Gustavo Lacerda

I am often annoyed by people saying things that imply a causal relationship when the latter is completely unjustified. I can recall 3 instances of this in the last month-and-a-half, one of which came from a distinguished statistician, who used the subtly causal "a high value of X is good for you". (I'm not counting a talk by a statistician doing drug research who really should worry about confounding, and who found my comment totally surprising; I didn't see a problem with his language)

If statisticians are not immune to this, how can we expect working scientists to keep the two notions separate?

Most of us say things we don't mean when it comes to causality, especially in informal settings. This perpetuates muddled thinking, and gives scientists excuse to be imprecise. So I have started a wiki page, to help authors separate causal from associational language. Think of it as a pair of Thesaurus entries, designed by a prescriptivist to have zero overlap: http://www.optimizelife.com/wiki/Causal_language

Please submit here entries here, as I'm keeping editorial control over this.