The book Freakenomics has some very interesting things to say. One of which I just saw on commercial last night, but entirely misused and misunderstood, either intentionally for marketing purposes or through ignorance. Honestly I think it?s the latter, though its easy to say the former since the author takes great pains to make his point clear. Either way, what the commercial is doing is fostering ignorance though in the service of a seemingly good cause.

The commercial is for donations to a not for profit organization whose state goal is to put books into households of underprivileged kids.  Their message and reasoning is thus: it has been shown that the presence of books in a house CAUSES an increase in academic performance.  I don’t think they actually say this, but they do say there is a relationship and then ask for money so they can fill up households with books. So they certainly connect the dots for the viewer.

This is incorrect. What the author of the book Freakenomics points out is that there is a relationship between the number of books in a house and academic performance. But what the author goes to great pains to point out is that just having books in the house isn?t a CAUSE but rather a result of certain types of people who are likely to have books in the house and the entire package of their values and behaviors that all act together to create a child who will be a better academic performer.

Just like the children of mothers under 30 don?t perform as well as the children of mothers over 30. It has nothing to do with the physical age and everything to do with the nature of people who wait until over 30, their beliefs and place in life at the time. And again, this is a relationship, not a point of causation.

So, just giving a bunch of books to people who do not intrinsically value them will not create better performing children, since the rest of the package, valuing education and doing well in school and having good behaviors that lead to that, simply isn?t there.

This piece of the book has been misunderstood and now used in a commercial, thus furthering the notion that the books mere presence CAUSES better performance in academics. It?s sad, but it works because through evolution or crappy education and embracing of mystical beliefs, too many people are willing to believe in mystical unproven things, rather than science.

This is the kind of thing I am becoming somewhat of a crusader about. The automatic assumption of people based on stories of something?s success in others with total disregard of the science involved, the power of the anecdote I guess.