2012-03-05
Explanation
In this comic, a frustrated person is arguing with a creationist, shouting: "Augh! No! This is why people don'''t like creationists. Correlation does not imply causality!" This is a common scientific refrain used to counter flawed reasoning -- just because two things are correlated doesn'''t mean one causes the other. The creationist pauses and says "Wait... it doesn'''t?" The skeptic, surprised that this seems to be getting through, replies encouragingly: "No. Wow. Am I actually getting through to you?"
But the creationist'''s reaction -- "This changes everything..." -- is not what the skeptic hoped for. In the final panel, labeled "Soon...," we see the "Creation Science Labs" building with someone announcing: "Guess what everyone! Now we don'''t need correlation either!" The creationist has taken entirely the wrong lesson from the exchange. Instead of understanding that you need rigorous evidence beyond mere correlation to establish causation, he concludes that if correlation isn'''t even needed, then creation science is free to make claims with no supporting data at all.
The votey drives the absurdity home: the Creation Science Labs building itself asks "What'''s correlation?" -- suggesting they never understood or cared about statistical concepts in the first place, and that the skeptic'''s attempt at education only gave them a new excuse to abandon empirical standards entirely.