In 2001 Judith Rich Harris published \u201cThe Nurture Assumption\u201d, which, from the many favourable mentions I\u2019ve seen in a variety of contexts, seems to have had a considerable influence on our thinking about how human beings develop.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t yet been able to get a hold of Harris\u2019 book, but I did just find an essay by her in a collection of essays put together by John Brockman, \u201cThe Next 50 Years\u201d.<\/p>\n
The argument Harris makes in the essay can be summarized as follows:<\/p>\n
(a) Genetic factors play a large (though far from exclusive) role in controlling human development.<\/p>\n
(b) Most studies in developmental psychology assume that it is the environment that determines human behaviour.<\/p>\n
(c) Those studies therefore fail to control for genetic effects.<\/p>\n
(d) Those studies are therefore essentially useless.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fascinating argument: simple, yet if correct, devastating for an entire academic field.<\/p>\n
(To avoid any confusion in attribution, I should say that I don\u2019t know who originated this argument, although it is clear that Harris is but one of many contributors.)<\/p>\n
Everyone knows, at some level, that correlation does not imply causation, but it is difficult to avoid the fallacies that can result when one is not mindful of this.<\/p>\n
It occurred to me when talking with my partner, Jen, this evening that I don\u2019t have a nice vivid example of this point ready at hand. So we made one up that I think illustrates the point memorably.<\/p>\n
Suppose one observes top basketball players, and notices that they all tend to wear very expensive basketball shoes. Is one justified in assuming that more expensive basketball shoes cause<\/em> someone to be a better basketball player?<\/p>\n In some small measure, the answer is yes. But it doesn\u2019t matter what you put on my feet, I\u2019m never going to jump like Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n Indeed, marketing in general seems to be based largely on the fact that, at some level, in many cases subconscious, we easily confuse correlation with causation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2001 Judith Rich Harris published \u201cThe Nurture Assumption\u201d, which, from the many favourable mentions I\u2019ve seen in a variety of contexts, seems to have had a considerable influence on our thinking about how human beings develop. I haven\u2019t yet been able to get a hold of Harris\u2019 book, but I did just find an… Continue reading Judith Rich Harris, correlation, and causation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}