Abstract
The contested notion of cause is centrally important for evaluating evidential reasoning in law and science, especially in so many cases where a causal conclusion is drawn from statistical correlations. Three current examples of arguing from correlation to causation that are based on scientific reasoning and that are of broad public concern as health issues are described and evaluated in this chapter. The first one concerns the question of whether eating chocolate makes people smarter. The second one concerns a correlation between weather patterns in the southern Pacific and flu pandemics. The third one concerns the question of whether ingestion of copper causes Alzheimer’s disease. This chapter shows how to improve the existing argumentation tools to enable us to judge whether a given instance is a reasonable argument or not and how to adjudicate cases where an allegation of drawing a hasty conclusion or even committing a fallacy is made.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
James Gallagher, Copper Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease, BBC News, Accessed August 21, 2013:
- 2.
Mark Michaud, University of Rochester Public Release date Aug. 19, 2013. Copper Identified as Culprit in Alzheimer’s Disease, Accessed Aug. 21, 2013.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/uorm-cia081413.php.
- 3.
Deccan Chronicle (no author given). Copper linked to Alzheimer’s? New Research Fuels Debate: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130820/lifestyle-health-and-well-being/article/copper-linked-alzheimers-new-research-fuels-debate Accessed Wednesday, Aug 21, 2013.
- 4.
The current version of the CAS editor can be downloaded from https://github.com/carneades.
- 5.
Charlotte Prichard, Does Chocolate Make You Clever?, BBC News, Nov. 19, 2012: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20356613.
- 6.
References
Castellano, J.M., R. Deane, A.J. Gottesdiener, P.B. Verghese, F.R. Stewart, T. West, A.C. Paoletti, T.R. Kasper, R.B. DeMattos, B.V. Zlokovic, and D.M. Holtzman. 2012. Low-density lipoprotein receptor overexpression enhances the rate of brain-to-blood Aß clearance in a mouse model of ß-amyloidosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U S A 109(38): 15502–15507.
Cohn, J. 2004. Markers of malign across the cardiovascular continuum: Interpretation and application: Introduction to surrogate markers. Circulation 109: IV-20-IV-21(109[suppl. IV]: 20–21.) http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/25_suppl_1/IV-20.full. Accessed 14 Aug 2013.
Couzin-Frankel, J., and Y. Ogale. 2011. Once on “fast track”, Avastin now derailed. Science 333(6039): 143–144. doi:10.1126/science.333.6039.143.
Doll, R. 1992. Sir Austin Bradford Hill and the progress of medical science. British Medical Journal 305(6868): 1521–1526.
Exley, C., E. House, A. Polwart, and M.M. Esiri. 2012. Brain burdens of aluminum, iron, and copper, and their relationships with amyloid-β pathology in 60 human brains. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 31(4): 725–730.
Fainaru-Wada, M., and S. Fainaru. 2013. League of denial. New York: Random House.
Freedman, D.H. 2010. Wrong: Why experts keep failing us – And how to know when not to trust them. New York: Little Brown and Company.
Gordon, T.F. 2010. The Carneades argumentation support system. In Dialectics, dialogue and argumentation, ed. C. Reed and C.W. Tindale. London: College Publications.
Govier, T. 2005. A practical study of argument, 6th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Groarke, L.A., and C.W. Tindale. 2004. Good reasoning matters! 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hill, B.A. 1965. The environment and disease: Association or causation? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 58(5): 295–300.
Ioannidis, J.P.A. 2005. Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. Published online 2005 August 30. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124. PMCID: PMC1182327.
Johnson, R.H., and J.A. Blair. 1983. Logical self-defense, 2nd ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Messerli, F. 2012. Chocolate consumption, cognitive function and nobel laureates. New England Journal of Medicine 367(16): 1562–1564.
Pinto, R. 1995. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. In Fallacies: Classical and contemporary readings, ed. H.V. Hansen and R.C. Pinto, 302–311. University Park: Penn State Press.
Proctor, R.N. 1995. Cancer wars. New York: Basic Books.
Reed, C., and D. Walton. 2003. Diagramming, argumentation schemes and critical questions. In Anyone who has a view: Theoretical contributions to the study of argumentation, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard, and A. Snoeck Henkemans, 195–211. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Shaman, J., and M. Lipsitch. 2013. The ENSO-pandemic influenza connection: Coincident or causal? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(Suppl. 1): 3689–3691.
Susser, M. 1977. Judgement and causal inference: Criteria in epidemiologic studies. American Journal of Epidemiology 105(1): 1–15.
Walton, D. 1996. Argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.
Walton, D., and T.F. Gordon. 2009. Jumping to a conclusion: Fallacies and standards of proof. Informal Logic 29(2): 215–243.
Walton, D., and T.F. Gordon. 2011. Modeling critical questions as additional premises. In Argument cultures: Proceedings of the 8th International OSSA Conference, ed. F. Zenker, 1–13. Windsor, University of Windsor. Available at http://www.dougwalton.ca/papers%20in%20pdf/11OSSA.pdf.
Walton, D., and N. Zhang. 2013. The epistemology of scientific evidence. Artificial Intelligence and Law 21(2): 173–219.
Walton, D., C. Reed, and F. Macagno. 2008. Argumentation schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walton, D. (2016). Arguments from Correlation to Causation. In: Argument Evaluation and Evidence. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19626-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19626-8_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19625-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19626-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)