Nicholas LaRocca of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society said the study showed "a statistical association, but not anything that you could really pin down as being causal or anything that really identifies a mechanism".
In the latter circumstances, the case for RBC transfusions being causal for adverse clinical outcomes can be strengthened by applying modified Bradford Hill criteria to the plethora of existing observational studies.
But the Macdonalds don't see this as incompatible with reason explanations being causal.
Only particulars are real the criterion for reality being causal efficiency.
If all facts were indeed logically equivalent, they would, of course, be unsuited for being causal relata.
Third, and related to this point, reason explanations might be different than other causal explanations in their subject matter without this preventing them from being causal.
None of this appears to be inconsistent with reasons explanations being causal explanations, and seems merely to individuate reason explanations from those that are made relative to different explanatory interests.
Furthermore, even if one were to control for all of this, it is still difficult to interpret differences in migration policies resulting from a cross-sectional analysis as being exogenous and, consequently, to interpret a correlation with the relative schooling outcomes of migrants as being causal.
Although telomerase activity and telomere length varied in HPC particularly from older donors, an age-dependent decline was not significant arguing against telomere exhaustion as being causal for the aging phenotype.
Evidence in support of this link being causal would include an association robust to adjustments for confounders (multivariable standard regression analysis) and the association of CRP gene polymorphisms with atherosclerosis (Mendelian randomization analysis).
Our findings here suggest that instead of body condition per se being causal, food restriction could be viewed as food stress; concomitant with the fall in androgens was an increase in corticosterone [39].
