Some misconceptions about the spurious correlation problem in the ecological literature

Abstract

It is a common misconception that correlations between variables that share a common term are statistically invalid. Although the idea that such relationships are wholly or partially spurious was rejected decades ago by statisticians, ecologists continue mistakenly to exclude legitimate hypotheses on this basis. Besides directing attention to the statistical literature on the subject, we briefly reconsider the problem from 3 viewpoints: first, the confusion between spurious correlation and spurious inference, second, the problem of concept familiarity and definition, with particular reference to the self-thinning rule for plants, and third, a legitimate concern with measurement error of shared variable components.

Keywords: Ratios; Relationships; Self-thinning; Spurious correlation; Statistical inference.