Mats Stensrud & Aaron Sarvet: Interpretational errors in causal inference and how to avoid them 

Speaker: : Mats Stensrud (EPFL) and Aaron Sarvet (EPFL)
Discussant: Kerollos Wanis (Western University) and Vanessa Didelez (BIPS) . Q&A moderators: Lan Wen (U Waterloo)
Title: Interpretational errors in causal inference and how to avoid them
Abstract: Pioneering works in causal inference were explicitly grounded in practical disciplines, aiming at formalizing real questions with mathematical definitions. Now, causal inference methods provide an architecture that profoundly regulates what practical questions get asked and how they get answered. Here we consider subtly different approaches for causal inference research, and their implications for theory development and practice. In this process, we formalize an interpretational error that is increasingly apparent in the causal literature, which we coin "identity slippage". This formalization can be used for error detection whenever policy decisions depend on the accurate interpretation of statistical results, which is nearly always the case. Therefore, broad awareness of identity slippage will aid in the successful translation of data into public good. As an illustration, we describe how this error appears in the methodological literature on mediation analysis, and how the error has propagated to applied disciplines.