Q: Can people with arthritis really predict...

Q: Can people with arthritis really predict the weather?

A: No, according to psychologist Amos Tversky of Stanford University. Tversky and Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier of the University of Toronto enlisted 18 arthritics, all but one of whom were convinced that their aches and pains were correlated to changes in weather.

The team studied the patients for 15 months, monitoring pain as reported by the patients, joint tenderness as determined by a doctor, and the patients’ ability to get along in daily life as measured by standard tests. They then compared the patients’ conditions to temperature, barometric pressure and humidity and found no correlations whatsoever. The bottom line, Tversky reported, is that the human mind is designed to look for patterns in data, even if none exist.