Should have clicked on your image.
So yeah, not sure why anybody takes this seriously as implying smart phones have anything to do with depression.
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The reason it's not OK to say 5% variance or whatever of a disorder is explained by smartphone or social media use is that without a theory of how this causes that or vice versa its just basically noise. If there's a theory I missed, then obviously that theory can be tested.
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I totally agree! But then the reason it's spurious is the lack of theory, not the size of the correlation (which I did admittedly assume to be r2 ...)
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Replying to @o_guest @alex__morley
Imho a correlation of .05 is practically equivalent to zero, whatever the p-value might be.
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In this case for sure. If you *could* be sure there was a causal relationship between something that millions of people are exposed to then small effects can still be important.
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Replying to @alex__morley @ed_berry
That's why I mentioned a theory. Which you would notice the trend in observational data and gather experimental data to test the theory.
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Yeah. I agree! I think I might not be explaining myself very well...
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Replying to @alex__morley @ed_berry
Tangent but only slightly, this is why science "prefers" experimental data and why observational data can only take us so far.
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Agree. Oberservational data can only be hypothesis generating, not testing.
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I'm not sure about that as it's a very strong statement — and I haven't had a chance to think about it too much — but, yes, 90% agreed.
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