There's a correlation between solar flares and heart attack deaths. Does correlation imply causation?

[Caronynx]

There's a surprisingly large amount of studies on this cropping up fairly recently, so I'm just going to link this one which was published on Harvard's website.

edit: I'll include some others, but not too many, since I don't want to spam links.

Solar storms may cause up to 5500 heart-related deaths in a given year

In an approximate 11-year cycle, the sun blasts out charged particles and magnetised plasma that can distort Earth’s magnetic field, which may disrupt our body clock and ultimately affect the heart

www.newscientist.com

On Health Geomagnetic Disturbances and Cardiovascular Mortality Risk

blogs.biomedcentral.com

Does the proposed mechanism to explain the correlation sound plausible?

But how do increased geomagnetic disturbances lead to an increase in deaths related to cardiovascular diseases and myocardial infarction?

Our results may be explained through the direct impact of environmental electric and magnetic fields produced during GMD on the human autonomic nervous system. Interactions between GMD and the autonomic nervous system are likely to induce a cascade of reactions in the body’s electrophysiology that culminate in the collapse of organ functions and death.

 

[exchemist]

There's a surprisingly large amount of studies on this cropping up fairly recently, so I'm just going to link this one which was published on Harvard's website.

edit: I'll include some others, but not too many, since I don't want to spam links.

Solar storms may cause up to 5500 heart-related deaths in a given year

In an approximate 11-year cycle, the sun blasts out charged particles and magnetised plasma that can distort Earth’s magnetic field, which may disrupt our body clock and ultimately affect the heart

www.newscientist.com

On Health Geomagnetic Disturbances and Cardiovascular Mortality Risk

blogs.biomedcentral.com

Does the proposed mechanism to explain the correlation sound plausible?

You’ve done this already, “Lara Knowles”: https://www.scienceforums.net/topic...heart-attacks-and-strokes-to-double/#comments

For some reason I’m reminded of spontaneous combustion and people strangled by their own thymus glands. Can’t think why……..

 

[Magical Realist]

Here's some amusing correlations:

Spurious Correlations

Correlation is not causation: thousands of charts of real data showing actual correlations between ridiculous variables.

www.tylervigen.com

 

[Magical Realist]

I just KNEW it! Now I have proof!