re: #130 Dangerman; Not a Dr. & don’t play one on TV

So…darts

Antivaxxeer crap is a weird version of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

This sometimes occurs in other fields of science. A study in Sweden examining health effects of living near high-voltage power lines over twenty-five years came up with a positive correlation between living within three hundred metres and about eight hundred different ailments. In particular, childhood leukemia came up four times more often than across Sweden by average.

The anti-sciencers then went to the Swedish Parliament to get laws passed to do something to “protect the children.”

The problem was with such a large number of ailments in a relatively small population being assessed (eight hundred ailments of people within three hundred metres), a cluster of some disease was very likely.

They drew the target around “childhood leukemia” and said “See?”

That particular study comes up occasionally now in discussions of high-voltage transmission lines, particularly as a counter to building new ones.