Cold Sores and Rice Cookers: A Story of Cause and Effect

A few weeks ago, I developed a cold sore on my lip. One of my wife's relatives had the perfect cure, so she directed my wife to wipe the condensed water on the inside lid of our rice cooker with a paper towel. My wife then applied the moistened paper towel to my cold sore after I failed an attempt to squirm away. The relative sensed my skepticism about the cure, and told me, "Believe me, I'm 72 years old. It works."

Well about a week later the cold sore was gone. "See, it works!" another in-law told me.

So I wondered out loud, "How did people cure their cold sores before the invention of the rice cooker?"

I explained to my kids, who watched the whole thing unfold, that the body has a natural ability to heal itself and that it is a logical fallacy to think that if A precedes B, then A is necessarily the cause of B. The name of this fallacy is POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC, which is simply Latin for what I told my kids; "after this, therefore because of this."

Only moments ago, I learned from my wife that the relative who recommended the cure got a cold sore herself and was looking for some spray thingy that supposedly helps.

I asked, "Why doesn't she just use the rice cooker?"

My wife replied, "She did, but it didn't work."