4 ms·
No study can ever establish causative links.
by fiatjaf 6y ago
No study can ever establish causative links.
- rflrob 6y agoA properly designed, well powered, double blind randomized controlled trial does a much better job at establishing causation than a retrospective correlation study, though.
- IgorPartola 6y agoReally? So atomic bombs explode when we set them off just by coincidence? Penicillin just happens to be administered every time the body decides to start fighting a bacterial infection?
- raverbashing 6y agoAccording to some "scientists", if you sailed looking for India and found the Americas your experiment failed and you should go back and now search for the Americas.
- ak217 6y agoMaybe you meant "no observational study"?
- samatman 6y ago"The effects of high-dose cyanide on mortality in lab mice" will establish a very strong correlation, with an impressive effect size. I suppose inferring causality still requires a leap of faith...
- Gibbon1 6y agoMore recently I've seen more discussion of observational power. That's related to bayesian probability. If someone said they fed a 3 month old mouse a 0.1 mg dose of Chemical X and it died immediately. Hard to argue that sample size of 1 means the result is worthless anecdote. The observability is pretty good.
- jacquesm 6y agoThat's utter nonsense. Of course they can. And they often do. Studies have limitations usually based on the statistics as a result of the size of the group and the degree to which confounding factors can be ruled out. But it is perfectly possible to establish a causative link by doing a well designed study, possibly even with small sample size.