With so much misinformation on social media, it’s important to understand these terms so you can accurately evaluate the information you’re consuming and make better choices for your body, mind, and overall health.
There is such a thing as a correlative study in research. The issue is that correlation does does not equal causation. This means that just because two things are correlated or happen at the same time does not mean that one is causing the other. Understanding these terms helps protect us from misinformation online.
Talk about correlation versus causation. There's a lot of misinformation online and so many of us, myself included, go to social media for information when we're struggling. Oftentimes we will see things that talk about one thing being correlated to another. And oftentimes this is really misleading. And here's why. There is such a thing as a correlative study in research. So there are real empirical evidence based studies that are about the correlation between two things. The issue is that correlation does does not equal causation.
What does this mean? This means that just because two things are correlated or happen at the same time does not mean that one is causing the other. And the issue is, is that on social media oftentimes people will talk about correlative studies and use this data as proof or evidence that one thing is the reason another thing is happening. I'm gonna use a metaphor and hopefully this will help. Let's say there's a study that says a high number of people die eating ice cream and it's a correlative study.
That does not mean that it's the ice cream that's killing them. By using correlation we remove so many other factors. Did some of those people have a heart attack while they were eating ice cream? Did they get hit by a car because they crossed the street while eating their ice cream and weren't paying attention? Were they eating ice cream and slipped and fell in a pool? Was it someone's last meal on their deathbed? We don't have all these other factors involved. We only know that there is a certain number of people that died while eating ice cream.
This is why it's really important for us to understand these terms because it helps protect us from misinformation online and from a lot of fe fear mongering that happens, especially in diet culture. So next time you see something online or social media that says some things were correlated and therefore you better watch out for this thing because it could cause this thing. Now you know better and you can do your own research and look for things that have to do with causation and not correlation.
I hope this was helpful and I will see you next time.
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