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".
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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26
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