Commentary: Gilding the black box

Abstract

Most epidemiology textbooks have the obligatory passage on ‘what is a cause?’ These discussions often start with Hume, pass reverently through Bradford-Hill and (if the book is of relatively recent vintage) end with Pearl. But as Hafeman and Schwartz¹ point out in their essay, few texts in our field go on to the question that really motivates these authors, which is ‘what is a causal structure?’ The closest thing I can find on my own bookcase might be Mervyn Susser's² ‘Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences’, now more than 35 years old and long out of print.