Question

While driving north on SR51, Dr. Harrison observed a man talking on his cell phone while the man drove by. A few minutes later Dr. Harrison noticed the man was in an auto accident. He theorized that talking on cell phones while driving causes accidents. What is the best response to Dr. Harrison's theory?

Answer 1

Answer:

Dr. Harrison's correlation theory is incorrect.

Explanation:

According to a different source, these are the options that come with this question:

• Dr. Harrison's correlation theory is correct.
• Dr. Harrison's correlation theory is incorrect.
• None of the above.

In this example, the theory that Dr. Harrison proposes is not correct. Dr. Harrison argues that because he saw a single man talking on his phone, it is necessarily true that talking on cell phone cause accidents. This theory is wrong for two reasons. First, Dr. Harrison is equation correlation with causation. The fact that the man was talking does not necessarily mean that this was the reason for the crash. There could be many other factors that can impact this. The second mistake that Dr. Harrison makes is thinking that one person is enough of a sample to reach such a conclusion. For the research to be valid, the doctor would need to use a much larger sample size.