Do we really still have to say 'correlation is not causality'?

By Brian Clegg

I’m a big fan of the BBC – but sadly I say this more often than not to temper a criticism. In the past I’ve pointed out confirmation bias in a report from their social media investigations correspondent Marianne Spring. Now we’ve got a fully fledged example of confusing correlation with causality (though admittedly coming from her co-presenter on the Top Comment podcast, Matt Shea). 

In their first episode they are looking at ‘decline porn’ – social media content, usually video, that shows a city (in their words ‘often metropolitan, quite liberal cities’) in a bad light. This is notably London as far as the UK is concerned. Shea picks up on a YouGov survey ‘that said that 61% of Britons now see London as unsafe. Which is up from 39% in 2014. But just a third of Londoners agree with that.’ Shea then says ‘So where is it coming from? And, it’s coming from this decline porn.’

That may be the case – but where’s the causal evidence linking the two? Has anyone researched it? Has anyone, for instance, even compared the age groups of people who think London is unsafe and people who watch TikTok videos and the like? If it has been done, there was no mention of it in the podcast.

I am someone who has always lived outside London and I may be able to shed some light – admittedly again without a study, but at least with some personal experience. The first point is the 39% from 2014 outside London who think London is unsafe. To be honest, I’m surprised it was so low. I was brought up in Lancashire and the general feeling was that London was a sink of iniquity and the cause of many of our problems. It was simply a place that was alien to life in a mid-sized Lancastrian town.

However, when it comes to the current 61% (is it current? – the show notes gave no link to the YouGov survey, so I don’t know when it was taken), my suspicion is that a lot more of the opinion is derived from the news, including the BBC’s output, and from people the surveyed know who live in London. (Incidentally, I now live in Wiltshire, where the background feeling about London is a bit less negative than in the North – but it’s still alien.)

One of my daughters, for instance, lives in London. She has seen one person die and another attacked by a machete outside her block of flats. This does not make the place feel safe to me. Secondly, I use my phone a lot. Generally I feel very safe doing this in Wiltshire – or, for that matter, in the metropolitan, very liberal city of Bristol where I’ve spent a fair  amount of time working. But in London I do not feel safe using my phone. To quote a BBC report about the Met using e-bikes and drones to tackle London phone theft, ‘A phone is stolen in the capital every seven to eight minutes – and the force warns that children as young as 14 are being targeted over social media and paid up to £100 to steal phones for organised crime gangs.’ 

What do you think is more likely to be the main cause of that 61% negative viewpoint about the capital? I certainly wouldn’t put to much of it down to fake AI videos about Croydon water parks. 

The Top Comment podcast has been contacted for a response but has not yet replied.

Image from BBC website

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.