Your Health Advice Is a Lie. Here’s Who’s Profiting.

Every time someone says “correlation doesn’t mean causation,” a con artist just got away with it. That phrase isn’t a warning — it’s a shield. Behind almost every misleading headline, every viral health tip, every multi-billion-dollar industry, there’s a hidden C. Not a confounder. A conspirator.

The real meaning of “correlation isn’t causation” is this: someone is hiding the real reason two things happen together, because they’re making money off the fake reason.

You’ve seen the textbook examples. Red wine drinkers live longer? No, it’s because they’re richer. Eating organic makes you healthier? No, it’s because you can afford organic and a gym membership. The classic “wealth confounds everything” story. Comforting, right? The world is rational. Statisticians have it covered.

Then you look at the real world.

A Harvard professor — Mark Hegsted — publishes a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming dietary fat causes heart disease. The entire food industry pivots to low-fat, high-sugar products. Yogurt, cereal, soda — all suddenly “healthy.” The obesity explosion? That’s a coincidence. Except it wasn’t. The sugar industry paid $50,000 for that paper. The real C was profit, hidden behind a white lab coat.

Correlation was the weapon. Causation was the fiction. And you paid the price.

Next, a Harvard Business School professor, Amy Cuddy, tells 50 million TED viewers that standing like Superman for two minutes changes your hormones and makes you powerful. She writes a bestseller, charges $50,000 per speech. The study had 42 subjects. It never replicated. The C? Her career.

Then there’s Alzheimer’s. For 16 years, the field believed that amyloid-beta plaques cause dementia. A single 2006 Nature paper by Sylvain Lesné started it. The NIH poured billions into plaque-clearing drugs. Biogen released aducanumab — it cleared plaques beautifully, did almost nothing for memory, and cost $56,000 per year. The C? The paper’s images were manipulated. The whole field had been chasing a ghost.

Each time, the pattern is identical. A correlation is presented as causation. The public buys in. The media amplifies. The profits roll in. And the statisticians shrug and say “correlation isn’t causation.” But they never ask the follow-up question: Who benefits from not asking that question?

Neutrality in science is a luxury. The moment money enters the room, the line between correlation and causation becomes a paywall.

The defence? “But peer review catches fraud.” It doesn’t. Journals are incentivised to publish sexy results, not boring null ones. Universities want splashy findings for rankings. Industry wants causal claims for patents. The system is designed to produce false causation, not correct it.

So what’s the solution? It’s not more statistics classes. It’s asking one question every time you see a health claim: Who benefits if I believe A causes B? The answer is almost never you.

I told you the C is hidden. But now you see it. That’s the only power you have — and it’s enough.

The next time someone tells you correlation isn’t causation, ask them who paid to make sure you never found out what the real C was. Then walk away. You just saved yourself a lot more than money.