That’s a quote from my mother (hi mom!), describing the phenomenon of causal explanations that seem intuitively correct, but upon scientific investigation, turn out to be wrong.
I’m bringing it up because Laura Seay at Texas in Africa has an excellent series of posts up on how social scientists think about evidence, causation, and uncertainty:
- how social scientists think: anecdotes aren’t evidence
- how social scientists think: what your driver says isn’t evidence
- how social scientists think: correlation is not causation
- how social scientists think: we’re not completely sure about much
She’s writing in an attempt to explain why social scientists and activists seem to produce such divergent assessments of the causes of conflict in places like the DRC and such contradictory prescriptions of what should be done to help. She argues that while academics are trained to think “in systematic ways that explain causal relationships between phenomena,” advocates “are trained to stir emotions and to draw personal connections between international events and Western students, consumers, and families.”
I don’t disagree that advocacy’s focus on awareness raising contributes to over-simplification of analysis (see Amanda and me not disagreeing here and here), however, I don’t think that’s what’s at the root of the difference in approach.
The kind of advocacy that Laura is talking about, even when not performed by human rights groups, is an outgrowth of the human rights movement. Yes, there are other philosophical sources for this type of activism, but the approach is heavily dependent on the methodology developed by human rights lawyers over the last half century. This methodology is characterized by meticulous documentation of violations of human rights laws, naming and shaming of perpetrators, and advocacy for (1) compliance with the laws, and (2) punishment of non-compliers.
Which is to say: lawyers don’t argue from evidence the way social scientists do. As Laura explains, social scientists are primarily concerned with using evidence to explain why certain events occurred and to predict future events. Lawyers use evidence to prove that certain events occurred and sometimes to prescribe or proscribe future action.
Consequently, lawyers (and those who employ their methodology) and social scientists are interested in patterns in evidence for very different reasons. When human rights researchers collect evidence, they are trying to provide enough support to legitimize a claim that serious violations are occurring. The goal is therefore quantity and reliability.
When social scientists collect evidence, they are trying to establish a causal story. As Laura explains, it is incredibly difficult to get from showing that two things happened to proving that one thing caused another thing. This means that they have to think about connections between pieces of evidence, and control for other potential explanations of the evidence they observe, that aren’t relevant for the lawyers’ approach.
Neither of these approaches is better than the other. The evidence-gathering methods of the human rights movement are extremely well suited to the strategy they were designed to support: advocacy for the cessation of violations of human rights laws.
The problem is that the strategies of some advocacy groups have outpaced their methodology. What Laura is highlighting is a move towards making recommendations that rely on causal claims that their evidence-gathering methods are not able to support.
(Stay tuned for my next mom-quote inspired post: “Not All Fruit Is Perfect, Just Eat It and Shut Up”)