I was complaining to a local friend last week about the rain here in Vanuatu. It rained every day for 2 weeks and I was going a bit stir crazy.
“It’s the cruise ships,” my friend told me. Really? “Yes, every single time a cruise ship comes to Vanuatu, it rains. Everyone in my village knows, cruise ships bring rain.”
Sure enough it rained for as long as the ships remained, and yesterday when the ships left, the sun came out. The natives are on to something!
What was amazing about this discussion was that it came just as I was preparing some articles for this blog about the difference between causation and correlation. This fundamental distinction between “X and Y happen together” versus “X causes Y” is perhaps the most misunderstood concept in the New Age community.
This discussion is important to you because many, if not most, New Age products and ideas, including alternative healing information, is based on this mistake of causation versus correlation. If you can understand this vital point that even scientists often get wrong, then you have learned one of the key tools in logical thinking that will save you a lot of time and money.
More Vanuatu beliefs
According to Lonely Planet Vanuatu, the hill tribe people of Vanuatu made the connection that malaria occurred near the ocean. Up in the hills they were safe from malaria. Therefore it was obvious that sea water causes malaria. People were forbidden from even looking at the ocean. They confused correlation (malaria does indeed occur at sea level) with causation (the sea doesn’t cause malaria). It was hundreds of years before they learned that mosquitoes – which live at sea level – are the cause.
I learned an even better example in researching today’s articles. According to this article, the natives in Vanuatu believed that body lice produces good health. They observed that healthy people always seemed to have lice, and yet sick people had no lice. The observation is correct (there is correlation). But lice don’t cause health any more than water causes malaria. They confused correlation with causation.
It took relatively advanced critical thinking to pierce the magical veil and convince tribes people that there was some other factor or cause at work. That mosquitos, living near water, cause malaria. Or that lice will abandon a feverish body in search of healthy hosts.
This type of logical thinking requires knowledge which the native people did not have.
In other words it’s ignorance and lack of education which causes people to confuse correlation (X and Y happen together) with causation (X causes Y).
What does this have to do with me?
If you are reading my RPT blog you most probably have an interest in alternative health and personal development. That is what RPT is about. And if you are interested in those subjects, there’s a chance that you are making several of the same logical fallacies that the indigenous people in my native land make.
“Hang on” you think! “I am educated. I know that malaria is caused by mosquitos and that cruise ships don’t cause rain. I don’t make that sort of mistake.”
Please relax, there’s nothing to be ashamed about. We all make these mistakes. To tell the truth, I’m as guilty as anyone else. And in fact even the supposedly smartest brains in the medical profession make these sort of mistakes far too often. Let me share some educational examples.
(a) HRT tests produce shocking results
You might have heard about the surprising results that women who were taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) had a measurably lower risk of getting coronary heart disease. This caused doctors to suspect that HRT can protect women again heart disease.
However tests on random groups of women showed the opposite, women taking HRT have a slightly higher risk of heart disease. How could the studies show opposite results?
Quite simply there were other hidden factors. In the first study, the women taking HRT were from wealthier backgrounds with better diet and exercise regimes. Perhaps women who take HRT are more likely to look after themselves through exercise. What matters is that HRT does not decrease heart disease. It’s just coinciding (correlated) with something else. It is a coincidence in the true meaning of the word.
Even doctors can make these basic mistakes. For more information about this, and for more examples, see this Wikipedia page.
(b) Eating fatty foods causes intestinal cancer?
You might have heard the reports that there is a direct link between the amount of fatty food in your diet, and your cancer risk. In fact the diagram of the link looks pretty clear-cut. 
It looks like damning evidence doesn’t it? I’m know lots of people looked at that graph and went “that’s it, I’m off the fatty foods.” I’m sure there are doctors and naturopaths around the world who saw that data and told their clients to get off fatty foods. And they’d be wrong.
The right kind of fat is good for you so under certain circumstances a high fat diet can be excellent for your health. It’s a myth that eating fat causes you to get fat, for instance. Fat is often the most nutritious part of the meal. You see this in nature where predators that can afford to be selective eat the fat of their prey, not the leaner muscles. My own diet is very high in avocados and nuts, both considered fatty foods.
Unfortunately a lot of healthy people have been misinformed that fat in foods (like nuts and avocados) is bad for you. It isn’t! If you have been taught this, you need to go back to your teachers, and your teachers’ teachers, to expose the confusion between causation and correlation.
So why did the doctors get it wrong? Well it’s like that idea of salt water “causing malaria.” Some other invisible factor causes both results. People in richer countries tend to eat more fat, and are exposed to more carcinogens. There are many types of cancer that are more common in rich countries because of the lifestyle that people can afford. The people in poorer countries who cannot eat fat also cannot afford the sort of lifestyle that causes cancer. Whatever the cause of the cancer – it isn’t fat. (Source: http://www.burns.com/wcbspurcorl.htm)
(I’m not advocating poverty! There are lots of diseases more common in poor countries; it’s just that cancer isn’t one of them.)
So you see, even highly trained “experts” make the mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Is it any surprise then that New Age teachers, untrained in statistics, make these mistakes every day.
In my next article this week I’m going to continue this theme, examining as many New Age myths about correlation that I can think of. For now, I’d really like to hear from you.
Do you think that you confuse correlation with causation? Can you think of times when you saw A and B happening and assumed A causes B? And what about New Age myths? Can you help me with some funny (or tragic) examples of healers or spiritual teachers confusing correlation and causation? I’d love to hear from you.
Blessings;
Simon Rose
Peter 
Lisa 
WendyB 
Peter Taylor 
Sarah 
Interesting… can’t think of any examples, but looking forward to your next article “examining as many New Age myths about correlation that I can think of”.
Just a thought – often we *want* to believe in causation, right? Actually, the belief in divine intervention is just that isn’t it? A kind of ‘forced’ connection between two things – God and ‘event’…
Ben
[Reply]
Simon Rose Reply:
April 19th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
You are right, Divine Intervention is a form of Magical Thinking which is a way of confusing causation with correlation. A person prays, someone is healed, and wow Divine Intervention. But what of the 99.9% of the time when nothing happens? That is somehow not considered dis-proof of divine intervention. I think of this every time an athlete credits their gold medal to God / Jesus / FSM. What about the thousands of atheletes who lost races that day who prayed just as hard?
Ben, we have a lot of work ahead of us raising consciousness about this form of self-delusion. But think how great the results will be if we succeed – a world in which people take responsibility for their lives and the consequences of their actions.
Magical thinking is a dangerous force, a virus that has taken over the New Age.
It’s so sad because the world really needs a new age. Global consciousness needs to shift around health (relying on drugs), education (rote learning not learning how to think), the environment, politics, etc. We need a new age, but we certainly don’t need the New Age movement as it stands.
Blessings
Simon
[Reply]