There is, but there’s still value to showing real world examples where ‘correlation is not causation’ and showing the real explanations (which in the absence of hard randomized trials, can come off as mindless nitpicking and motivated cognition by people who just don’t want to accept the correlation*).
* I’m worried about this because looking back over the years of discussion on the dual n-back mailing list, I get the feeling that a lot of people wrote off the methodological criticisms of the n-back studies as basically theoretical ‘perfect is the enemy of better’ motivated-cognition nitpicking, even about the soundest criticisms like active control groups, until I finally sat down and did the meta-analysis showing the active control group criticism was right on the money.
If only there were a snappy five-word phrase to this effect that got printed in pretty much every statistics textbook ever written...
There is, but there’s still value to showing real world examples where ‘correlation is not causation’ and showing the real explanations (which in the absence of hard randomized trials, can come off as mindless nitpicking and motivated cognition by people who just don’t want to accept the correlation*).
* I’m worried about this because looking back over the years of discussion on the dual n-back mailing list, I get the feeling that a lot of people wrote off the methodological criticisms of the n-back studies as basically theoretical ‘perfect is the enemy of better’ motivated-cognition nitpicking, even about the soundest criticisms like active control groups, until I finally sat down and did the meta-analysis showing the active control group criticism was right on the money.