Missing the Point

I find this Mountain Dew commercial incredibly annoying:



Yes, I know it's a joke. My problem, however, is that there are far too many people who confuse correlation and causation. If that were true, we would conclude that carrying a lighter causes lung cancer. We would conclude that wrinkled skin causes drowning. We would also conclude that Erin Brokovitch was not a complete fraud - oh wait, a group of idiots already did that.

The reason men are struck by lightning more often than women is that men are far more likely to be in situations that would expose one to the risk of lightning. The juxtaposition of showing the man getting hit while the women are doing risky things is a poor attempt at humor. From the supposed "wage gap," which disappears the moment you correct for type of job and hours worked, to the millions who have died of malaria thanks to the junk science behind the DDT ban, there are way too many problems in this world which are the result of people jumping to conclusions they want.

Edited 2/06/09 to correct grammar (changed "to" to "too")