Jump to content

Joint effect

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bryan Derksen (talk | contribs) at 07:58, 5 July 2004 (Category:Logical fallacies). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Joint effect is a logical fallacy of causation in which two things that have a common cause, are thought to be cause and effect themselves.

For example, ice cream consumption and murder rates are highly correlated. Now, does ice cream incite murder or does murder increase the demand for ice cream? Neither: they are joint effects of a common cause, namely, hot weather.

This is a special case of correlation implies causation. In statistics this fallacy is called a spurious relationship.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joint_effect&oldid=5177620"