Believe anyway

False correlations

Food, food, glorious food stacked high in supermarkets in every town. Not so everywhere. In bygone eras food supply varied throughout the year with a bounty at harvest time. Eked out over winter. Thus, the time of year that you showed your face for the very first time could have an impact on how you develop. We can run with this idea, the level of nutrients you got whilst in the womb allows us to make some future prediction about your prosperity. We can give you a personal star sign as the planets would be in a certain position when your parents copulated. Everyone born in the same month can be shown to have remarkably similar personalities. They are not vague and nor are they generalisations that apply in equal measure to everyone else. They follow a one-in-five rule. You scan the predictions and pick one out of the five portents that seems appropriate. You cling to that. The rest is background noise – to be ignored.

We washed, clothed, and fed our children. We took them to the park three times a week. We bought them presents at Christmas and on their birthdays. We read to them night after night and comforted them when they were troubled. We acted as a taxi driver and lent them cash and never got repaid. What do they remember about all this? They only recall the ‘bad’ things, the things we forgot to do or failed to get right. If we did well on a hundred things and fell short on one, you can be sure the one thing wrong will stick out like a missing brick in a wall. Now turn that inside out and think how that relates to hocus pocus. We see that oddity and make a big deal out of it. People do, however, get things right sometimes but for the wrong reasons.

What else can we use to add weight to our belief in the supernatural? The tides? Animals behaving oddly during the full moon. Hormones, temperature fluctuations, anything to shine light on random correlations. Besides, for me, you can’t beat blue skies and warmer weather. I notice my mood lift, much more so than day after day of grey skies and rain. If it makes you feel good, you might be more positive and perhaps more open to luck and good fortune.

In times of desperation, it is hardly surprising that people will think it better to spend the last few pieces of silver on a last chance to win big than stop and think about rebuilding in a way that is more certain. Laziness and the fast fix are so much more attractive. Myths and falsehoods seep into the conscious of the many and in most parts little damage is done. However, there are times when farcical claims create uncertainty and put people off making sensible choices.

The essence of science is to set out an experiment, repeat it over and over to see if it is consistent. Then publish the result so that other people can do the same experiment and see if they get the same result. You need to be careful on so many counts. Let’s say you test a headache pill. You can’t be sure that the water that you use to swallow the pill might be as helpful in alleviating the pain as the pill itself. Was it the pill or was the water countering dehydration? You must be absolutely sure the item you are testing is the active component and that you keep every variable the same each time you run an experiment. Science can be misinterpreted. Science can be wrongly applied. Statistical proofs lend weight to an argument rather than give us scientific proof. If what you are doing is based on science but is outside of precise laboratory conditions, it can no longer be legitimately called science. It is a gamble, punt, postulation, or an educated guess. Science is precision. Statistical evidence is often misquoted as science. Statistics gives you belief, but bad actors mislabel it as scientific proof. The semantics matter as the use of one word in place of another lends itself to coercive behaviour. Important, vital. Large, noticeable. Should, could. Science, statistics.