Could education be dangerous to your health? Pitfalls of misapplied statistics

It is important to evaluate cardiovascular risk factors. A correlation between cholesterol levels and the duration of formal education has not been observed previously. In analyzing our data, it was found that these two variables had a significant correlation (p < 0.05). Further evaluation did not substantiate this correlation. After considering various possible reasons we concluded that the seeming correlation was caused by inappropriate statistical evaluation.