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The confusion of correlation with causation is everywhere in the social sciences. The entire profession suffers from the keys and lamppost fallacy. They study
by bokonist 17y ago
The confusion of correlation with causation is everywhere in the social sciences. The entire profession suffers from the keys and lamppost fallacy. They study intensive mathematics and then they end up trying to attack every problem with regressions, and miss out on the supporting logic that proves causation.
How many useful and accurate predictions do you see coming out of economics? Or out of nutrition for that matter?
This article is a classic example of confusing correlation with causation. The author simply does not detail a chain of cause and effect. And the correlation she poses, does not explain such facts as why Baltimore was really safe in 1900, and is violent wreck today.
- euccastro 17y agoWhat should be predicted in nutrition that isn't?
- bokonist 17y agoWell, virtually everything that gets spouted as gospel ends up turning out not to be true five, ten years later. Fats are good, then fats are bad, then they are good again. Then only certain kinds of fat, then other kinds of fat, etc. If you actually look into the studies, you find that the evidence for any the propositions is usually non-existent. I was reading some recent studies for instance, that were showing lower cholesterol increases mortality. Of course, I have no idea how good this study was. The entire review process for published results is broken horribly. You're pretty much better off ignoring everything and just using common sense.