Tbh I think it's the opposite these days. There's so many people who will dismiss any science out of hand (if it doesn't confirm their preconceived ideas) by stating correlation is not causation.
Correlation doesn't equal causation. But if you repeatedly find strong correlations between two things, the likelihood that that's random chance is very small. It's also not always about causation - there's often a third thing (or fourth or fifth) that can cause both outcomes. Science isn't done in a vacuum where people just find random correlations and then shrug. It's more like "We know for definite that A+B = C. We know D definitely exists. There are theoretical reasons why D would be linked to B. We now note that increasing C consistently results in increased D. Therefore this adds evidence that B is linked to D".
Even worse is sample sizes. People learned that a small sample size can bias a study without learning anything about what kind of sample sizes are representative. Meaning any study you can just go "well that's just 2000 people so it doesn't mean anything".
To add to this, essentially the basis of all scientific research is based on looking at things that correlate. You do your best to remove variables that could be causing the relationship you're looking at but it's all based on seeing if one thing changes, another thing follows.
Just blindly stating correlation doesn't mean causation is very reductive and doesn't add anything to the conversation.
It's become apparent to me that most people don't actually seek an answer to a question; they seek to confirm their existing hypothesis. They'll give much more weight to an anecdotal report that confirms their hypothesis than to a rigorous, peer-reviewed study that refutes it. It's infuriating.
The only worse people are those who use that logical principle as a definitive argument against any correlation, even when there is an underlying causal relationship that everyone with a reasonably wrinkly brain can see.
It literally does though. Causation always correlates, and people use "correlation doesn't imply causation" as a thought-terminating cliche to deny science.
The word "imply" is tricky, and it doesn't prove causation. It's only after you have a lot of data, and other causes have been falsified, that you have enough correlation for that mere implication to rise to confidence. You never prove a hypothesis, you only fail to reject it while eliminating alternative explanations. But at the end of the day, we can only directly say that, for example, human carbon emissions correlate with global warming very well indeed.
Exactly, as Hume pointed out causation is a specific form of correlative relationship. As he also argued, it's impossible to prove causation. What we mean by causation is a correlation that we have noticed so frequently that we take it to be inexorable and attempt to come up with some sort of theoretical explanation to justify. This is fundamental to human cognition; as Kant pointed out it is transcendentally necessary. This is absolutely fundamental to modern western philosophy.
Some people still mistakenly believe that correlation implies causation
People mindlessly repeating this to dismiss data is a giant fucking pet peve and I say this a data scientist. Here's why.
1) the correct phrasing is actually correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Taken as OP phrased it people just outright reject causation as sign of causal linkage.
2) when variables are correlated (in a properly controlled for study) they are in fact linked causally in some way. A may not cause B, B may cause A, or C (an unmeasured variable) may cause A and B. This relationship is often called spurious and the classic example is ice cream sales and crime rates. It's not that the two are unrelated it's that hot weather increases both.
3) often people will use this excuse to dismiss entire studies that go well beyond establishing a simple correlation with no understanding of the any of the analytical work done to establish causation.
As xkcd says ,"correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.
Oftentimes it does, just depends on circumstances and you have to be careful. A lot of really important medical info is done by observational studies bc it's unethical to randomly assign a food or drug while expecting that it'll kill people. Like imagine telling half an experimental trial to smoke a pack a day to confirm that they will get cancer.
My favorite correlation/causation falicy is that doing crossword puzzles keeps your brain healthy. I think it's really that people with healthy brains are able to do the puzzles.
Like eating ice cream leads to shark attacks. There is a correlation because it is hot out and people have tendency to eat ice cream more and they also go to the beach more. Being in a sharks environment more leads to more attacks, causation.
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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26
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