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A writer for the Daily Rag by the name of Anita Quigley has written a piece where she speaks of smokers in the typical patronizing way. Anita recently gave it to all and sundry in a diatribe covering everything from politicians to rugby players.

Sounds to me like there's a deeper problem for Ms Quigley (one that a good seein to would sort right out).

Anyway, in her piece, she refers to a report out of Bristol University in England that claims that 90% of mothers who lost a baby to cot death were smokers. Ms Quigley goes on to ask why the fathers weren't considered also. Fair enough I suppose - if you're going to make an outlandish statement like that, you may as well include all comers. We need to be careful here. 90% of women who who experience cot death, smoke ISN'T the same as smoking causes cot death - it's a ridiculous suggestion.
Does that then mean that if those same 90% eat chocolate, that chocolate causes cot death? Course it doesn't. Well this is the same and the big danger with statistics. Statistics don't take coincidence our plain bad luck into consideration.
It's like - 10 people have a certain disease. The boffins search for a pasttime that these 10 people all do and then claim it makes them ill. For example: ten people have Parkinson's disease; these ten people also eat cheese sandwiches regularly. Does this then mean that cheese sandwiches cause Parkinson's disease? Of course not!

Lies, damn lies, and statistics, someone once said.