WE’RE NOT AS gull-ible AS YOU MIGHT THINK!

Correlation? Causation? These two words often pop up in scientific studies and research papers…but what do they actually mean.

Well, with the help of a busted bar and Britain’s least favourite chip-stealing seabird, experts recently took to Twitter to clear up any confusion.

Using the above picture, they explained that just because one thing is ‘associated’ with another doesn’t mean that one was actually caused by the other.

In fact, Professor of Public Health Sciences and

Psychiatry Johnathan Foulds said: “When you read a headline stating, ‘study finds that X is associated with Y’, please try to remember what that means… absolutely nothing.”

Giving an example, drug reform doctor Alex Wodak suggested that, even though smoking cigarettes is three times more common in kids who have vaped, vaping isn’t necessarily a gateway to smoking.

He pointed out that if the same logic was applied to this image, then it would be fair to assume that the seagull must have landed on the metal bar and bent it.