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This kind of article repulses me. Making the link between Craiglist and HIV rate doesn't make sense, correlation is not causality.
by hartator 12y ago
This kind of article repulses me. Making the link between Craiglist and HIV rate doesn't make sense, correlation is not causality.
- barry-cotter 12y agoYou can never absolutely prove causality. But as is pointed out in the article Craigslist became available in different cities at different times. The pattern of a lag followed by an increase in STDs was found in many cities. Whether one is repulsed by the implications of a study has no effects on its truth value.
- tunesmith 12y agoSomething else could have caused both the STD increase and the appearance of a local craigslist presence. Like, say, a certain critical mass of population density.
- ryan_j_naughton 12y agoExactly. Craigslist isn't randomly opening their local sites. They are doing so in response to changes in communities following some semi-strategic growth strategy. Its not a natural experiment as claimed by the authors at all. Its like looking at the effects of google fiber on the cities it launches in without taking into account that those cities were selected by google for a reason. Quasi-experimental methods would be helpful here like a propensity score matching to match the cities to others that are like them and make pseudo-controls.Even then you can't consider this remotely a natural experiment.
- learnstats2 12y agoOK, but correlation is correlation. Should we stop doing statistics because it can never prove anything? Should we only accept that statistical results are valid when they are convenient and fit with our existing world view?