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A Second Chance to Get Causal Inference Right: A Classification of Data Science Tasks
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For much of the recent history of science, learning from data was the academic realm of statistics,1,2 but in the early 20th century, the founders of modern statistics made a momentous decision abo...
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“ML can play a role in causal inference [41,340,619], including in the context of policy problems [40,453] and in climate-relevant scenarios such as estimating the effects of temperature on human mortality [356] and the effects of World Bank projects on vegetative cover [883].”
From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [340]
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Smit, J. M., Krijthe, J. H., van Bommel, J., Collaborators, T. C. I. F. I., van Genderen, M. E., Labrecque, J. A., Komorowski, M., Gommers, D. A. M. P. J., & Reinders, M. J. T. (2023) · Intensive Care Medicine · doi:10.1007/s00134-023-07102-y · Cited by 31
Framework for identifying drug repurposing candidates from observational healthcare data
Ozery-Flato, M., Goldschmidt, Y., Shaham, O., Ravid, S., & Yanover, C. (2020) · JAMIA Open · doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooaa048 · Cited by 30
Ponsonby, A. (2020) · International Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/ije/dyaa174 · Cited by 25
Overton, M., & Kleinschmit, S. W. (2021) · Teaching Public Administration · doi:10.1177/01447394211004990 · Cited by 30
“While some authors view data science activities as solely contributing to the analysis of data (Hern´an et al., 2019), the broader discipline is concerned with every step of the data to insight process (Donoho, 2017).”
BackgroundA scoping review of law enforcement drug seizures and overdose mortality in the United States
Cano, M. N., Timmons, P., Hooten, M., Sweeney, K. R., & Oh, S. (2024) · International Journal of Drug Policy · doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104321 · Cited by 29
The Target Trial: A Powerful Device Beyond Well-defined Interventions
Moreno‐Betancur, M. (2020) · Epidemiology · doi:10.1097/ede.0000000000001318 · Cited by 26
Improving child health through Big Data and data science
Vesoulis, Z. A., Husain, A. N., & Cole, F. S. (2022) · Pediatric Research · doi:10.1038/s41390-022-02264-9 · Cited by 29
“Three overarching approaches to analysis have been used: descriptive, predictive, and counterfactual.(28,29) Descriptive analysis utilizes conventional parametric and non-parametric statistics to provide quantitative estimates of central tendency and variability.”
Barmanray, R., Kyi, M., Worth, L. J., Colman, P. G., Churilov, L. P., Fazio, T. N., Rayman, G. A., Gonzalez, V., Hall, C., & Fourlanos, S. (2024) · The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism · doi:10.1210/clinem/dgae051 · Cited by 28
Re-examining the Association Between E-Cigarette Use and Myocardial Infarction: A Cautionary Tale
Critcher, C. R., & Siegel, M. D. (2021) · American Journal of Preventive Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2021.05.003 · Cited by 27
Shiba, K., Daoud, A., Kino, S., Nishi, D., Kondo, K., & Kawachi, I. I. (2021) · Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences · doi:10.1111/pcn.13322 · Cited by 27
Impellizzeri, F. M., Ward, P., Coutts, A. J., Bornn, L., & McCall, A. (2020) · Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy · doi:10.2519/jospt.2020.9211 · Cited by 26
Node Centrality Measures are a poor substitute for Causal InferencePreprint
Dablander, F., & Hinne, M. (2018) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/nue4z · Cited by 26
Reshaping the Arc of Quantitative Educational Research: It’s Time to Broaden Our Paradigm
Singer, J. D. (2019) · Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness · doi:10.1080/19345747.2019.1658835 · Cited by 24
“Epidemiologists Hernan, Hsu, and Healy (2019) emphasize this point in a recent paper that concludes: “No AI will be worthy of the name without causal inference.””
BackgroundNielsen, R. O., Shrier, I., Casals, M., Nettel‐Aguirre, A., Møller, M., Bolling, C. S., Bittencourt, N. F. N., Clarsen, B. M., Wedderkopp, N., Soligard, T., et al. (2020) · Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy · doi:10.2519/jospt.2020.9876 · Cited by 25
Types of Research Questions: Descriptive, Predictive, or Causal
Kamper, S. J. (2020) · Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy · doi:10.2519/jospt.2020.0703 · Cited by 25
A framework for modeling human behavior in large-scale agent-based epidemic simulations
de Mooij, J., Bhattacharya, P., Dell’Anna, D., Dastani, M. M., Logan, B. S., & Swarup, S. (2023) · SIMULATION · doi:10.1177/00375497231184898 · Cited by 25
“8 11 The importance of ABMS for studying the impact of behavioral health interventions has become particularly evident during the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”
BackgroundThe insight of why: Causal inference in Earth system science
Su, J., Chen, D., Zheng, D., Su, Y., & Li, X. (2023) · Science China Earth Sciences · doi:10.1007/s11430-023-1148-7 · Cited by 27
Explainable AI in healthcare: to explain, to predict, or to describe?
Carriero, A., de Hond, A., Cappers, B. C. M., Paulovich, F. V., Abeln, S., Moons, K. G. M., & van Smeden, M. (2025) · Diagnostic and Prognostic Research · doi:10.1186/s41512-025-00213-8 · Cited by 48
Metadata
- Authors
- Hernán, M. A., Hsu, J., & Healy, B.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- ORCID
- Healy, Brian
- Venue
- CHANCE
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-01-02
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 42-49
- ISSN
- 0933-2480 (ISSN-L)
- 1867-2280
- OpenAlex
- W2798958557
- Cited by
- 495
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 70 · 2025: 79 · 2024: 67 · 2023: 70 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 67 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 20
- FWCI
- 40.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- CHANCE (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Advanced Causal Inference Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistics Education and Methodologies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy of Biology and Scientific Explanation
- Keywords
- causal inference, history of statistics, learning from data
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