Discussion Question Number Three: Part Nine

(Chapter Fifteen)

Cause and Effect in Populations


Chapter fifteen teaches the concept of cause and effect in populations. It illustrates three major points and experiments available to further distribute any response or result about a certain population and its differences. The textbook refers to these three experiments as: a controlled experiment (cause-to-effect), an uncontrolled experiment (cause-to-effect), and another uncontrolled experiment (effect-to-cause).

Epstein includes a main example dealing with smokers and non-smokers, as well as the probability of getting lung cancer, and how much influences and differences are in these two aspects or lifestyles that will ultimately see if it contributes or lessens the probability of receiving lung cancer. The example is illustrated through all three points of experiment. The controlled experiment, seen as most inhumane, would have a large sample size gathered by those who are giving the experiment. One group would stay away from cigarettes, the other would smoke twenty-five of them a day. They would then check back on the sample size twenty years later and see its effects on the participants, and so on, with the other experiments with small variants to the experiment (first uncontrolled gathers decided smokers and non smokers, and checks back at the same time; second uncontrolled takes the result and traces back to its cause of a smoker receiving lung cancer).

The idea of sweeping generalizations is made with the idea that it should become more trustworthy of certified scientists who make and devise experiments to conclude whether or not a cause of something truly is that particular thing. I found all of this really interesting.