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Does this graph show that there has been an increase in the number of GoFundMe campaigns relating to sudden deaths, starting at the same time as the authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the United States.

This is a preliminary analysis of the relationship between mentions of "unexpected or sudden death" in GoFundMe campaigns and widespread immunizations

Source of quote

Link to original graph

Graph

Aaargh Zombies
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  • People are invited to edit this question rather than to down vote it. If it's not up to standard please improve it rather than close it. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 14:09
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    Is there a reason this is a notable claim other than it showing up on a random Twitter page? – antlersoft Dec 15 '22 at 14:15
  • It's been doing the rounds on conspiracy forums, and has gained traction with anti-vaxxers despite it being a new claim. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 14:21
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    A twitter user with 142 followers is not a notable source. If you can find a notable source you should include that. But as of now it doesn't appear to have one. – Joe W Dec 15 '22 at 14:21
  • Notability is derived from the traction that it has gained with anti-vaxxers. I'm citing the original source, rather than quoting someone who quoted them. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 14:23
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    The notability needs to be demonstrated in the question, not just asserted in comments - perhaps as well as quoting the original source, you can point to some prominent places where it is "doing the rounds"? If this is really the source of something that's "gaining traction", I would also expect more than 17 retweets and 7 quote tweets. – IMSoP Dec 15 '22 at 14:29
  • @IMSoP, There is no guidance in the FAQ regarding what a "prominent place" is in regards to conspiracy forums, or what kind of numbers are required in terms of reads or responses. For example, are 10,000 retweets for an Alex Joness worth more or less than 10,000 for a Joe Rogan? Is Facebook more notable than Instagram for a source? Does a 4Chan board count? – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 14:36
  • @IMSoP Most question on this site just seem to post a link to the original source, there's almost never any discussion of notability. Is this just a Covid thing? – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 14:37
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    I'm not sure what gave you that impression. The requirement to demonstrate notability is [mentioned in the Welcome to New Users](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) and spelled out in detail in [an FAQ entry](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-a-notable-claim) and [explored in a number of other meta discussions](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/notability). It is one of the most common reasons for questions being closed on this site. – IMSoP Dec 15 '22 at 15:17
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    That said, yes, sometimes notability can be a bit subjective, but right now, you haven't even *attempted* to fulfil that requirement. The question itself provides nothing but a tweet with a reach of about 100 people. Your comments imply that you've seen it quoted in other contexts, but you seem unwilling or unable to actually name any specifically. Until you do that, arguing about what might in theory constitute notability is a waste of time - if you think it's notable, make your case, with evidence, and we can discuss. – IMSoP Dec 15 '22 at 15:21
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/141326/discussion-between-aaargh-zombies-and-imsop). – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 16:01
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    @AaarghZombies This is not something that can be continued in chat. Either you or someone else needs to provide evidence that this is indeed a "notable claim" or the question will be closed. Counting on someone else to provide this evidence is not a good idea. Continuing the discussion in chat also is not a good idea. – David Hammen Dec 15 '22 at 16:35
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    Voting to close, because notability has not been established. Feel free to add sources showing notability and flag for reopening. Though I must say that the claim in general doesn't seem a great fit for this site. The claim itself is not very interesting; what is interesting is the implied claim (that vaccines *caused* a rise in deaths; of course, there's a much simpler explanation why deaths may have spiked at the beginning of 2021). – tim Dec 15 '22 at 16:51
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    FWIW: I did go looking for notability, and couldn't find any. – Oddthinking Dec 15 '22 at 16:53
  • @David Hammen, If you don't believe that the question meets the standards, then by all means edit it, that's what the edit function is there for. You're supposed to improve questions that don't meet the standards, not censor questions that you don't want answered. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 17:42
  • @tim, please define what notability means. For example, a 100 retweets, 200 Facebook shares, 1,000 comments on Redit? – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 17:45
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    @AaarghZombies You asked the question; showing notability is your job. Like Oddthinking, I looked for notability but didn't find any. (Oddthinking most likely did a much more thorough search than I did.) – David Hammen Dec 15 '22 at 17:47
  • @David Hammen, you've failed to even define what notability is, how can you ask me I meet a standard that's so nebulous that you don't know what it is? Should I just wait a couple of days for there to be more retweets, or do you want this to be a CNN headline? – Aaargh Zombies Dec 15 '22 at 17:59
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    @AaarghZombies please see the links posted by IMSoP for help on what notability is and how to establish it. – tim Dec 15 '22 at 18:07
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    FWIW, [I've posted questions based on viral social media posts before](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/40733/39658), but the key word there is "viral" - you'll need thousands of likes for a social media post to meet the notability threshold, I'd say. – F1Krazy Dec 15 '22 at 18:18

1 Answers1

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The methodology used to produce these results (Google search and use the number at the top) is about as trustworthy as asking Google to produce a random number between 0 and the number of total gofundme campaigns. The latter at least guarantees you don't overcount, however.

According to Google result counts are a meaningless metric:

Google result counts are a meaningless metric. The count that you are pointing to proves nothing at all. Stop using this meaningless metric and make a proper argument based upon proper research instead.

The basic problem with the Google hit count reported in search results, particularly for phrases and searches using "AND" or "OR" operators, is that it is an estimate. It's not actually a count of anything, at all. It's the result of a calculation based solely upon the words that the query comprises, as Kevin Marks notes. Google explicitly states that it's an estimate [link broken], although it is coy about what that estimate is actually based upon. To quote one un-named Google employee, "these are all estimates, and we just haven't tried that hard to make the estimates precise". A named Google employee said much the same after this frequently given answer had been around for some years

For that broken link see instead this Google Search Appliance PDF which says the same thing.

Search Engine Land also has a good article, though some of the points they raised seem to have be made obsolete by changes to Google (e.g. adding a negative term doesn't seem to increase the number of results anymore).

Google search won't show more than 1,000 results for any search. However, among those results in the 2022 query (tweaked slightly with an additional word to show more variety in the results), I found:

None of these are relevant for what the query is trying to prove.

I'm trying to find results from people who at least tried to do "proper research". For January 1, 2020–July 31, 2020 one paper found 176,561 campaigns that mentioned Covid in some fashion (but may not have mentioned death) but it did not go past that date. It's unclear how they scraped the data, but they did scan all the pages they counted for more data, so we know that each page exists at least.

Laurel
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    I'm torn, because while this demolishes one aspect of the alleged correlation, I don't think it goes far enough. Even if the hit count issue is addressed, the result still falls at an earlier hurdle. The original (implied) claim is an incredibly blatant post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: Did the one named vaccine cause the increase? Or another vaccine? Or COVID? Or lock-down laws? Or the increasing popularity of GoFundMe? Or some other confounding factor? – Oddthinking Dec 15 '22 at 16:52
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    @Oddthinking I'm not sure that there is an earlier hurdle. It's like asking if the vaccine caused my random number generator to show a higher number when I plugged in the number of gofundme posts for 2022. They're both numbers which may not correspond to actual posts and there is no reliable data that shows an increase. The exact method that generates the estimate in Google is unknown and I don't have anything but speculation as to why it spat out those numbers — the only discovery I've made is that including *2022* in a search makes it estimate a higher number. – Laurel Dec 15 '22 at 17:27
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    I can't answer anymore, because the question is locked, but I'm pretty sure that this is just an artifact of google search results. The same behavior as illustrated in the graph is found regardless of the search parameters when searching 'site:gofundme.com ""' – DenisS Dec 15 '22 at 21:59
  • @Laurel: I do see your point, but if someone asked that question, I think we would risk of being nerd-sniped if we focussed on going through the details of the algorithm of the RNG, rather than the basic fallacy of thinking. – Oddthinking Dec 15 '22 at 23:04
  • @Oddthinking, please define "fallacy of thinking". – Aaargh Zombies Dec 17 '22 at 16:30
  • @DenisS, it seems to be a feature of this site, questions regarding certain topics get closed so quickly that there's no chance for an answer to be given, let alone community review. It's also rather alarming that questions get closed without any effort being made to correct any issues that they have. 2 downvotes shouldn't be enough to get a question closed when absolutely nobody has made any effort to address any issues that it may have. There needs to be more oversight. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 17 '22 at 16:33
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    @AaarghZombies Downvotes and close votes are two completely different things and should not be confused with one another. Your question wasn't closed because it received downvotes, but because five users of the site voted to close it. I don't know why you're saying there was no effort made to improve the question, because it's perfectly clear from the comments that a) several users have informed you that you need a more notable claim, and b) several of those users have personally attempted to track one down for you. – F1Krazy Dec 17 '22 at 17:21
  • @F1Krazy, and yet not one of them would say what a constituted a notable claim. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 17 '22 at 19:22
  • I think my own comment was quite clear, at least with regards to Twitter. – F1Krazy Dec 17 '22 at 19:25
  • @AaarghZombies: Re "fallacy of thinking". Sorry for being unclear. I think I was trying to avoid "logical fallacy" because [post hoc versus propter hoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc) is not a [formal fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy). I was going for something between "[informal fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_fallacy)" and "[cognitive distortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion). – Oddthinking Dec 18 '22 at 02:43
  • Re: Notable claims: There is an [FAQ on what notable means](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-a-notable-claim), but the [Welcome to Skeptics](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) page covers the basics. – Oddthinking Dec 18 '22 at 02:45
  • @AaarghZombies find a /r/conspiracy post discussing this tweet, find a notable figure discussing it, find something besides a tweet with fewer interactions than most people would get on a facebook birthday announcement. If you have something like this available you can edit it into your question and nominate it for re-opening. – DenisS Dec 19 '22 at 19:41
  • @DenisS, there's a conflict of interest on the best source, I can't use it. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 20 '22 at 18:18
  • @AaarghZombies elaborate please – DenisS Dec 20 '22 at 20:07
  • @DenisS, Linking to it would create a conflict of interest that I want to avoid. So I'm linking to the original source where the original creator puts things in their own words. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 20 '22 at 21:06
  • @AaarghZombies is this source more notable than a tweet with 30 total interactions? Conflict of interest doesn't matter on this site as long as you aren't trying to hawk some product on here. – DenisS Dec 20 '22 at 22:27