Tom Naughton has a great post examining, once again, the fallacy that association is the same thing as causation. Here's an excerpt:
TV watching raises risk of health problems, dying young
No one ever claimed that watching TV was healthy, but doctors are only now discovering just how bad it can be. Evidence from a spate of recent studies suggests that the more TV you watch, the more likely you are to develop a host of health problems and to die at an earlier age.
In a new analysis published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers combined data from eight such studies and found that for every additional two hours people spend glued to the tube on a typical day, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases by 20% and their risk of heart disease increases by 15%.
And for every additional three hours the study participants spent in front of the TV, their risk of dying from any cause during the respective studies jumped 13%, on average.
You can see why I’m especially concerned about those of you who ordered the DVD. With the bonus interview track, I seduced you into watching TV for 144 minutes, thus inducing diabetes and heart disease. Now toss in the 60-minute speech on the international version, and I’ve raised your risk of dying from any cause by 13%. Somewhere in the world, someone is fighting for his life after contracting swine flu and screaming, “Damn that Tom Naughton! He never should’ve created a DVD with more than three hours of viewing material!”
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