This is rather silly (and not in the way intended).
The goal of the paper is to demonstrate a strong linear correlation which arises without a trivial confounder (such as age influencing both reading age and shoe size in children). However, the confounder in the case of storks (country land area influences number of storks and absolute number of births) IS trivial.
Yes - to be clear, the author knows this is the confounder. That's why it was silly of the author to claim that the paper would describe a correlation without a trivial confounder.
Comments
This is rather silly (and not in the way intended).
The goal of the paper is to demonstrate a strong linear correlation which arises without a trivial confounder (such as age influencing both reading age and shoe size in children). However, the confounder in the case of storks (country land area influences number of storks and absolute number of births) IS trivial.
Yes - to be clear, the author knows this is the confounder. That's why it was silly of the author to claim that the paper would describe a correlation without a trivial confounder.
Land area isn't well-correlated with the other three columns in the table.
Yes it is! I calculated R = 0.58, 0.81, 0.92, respectively. These will be highly significant, comparable to the p-value in the headline.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QTEB7KF1PXBV_TjgBsuV...