It's High Fructose Corn Syrup, damn it.

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3. ah, so some correlations are not causal?

or few are?

correlations are indeed mere statistics, but they can hint at causality; and if supported by a hypothesis that provides some reason to believe there might actually be a causal relation, that is, as you indicate, a reasonable basis for further research.

i doubt very much that anyone is suggesting that ssris or video games or whatever has some relationship to mass shootings without having SOME intuitive reason for thinking that there's a causal relationship.

so far the only one i've seen that doesn't seem to have any basis for a causal relationship is that one post talking about obesity/hfcs....