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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7474019" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm saying that public health researchers don't go about spreading disease so as to perform experiments concerning population health.(I'm not talking here about experimenters who infect themselves, which happens from time to time.)That's not an experiment. It's careful observation and measurement. Those are not the same thing!It would be correct to say that correlation does not, per se, indicate causation.I have noted the following correlation over my life, though: when I tap a solid surface with my finger, it often generats a noise. And I have inferred, from the correlation, plus the absence of any other salient phenomenon correlating with my tapping, that it is the tapping that generates the noise.Patterns of correlation (what present thing correlates with what other present thing, what absent phenomenon correlates with what other absent thing, what absence correlates with what presence, etc) tend to be the best evidence we can get of causal relationships. Part of the function of control in experiments is to eliminate the possibility of non-salient correlations.Part of what distinguishes Darwin's careful observation and measurement from someone taking holiday photos is that he is trying systematically to note correlations between phenomena (both present and absent) that he judges to be salient.Collection and cataloguing of data can be science, by itself, if other conditions are satisfied. Joseph Banks systematicallly catalogued fauna and flora on his voyages. That was - in my view, correctly - treated as a contribution to science.Astronomy begins by systematically recording the position and visible motion of heavenly bodies. That is science.There are many sorts of information that can be collected and systematised. There are many ways of doing so. And there are many degrees of difficulty in doing so. Whether or not such collection and systematisation constitutes science may depend on all these things. Baseball scores are (i) not interesting features of the natural world, (ii) not hard to discover, and (iii) are not systematised in any interesting or revelatory way by a scorekeeper.Whereas the work done by Banks, or by early observers of the heavens, (i) concerned interesting features of thenatural world, (ii) required the application both of discipline and intellectual effort to discover, and (iii) was systematised in various interesting and revelatory ways.</blockquote>

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