About Brenda Goodman
Brenda Goodman (@ReporterGoodman) has been a reporter for 15 years, covering health, science, and medicine for television, magazines, newspapers and the Web. She was senior news writer for WebMD before joining CNN Health. Her stories have appeared in Scientific American, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Parade, Self, Health, and The Boston Globe, among others.

Image by Susan Sermoneta via flickr.
Two recent studies in the news have been clear examples of the correlation vs. causation question that’s part and parcel of covering observational research studies.
And they’re worth taking a look at because the correlations are inherently interesting, even though they almost certainly aren’t causal.
First up is “The Effect of Sexual Activity on Wages”, which was published by Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor. Predictably, and probably in part due to its terrible title, this study generated lots of headlines like “Have more sex, make more money”, from The Wall Street Journal‘s Marketplace, and Cosmopolitan‘s “The More Sex You Have The More Money You Make“.
Well, not exactly. The study found an association between sex and wages. As self-reported sex increased, so too, did income. Of course, that doesn’t mean that having more sex causes people to make more money, a point that wasn’t stressed clearly enough in some articles for Scientific American blogger Evelyn Lamb’s tastes. Continue reading →
Brenda Goodman (@ReporterGoodman) has been a reporter for 15 years, covering health, science, and medicine for television, magazines, newspapers and the Web. She was senior news writer for WebMD before joining CNN Health. Her stories have appeared in Scientific American, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Parade, Self, Health, and The Boston Globe, among others.