Amadio, Dean wrote: > Are you saying that we should ignore all non-experimental research? Of course not. I saying we should draw from correlational research the conclusions that are justified by correlational research. > I'm concerned you're giving this message to your students! This is the > justification the tobacco industry used to say that there is no evidence that > smoking causes lung cancer in humans. But they were simply wrong. Part of it was correlational, but there was (eventually) lots of good animal and histological and biochemcial research that proved what the correlations suggested might be the case. It might well have turned out otherwise. It took good research, not correlational speculations to establish the causal connection.
Your argument seems to be that just because one famous correlational connection proved (upon further experimental research) to be underpinned by a causal connection (tobacco-cancer), that all such correlations must be underpinned by a causal connection (alcohol-cancer). Obviously, that is a very poor inference. > we have to adopt a wait and see and skeptical, but perhaps somewhat prudent > attitude. This is precisely the message I give students. Telling your students on the basis of merely suggestive research of this sort that they should wholly abstain from alcohol is not merely prudent. It is alarmist, and unwarranted by the currently available data. > While the BBC article certainly overstated much (as is typical with popular > media), I think calling these types of studies "ridiculous" is very > misleading, and in some instances, downright dangerous. I repeat: Even if the causal connection were established here, the rise in in cancer risk would amount to 2 in 10,000. Does that strike you as dangerous? That's about the same as the probability of being killed in a car accident (see http://www.fearlessflight.com/airplane-disasters-plane-crash-statistics). Do you totally abstain from riding in cars for fear of being killed in one? Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
