Climate Change Causing Suicide...

Today google surprised me with my daily bogus science article of the day. A group of genius scientists has found that rising temperatures correlate with the suicide rate over a study of about ten years link.

While I do not doubt that there is this correlation, it is important to remember that correlation does not imply causation. The temperatures have been rising slowly over the past years, and that correlates with everything else that has been rising over the same timespan. For example world population, amount of refugees and many more. But nobody would claim that rising numbers of refugees are causing climate change only because there is a correlation. Always remember the famous (joke) study (nowadays obviously disproven) that pirates cause climate change link.

In the current study the scientist actually state that all they have is a correlation. But they conclude that more studies are required, where the obvious conclusion probably should be that this is likely a funny correlation and nothing more. While you can see this critical, I would not say that it is already bad science. But what happens then is that several people publish a story around this study, exaggerating the claims and no longer showing the disclaimers. For example the Atlantic titles:
"Climate Change May Cause 26,000 More U.S. Suicides by 2050", which relies on

• us being able to forecast climate change 30 years into the future
• the effect being a causation and not a correlation

Because both points are false, the study clearly does not forecast 26,000 additional suicides.

In fact looking at global suicide rates, it are not the hot countries that lead the list, with tropical countries being about average. If temperature has an effect, it is at best a secondary and other factors play much bigger roles.

source

But why do I rant this much about this stupid story. It shows a problem both in how science is made and how it is communicated. People that do not study all the details obtain a very biased view focused on exaggerated stupid stories. Either they are in the "pro-science" crowd that believe all the bullshit, or they see the fake and that causes a general distrust towards a science based world-view. Both is a disaster for our future that relies on people making valid decisions based on proper science.

But how can this be improved? How can a better quality in scientific studies be achieved and how can communication be improved?