Rule 44 : Most things can be proved, but it doesn't mean they are right

One of the interesting things about having such a diverse group of Facebook friends is the amazing variety of articles that appear on my wall. Reading these for the past couple of years something has become very apparent to me ... that if you look hard enough on the Internet you will find an article in support of any point of view. This is all well and good, but lately I have been having to remind myself that this doesn't mean that all these article and their associated points of view are correct. People can interpret things in many ways, and facts aren't always what they seem. In my youth I studied statistics, and the tutor told us of a case where the 'figure' could be misinterpreted. It went along the lines of this ... Young children who receive an adequate milk supply are more likely to grow up and suffer cancer than those who don't The tutor pointed out that this could be interpreted as implying a link between milk and cancer, leading to claims that the former caused the later, whereas it was actually a link between growing up and cancer, in that those children who has an adequate milk supply lived longer and therefore were more likely to contract cancer than those children who did not get adequate milk and so died in childhood. I must remember this lecture when next I read some implied wisdom from the Internet.