Highlights
- •
- Summarises the ongoing “methodological revolution” concerning causal inference in epidemiology judgement.
- •
- Identifies underlying philosophical commitments of the revolution.
- •
- Argues that the revolution's conceptual commitments concerning the nature of causation and the relation of causation to prediction are unwarranted.
- •
- Concludes that POA techniques not sufficient to replace qualitative, informal assessment of causality.
Abstract
There
is an ongoing “methodological revolution” in epidemiology, according to
some commentators. The revolution is prompted by the development of a
conceptual framework for thinking about causation here referred to as
the Potential Outcomes Approach (POA), and the mathematical
apparatus of directed acyclic graphs that accompanies it. But over and
above the mathematics, a number of striking theses about causation are
evident, for example: that a cause is something that makes a difference;
that a cause is something that humans can intervene on; and that causal
knowledge enables one to predict under hypothetical suppositions. This
is especially remarkable in a discipline that has variously identified
factors such as race and sex as determinants of health, since it has the
consequence that factors of this kind cannot be treated as causes
either as usefully or as meaningfully as was previously supposed. In
this paper I seek to explain the significance of this movement in
epidemiology, to understand its commitments, and to evaluate them.
Keywords
- Causation;
- Prediction;
- Epidemiology;
- Potential outcomes;
- Miguel Hernan;
- Directed acyclic graphs
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
