Researchers are careful to distinguish between causation and association – in other words, whether the experiment shows an actual cause and effect, or if two things just appear to be related in some way. Reverse causality may also be considered. For example, suppose an experiment shows that people who have high levels of a particular chemical in their blood are more likely to have something wrong with their kidneys. The conclusion might be that the chemical causes kidney disease, whereas the real explanation might be that in people with kidney disease, the kidneys are just not doing a good job of extracting the chemical from the blood."
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