site, which Knight Science Journalism blogger Paul Raeburn and others have been noting of late.
I think Keith Kloor would have better shown his point if he would have shown the correlation between organic food sales and ER visits due to food allergies.
Every three minutes, a scientist or public health professional bangs their head on their desk because of something clueless they see on twitter.
Somebody smarter than me thought of that: https://twitter.com/keithjs/status/469188389925711872
The correlation between the amount of government money given to the climate cult and the number of ‘scientific’ reports generated to validate their beliefs.
There’s no lack of critical thinking here! Using these spurious correlations is 100% intentional.
We also have 100%-intentional mischaracterizations to explain away data that are perfectly real and aren’t even the result of spurious correlations – the no-pause-in-atmospheric-temperature crowd – and people who just plain old make things up – the Sandy-is-the-new-normal crowd (if so, it’s better than the old normal, where storms were much worse).