Ludicrosity

This new "study" deserves its very own made-up word--that's how utterly ridiculous and misleading it is.

It's a classic case of distortion, from the headline--"Obese? Drive at Your Own Risk!"--to the bait-and-switch of its conclusion. Based on research involving people in car accidents, it purports to look at how BMI affects your risk of dying in a car accident.

Here's how it opens:

Being obese may increase the risk of perilous diseases like diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer. And it can be fatal in one more way -- it enhances the risk of dying in a car crash.

What's the connection? Well might you ask. This is one of those reviews masquerading as a study, where researchers look at data--in this case, data on people involved in car accidents and their BMI.

Researchers divided over 230,000 people into groups based on their body mass index (BMI) . The rate of always wearing seat belts was 82.6 per cent for non-obese motorists (BMI less than 25), 80.1 per cent for overweight motorists (BMI 25-29), 76.6 per cent for obese motorists (BMI 30-39) and 69.8 per cent for extremely obese motorists (BMI 40 and above). The gap climbed from 2.5 per cent for overweight, to 6.0 per cent among the obese, to 12.8 per cent among the extremely obese.

Um, what we've got here is a correlation between not wearing your seat belt and dying in a car crash, along with a statistical analysis of percentage of seat belt wearers and their BMI.

As Sandy Szwarc is fond of saying correlation is not causation. Or, to put it another way: The media is willing, but the evidence is weak.