Good thing I haven’t been eating cucumbers and cabbage recently… think this means I don’t have to wear a mask?! Just kidding of course.
My earliest memory of correlation vs causation is the example of ice cream consumption leading to murder because of the correlation between rate of murders and ice cream sales (since both are high in the summer). In glaring examples like this one it’s easy to clearly understand that correlation is not causation, however, things aren’t always that clear cut like in Anna’s ACL-R example.
It’s incredibly difficult if not impossible to control for every variable. While correlational studies are still important and add value, I tend to weight them lower on the totem pole of evidence than causation studies.