I think most of the lay public have the wrong end of the stick. Proving causation is the cherry on the top of research. Most of the time correlation and mecha

I think most of the lay public have the wrong end of the stick. Proving causation is the cherry on the top of research. Most of the time correlation and mechanism is all that can be found in a timely manner. This data is really quite good. Correlation between smoking and poor health was shown decades before causation was considered proven. It'd be ridiculous to tell someone don't worry keep smoking, all the data we have this far shows only correlation! Right up until the 50s, when in the 20s it became apparent smokers died young. What we see here is people moving thresholds depending on their bias. This is the root cause of confirmation bias.