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What do you take from this hypothetical headline: "Reading the Research Digest blog is associated with higher intelligence"? How about this one: "Reading this blog might increase your intelligence"? According to science writing guides like HealthNewsReview.org, taking the first correlational finding from a peer-reviewed article and reporting it for the public using the second wording, implying causation, is a sin of exaggeration, making a relationship appear more causal than the evidence suggests.

What is the basis for the argument that poor Americans will be healthier if they are required to pay substantially more for health care? It appears that proponents like Ms. Verma have looked at research and concluded that having Medicaid is often no better than being uninsured - and thus that any private insurance, even with enormous deductibles, must be better. But our examination of research in this field suggests this kind of thinking is based on a classic misunderstanding: confusing correlation for causation.

When Ice Cream Sales Rise, So Do Homicides. Coincidence, or Will Your Next Cone Murder You?

Discusses a recent paper and press-release (a short summary circulated to the media by the people involved. In research, this is generally a summary of the paper often published by the university or organisation that has conducted the research). Do you think starting to eat nuts is likely to decrease your risk of heart disease? What other behaviours or characteristics do you think nut-eating might be associated with? Would any of them also be related to health factors?

Another example of news coverage over-stating the causal relationship between two things that research has demonstrated have some *association*. Good discussion of the particular headlines.

"we pushed back against a misleading news release from Yale University that ran with the headline, "Yale researchers discover underlying cause of myeloma." The release claimed that the researchers identified "what causes a third of all myelomas," describing a faulty immune system response to compounds known as lysolipids as the culprit. But that characterization was wrong. First off, the research only demonstrated an association between lysolipids and this cancer - they didn't prove that one caused the other. And far from applying to a third of myeloma patients, the findings applied only to a tiny group of patients "