Instruction
Your assignment is to explore recent media reports of scientific studies (mainstream outlets only; USA Today, Washington Post, Discovery Magazine, Etc.). I want you to find an article making causal claims about the effect of some variable on another variable. For example, headlines proclaiming that "bacon consumption causes cancer", etc. (though, that one is off limits now). Next, you should read the article, and perhaps even track down the original scientific study if that helps you make your case. Finally, I want no more than two pages of written essay (12 pt font, double spaced) concerning whether or not we should have much confidence in the causal arguments made in the news article. In the course of writing your essay, you should be thinking about confounding primarily. Are there variables that could have explained the relationship mentioned in the article (think about the ice cream - crime correlation example from class).