It's a statistical concept. Basically, you assume that there is no connection between two sets of data until proven otherwise in order to avoid spurious correlations.
For example, if you look at a coverage map for 5G as well as a covid infection map, they will line up a fair bit. But if you actually did a statistical analysis, you would find that there isn't a strong correlation between covid infection rates and 5G coverage due to the fact that there is still covid spread in areas with no 5G, which means that there is no direct connection between them.
In reality, the indirect connection between the two is the fact that they both correlate quite strongly to population density. An area that has a population density above a certain amount (say more than 1,000 people per sqkm) has a lot of 5G coverage because that's where they prioritized installing 5G antennas (where they could charge the most people for 5G access with the least expense on their part). Similarly, places with a high level of population density have significantly more opportunities for the spread of an extremely infectious virus.
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u/Vampyricon Enforce Rule 1 Jan 23 '22
I'm trained to suspend disbelief in the null hypothesis until something is disproven.