Maggie's Farm

Our editor sent me this report in the useless rag USA Today, which says it ranks jobs by incidence of depression, with the implication that the job is the problem.

Rather than using it as a starting point for a discussion of depression, it looks like a better opportunity to step on The Barrister's turf and say that is is a fine example of the informal logical fallacy of cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

Reporters are notoriously ignorant of science and statistics. More likely than not, an arrow of causality can be postulated such that people with emotional frailties tend towards certain lines of work in which they can succeed, and in which they will not feel overly stressed.