Sfish good for the gut? researchers tracked 22,000 male physicians for 22 years. those who reported eating seafood of any kind at least 5 times per week had a 40% lower risk of colon cancer than those who said they ate seafood less than once a week. is it reasonable to conclude that eating seafood causes a reduction in the risk of colon cancer, based on this study?

No, it is not reasonable for the researcher to conclude based on his study that eating seafood causes a reduction in the risk of colon cancer because;

He did not fulfill 2 conditions of correct causal inference namely temporal precedence and control of extraneous variables.

After doing the research, for the researcher to conclude that eating seafood causes a reduction in the risk of colon cancer means that he has made a causal inference from the study.

Now, the three conditions are;

1) Covariation; This condition implies that the causal variable must have to vary with with the variable it is assumed to cause in a systematic manner.

2) Temporal precedence; This condition implies that the cause must precede effect. In a nutshell, it denotes that the variable which has the causal effect must come before the effect that it is meant to cause.

3) Control for extraneous variables; This condition means that results of a research must not be due to other factors outside of the experiment/research.

Now, let us analyze the research in the question if it passed these three conditions.

- The covariation condition is fulfilled because his causal inference is tied to the response he got from those who reported eating any sea food.

- He did not fulfill the temporal precedence because the cause of them eating or not any seafood did not precede the effect the sea food had on lowering the risk of colon cancer.

- He did not fulfil the third condition because it is very plausible that there could be other foods or factors that contributed to the lower risk of colon cancer.

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Probably not.

The reason why is that we don't know if seafood is the only thing that contributed to the lower risk.

Did an increase of seafood in the diet lower other meats such as pork that maybe causes this type of cancer? What about the ration of seafood to vegetables or fruits for both groups. We don't know what vitamins and minerals could be in a deficit for these groups because of their diets.

The only thing that we can conclude here is that a diet rich in seafood could lower the risks but not necessarily because of the seafood but it could be the case none the less. Further research is needed to conclude that there is a connection between seafood and lowering the risks of cancer.