Spurious Relationships: Clickbait & Keeping the Trolls away

First, a clarification: I don’t mean rude anonymous people on the internet. I mean Trolls. The large scary beasts of fantasy and science fiction lore. My latinx friends may have been told of the CuCuy, while Jamaicans have stories about Duppies. There are so many examples of the LIES (hopefully) that we were told by our parents, grandparents and guardians to get us to behave. “Go to sleep, or the Cucuy will get you.” “Duppies come for children who don’t listen to the parents.” The connection between our behavior and the actions of our cultural boogeymen are the earliest spurious relationships that we are ever exposed to.

We are told that if some positive aspect of our behavior were to increase, then there would be a drastic decrease in the activities of the things that go bump in the night. And of course the big one, here in North America at least, the starving children in Africa. I truly believe that any and every person reading this has been told of the starving children in Africa, and why we should not waste food because of them. As if by not cleaning our plates we would somehow add to their plight. As if there is some inverse proportionality between food wasted by American children and food security for (Sub-Saharan) African youth.

Of course, as we grew older, we discovered the truth of these things. The truth being that there is no truth behind them at all. And, as we’ve grown into adulthood, there have been more advanced Trolls, with more substantive steps to take to avoid them. However, the spurious nature of the relationships between those steps and those Trolls have become more and more difficult to ascertain.

From the inane, “ You may not need a white noise machine, but your dog might.” { https://www.rd.com/advice/pets/how-to-get-your-dog-to-sleep-better/}.

To the mundane, “ Could Tea Help You Lose Weight?” {https://www.webmd.com/diet/tea-and-weight-loss#1}

To some of the biggest issues facing us today: “Chart shown at Planned Parenthood hearing is misleading and ‘ethically wrong” {https://static.politifact.com/politifact/photos/mega-center-release-graphic.jpg}

Thankfully, there is silver in the lining. While I’m not happy that these types of untruths have been told to us, are being told to us, and will continue to be told to us, I’m glad that data analysts and scientists are around to help us pick through them. For every graphical or statistical lie that gets pushed on us, there is a website that is ready to impart honest data, and non-flubbed visualizations. The future looks bright