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> "An association doesn't necessarily mean that one thing causes the other thing," says Floud. Does anyone else get tired of seeing this all the time? It feels
by serve_yay 12y ago
> "An association doesn't necessarily mean that one thing causes the other thing," says Floud.
Does anyone else get tired of seeing this all the time? It feels like the standard, pat response nowadays of a smart person to basically any association whatever. Of course ice cream sales in the summer don't cause murders, but in turn, I seriously doubt anyone is saying that sexual assault somehow physiologically deforms breast tissue directly leading to carcinoma.
Look, I know very little about medicine, I don't even know that much about statistics. But wouldn't the idea be more like these traumas could stress the body in some way that makes some of its subsystems perform in a degraded manner, which over time develops into illness? As I say, I'm out of my depth here. But that sort of response is starting to strike me as irksomely glib.
- downandout 12y ago>Does anyone else get tired of seeing this all the time? You're probably seeing it more often because more people have access to more data than ever before and are making lots of connections that aren't necessarily connected. Floud probably stated it this way because of the inevitable eye-rolling that occurs in reaction to the more common way of saying it: Correlation does not imply causation. In this case, however, Floud is probably wrong. There is plenty of statistical evidence to prove links between traumatic childhoods and undesirable characteristics in adulthood. It isn't much further of a leap to assert that physical changes, as a result of unnatural levels of stress hormones etc., could occur.
- sukilot 12y agoThis post could be the Wikipedia entry for "question begging". It is claiming that correlation implies causation because of the observed correlation.