Coincidence can masquerade as causal proof when no baseline is considered
Evidence
I studied this propensity in 466 of my students at the beginning of September 1990 by asking for reactions to the twenty statements in Exhibit 4.2 (shown with correlation to RWA scores in parentheses). Take the first item. Do you agree that “the fact that airplane crashes sometimes occur when the pilots’ biorhythms are at a low point proves biorhythms affect our lives?” I hope not. If biorhythms affected nothing, you would still find coincidental times when planes crashed and the pilots’ biorhythms had been “low” (just as there are days when planes crash and graduate students are caught up in their work—although these are much rarer). — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1299
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Illustrates the fallacy of arguing from post-hoc coincidence without baseline rates.