囧研究:巧克力吃得多,得诺贝尔奖的几率越大?

Grubbs' countryman, Eric Cornell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, told Reuters: "I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume. Personally I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid… dark chocolate is the way to go. It's one thing if you want a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate."
格拉布的同僚，曾获得2001年诺贝尔物理学奖的埃里克·康奈尔告诉路透社：“我将我所有的成功归功于我吃掉的巧克力，个人认为牛奶巧克力会使人变笨，黑巧克力是最好的。”

But when More or Less contacted him to elaborate on this comment, he changed his tune.
但当《More or Less》就此事联系采访他时，他改变了自己的说法。

"I deeply regret the rash remarks I made to the media. We scientists should strive to maintain objective neutrality and refrain from declaring our affiliation either with milk chocolate or with dark chocolate," he said.
“对于我曾经的轻率言论我感到遗憾，作为科学家应该保持中立可观，避免对牛奶巧克力或黑巧克力表现过度的喜恶。”

"Now I ask that the media kindly respect my family's privacy in this difficult time."
“我希望媒体能在这时候尊重我的家庭隐私。”

It might surprise you that we are trying to make a serious point. This is a classic case where correlation, however strong, does not mean causation.
你可能会感到惊讶，我们想在此阐述一种严肃的观点：即使有些事件之间存在很多关联，但并不意味着他们就是因果关系。

Messerli gave us another example. In post-war Germany, the human birth rate fell along with the stork population. Were fewer storks bringing fewer babies?
Messerli给我们举了另外一个例子，在战后德国，人口出生率与鹳的数量均下降，那是否鹳的减少导致婴儿减少呢？

The answer was that more homes were being built, destroying the storks' habitat. And the homes were small - not the sort of places you could raise a large family in.
真正的原因是房屋越建越多，导致鹳的栖息地被破坏，房屋面积的减小，使得多成员家庭减少。

"This is a very, very common way of thinking," he says.
“这是很普遍的思考方式。”他说道。

"When you see a correlation, you do think there is causation in one way or another. And in general it's absolutely true. But here we have a classic example where we cannot find a good reason why these two correlate so closely."
“当我们看到事物之间的联系时，就会想当然地想起各种因果关系。一般来说是正确的，但是也有经典案例表明，我们找不到两种事物紧密关联的原因。”