title: Does water kill? A call for less casual causal inferences.
abstract: "Can this number be interpreted as a causal effect?" is a key question for scientists and decision makers. The potential outcomes approach, a quantitative counterfactual theory, describes conditions under which the question can be answered affirmatively. This article reviews one of those conditions, known as consistency, and its implications for real world decisions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA; Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Boston, MA. Electronic address: miguel_hernan@post.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Miguel A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hernán
mesh_terms: D015984:Causality; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D003657:Decision Making; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012107:Research Design; D014867:Water / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D014867:Water
keywords: Causal inference; Consistency; Counterfactuals; Potential outcomes; Well-defined interventions