New research on a parasite commonly carried by cats – Toxoplasma gondii – suggests that it can be linked to mental illness in owners, particularly schizophrenia.If you read the article, you will see that they are talking about a corollary between an increased risk of schizophrenia and cat ownership, when the patients were in cat-owning homes as children. But, as anyone with an ounce of knowledge of statistics can tell you*, correlation does not equal causation.
Researchers also believe that there is a correlation between pot-smoking and psychosis, but again, there is no proof.
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* The anti-vaxxers are immune to that point, thanks to childhood infections of Derpus Boobus. Or maybe they smoked too much weed.
This is sort of like the correlation between drinking diet sodas and being fat. Or the correlation between carrying an open umbrella and rain. No, carrying an open umbrella doesn't cause rain. And most fat diet soda drinkers switched to diet soda *after* they became fat, so it can't be the cause of them being fat, duh (cause, by necessity, *pre-dates* effect). Yet people continue confusing correlation with causation. SIGH.
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