Ambiguous Causation

A cause of study bias

Authors

Affiliations

Nate Yomogida, B.S., SPT

Doctor of Physical Therapy

B.S. in Kinesiology

Chloë Kerstein, B.S., SPT

Doctor of Physical Therapy

B.A. in Neuroscience

Ambiguous causation refers to when correlations/associations between variables are incorrectly interpreted as causal effects. Ambiguous causation is an error committed by researchers when creating inferences from data. Researchers could take a correlation between “A” and “B” and then state that “A causes B” but even though there is a correlation, we cannot determine causation from correlation information alone.

Example

• Study concludes that reducing shoulder pain improves physical activity participation based on a negative correlation between pain and activity levels
• Researchers are performed ambiguous causation since they stated that shoulder pain causes them to decrease activity level.
• Inferring this causation is premature since people who exercise more may hurt less since exercise may reduce pain.
• We cannot determine whether exercise reduces pain or reducing pain improves exercise since either could be true

How does this effect treatment effects?

• We are not able to determine whether treatment effects are over/under estimated since correlations do not provide evidence of cause and effect tx effects.