• nous@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    The surge of cancer since the 1900s is also explainable by the surge in our ability to detect cancer and overall understanding of it.

    One big reason papers always find these links is just that they are finding correlations, which are always there, even for unrelated things. When you are looking at loads of factors in a observational study you are almost bound to find some accidental correlation. It is very hard to tell if that is just random or if there is a true cause behind it.

    There are all sorts of spurious correlations if you look hard enough.