Correlation is not causation
As for common sense, it can be sadly lacking when it comes to the reporting of data, 'Bad Science' author Dr Ben Goldacre told IFT delegates on Sunday evening. If you plot them both on a graph, he said, the rise in diagnosed cases of autism correlates closely with the rise in sales of organic foods. So do organic foods cause autism? Of course not, but the same kind of flawed logic prompts a surprising number of headlines and blog posts, especially where food is concerned, he pointed out.