Are there Rival Causes?
From Asking the Right Questions
After carefully conditioning a flea to jump out of a box following the presentation of a loud noise, the researcher removed the first pair
of legs to see what effect this had. Observing that the flea was still able to perform his task, the scientist removed the second pair of
legs. Once again noting no difference in performance, the researcher removed the final pair of legs and found that the jumping
behavior no longer occurred. Thus, the investigator wrote in his notebook, “When all the legs of a flea have been removed, it will no
longer be able to hear.”
Lesson:
The same evidence can be consistent with different interpretations, known as rival causes.
A rival cause is a plausible interpretation, different from one author’s interpretation, which can explain why a
certain outcome occurred.
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Example: In the year 2000, healthcare costs increased 7.2 percent, the largest jump in a decade. Hospitals need
to curtail the rising use of very expensive high-tech diagnostic and treatment procedures, such as organ
transplants and Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
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Good Critical Thinking Rules of Thumb
1. Many kinds of events are open to explanation by rival causes.
2. It’s possible to look at the same evidence and come up with different causes to explain it.
3. Although many explanations may “fit the facts,” some will seem more plausible than others.
4. Most communicators will provide you with only their favored cause; the critical reader or listener
must generate their own rival causes.
5. Generating rival causes is a creative process; usually such causes will not be obvious.
6. Even “scientific” researchers frequently fail to acknowledge important rival causes.
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Detecting Rival Causes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Can I think of any other way to interpret the evidence?
What else might have caused this act or these findings?
If I looked at this from another point of view, what might I see has important causes?
If this interpretation is correct, what other interpretation might make sense?
DANGER: Causal Oversimplification: Explaining an event by relying on causal factors that are insufficient
to account for the event or by overemphasizing the role of one or more of these factors.
Example: Television causes violence