I had problems with yahoo groups so some of my replies didn't get to thelist.
Correlation does not equal causation.
My dog barks just before my door bell rings. every time, every day for years. My dog is a pretty quiet dog and this is the only time she barks. Does her bark cause the door bell to ring.
This is an example of repeated correlation without causation.
There was a big cancer scare in east baltimore a couple decades. Front page articles screamed about the horrendous cancer rates. The area was highly industrial including the worlds largest chromium processing and a solid speciality stainless steel industry that had existed for almost a century. Action was demanded to get rid of the chromium plant and the stainless foundries. Once they were gone, and the once proud blue coller workers and their children were ruined and demoralized, a hopkins statistician at the school of public health looked at the cancer data a little closer. He discovered that the reason the cancer level in east baltimore was so high was that the Johns Hopkins Regioonal Cancer was in East Baltimore. Deaths in the center were attributed to the area around the hospital. Thus an epidemic was a phantom of statistics.,not caused by a century of chromium processing.
I could go on but I am tired . More later.