Civil engineering PhDs and fireball meteor reports, climbing together. The bridges are not, on average, observing the sky. The meteors are not, on the whole, peer-reviewing dissertations. Yet both lines tick up year after year, indifferent to anyone's sense of relevance.
Civil engineering doctorates awarded in the US grew steadily across this window as STEM enrolment expanded and international students entered American programmes in larger numbers. Fireball reports also climbed, but for an entirely observational reason: the American Meteor Society's online reporting tool, smartphones, and dashcams turned every commute into a witness platform. The actual rate of fireballs entering Earth's atmosphere was unchanged. The lines move together because higher education and witness infrastructure both expanded in the same decade.
The credentialed got more numerous; the observed got more numerous; both for unrelated reasons. Decades inflate measurements.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Civil engineering doctorates awarded” vs “Fireball meteor sightings reported” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
