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It was sometime ago that I mentioned that our social studies are strongly biased for two main reasons: first, because such studies are purposely directed to come up with predetermined solutions to solve our problems, and second, because our social researchers cannot understand yet the difference between causation and correlation.

Causation means to have an understanding of the causes affecting a problem, and correlation looks at the linear relationships between events or phenomena which appear along with a problem.

The most recent noted fraud in research was the one committed by Dr. David Cassidy with his study on SGI's No-Fault Auto Insurance in Saskatchewan and in which he applied the 'gold standard' method to measure the correlation between recovery and claim closures. We must point out that Dr. Cassidy failed to tell us that the causation of the claim closures was the height of the claim stacks on the desks of the SGI's adjusters. Further, we have highlighted in the past the dismal results of the researches conducted by the Health Services Utilization and Research Commission (HSURC) of Saskatchewan.

Fyke's report for me is another fraud and the people of Saskatchewan are not aware of this. Fyke has no understanding of the meaning of the word "causation" and he is telling the people of Saskatchewan that we must close rural hospitals and have some 12 regional hospitals serving all the Saskatchewan people. And Mr. Fyke is telling us that we can increase the quality of health care delivered by setting a centralized Quality Council organization and merge this organization with HSURC. Today, we have the hospitals of Regina and Saskatoon unable to cope with a proper delivery of health services as our health professionals leave the province or fall sick for over work. And I would like to ask Mr. Fyke how would these hospitals cope with a new demand of services as the rural hospitals are going to be closed? Also, I would like to ask Mr. Fyke how would new centralized researches on quality of health services improve our health if our researchers continue to produce meaningless researches as they continue their researches in correlating one thing with everything else they want?

And, I was forgetting another simple question for Mr. Fyke, "do you know the difference between causation and correlation?"

References: Relevant political and economics articles at Ensign http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign