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Sometimes causal effect estimators don't provide evidence of causal effects
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Sometimes causal effect estimators don't provide evidence of causal effects

And one of the myriad reasons why you shouldn't trust that new neuroscience paper with causal in the title.

Manjari Narayan's avatar
Manjari Narayan
Aug 31, 2024
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Sometimes causal effect estimators don't provide evidence of causal effects
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Important work by @aweisstweets.

I am a fan of the power of causal inference, assuming it is done to the highest theoretically warranted & empirical standards. But this is a good reminder that papers that lack the capacity to infer the target causal effect, despite seeming to use the popular CI machinery, do not actually provide evidence of a causal effect.

My pet peeve in the last 4 years of bio/neuro science papers is that people continue to do the same old stuff they did before (where causal effects were not identifiable) but now just add "causal" or apply newfangled causal discovery algorithms or causal effect estimation algorithm that only work under unjustifiable assumptions.

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Michael Spencer's avatar
Michael Spencer
Oct 23

I await your more serious pieces.

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Sewall Wright and John Tukey on Path Analysis in 1952
Papers from a symposium at The Biometrics Society (ENAR) Conference in 1952 at Iowa State College; Relevant to the history of causal inference.
Dec 2, 2024 â€¢ 
Manjari Narayan
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Sewall Wright and John Tukey on Path Analysis in 1952
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Paper: Why We Must Rethink Empirical Research in Machine Learning
Quick take on Herrmann, M. et al. (2024) ‘Position: Why We Must Rethink Empirical Research in Machine Learning’, International Conference on Machine…
Nov 4, 2024 â€¢ 
Manjari Narayan
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Paper: Why We Must Rethink Empirical Research in Machine Learning
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Neurostats Digest #2
Select links and reading on regulatory science, free energy principle, vitamin-D interventions, preterm birth interventions
Jan 31 â€¢ 
Manjari Narayan
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Neurostats Digest #2
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