Re:“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
by tboyd47 on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @09:24AM
(#21323308)
Agreed. The "correlation != causation" mantra does not match the context here.
It's true that correlation studies are not as conclusive as laboratory experiments in general, but when we're talking about negative long-term health effects on humans, you can't establish causation without doing something unethical. But does that mean science becomes useless? I don't think so.
There are times when it's appropriate to infer causation from a correlation and act on that conclusion. For example, the famous lead toxicity studies are correlation studies. One such study, cited over 1000 times, [0] meets only 6 out of 9 criteria for inferring causation [1], and people are comfortable making that inference.
A good next step would be to go through the PowerWatch list of studies [2] and evaluate these studies based on these criteria (or a similar list).
It's true that correlation studies are not as conclusive as laboratory experiments in general, but when we're talking about negative long-term health effects on humans, you can't establish causation without doing something unethical. But does that mean science becomes useless? I don't think so.
There are times when it's appropriate to infer causation from a correlation and act on that conclusion. For example, the famous lead toxicity studies are correlation studies. One such study, cited over 1000 times, [0] meets only 6 out of 9 criteria for inferring causation [1], and people are comfortable making that inference.
A good next step would be to go through the PowerWatch list of studies [2] and evaluate these studies based on these criteria (or a similar list).
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[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199001113220203 [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003591576505800... [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl...