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What Causes What

Methods

The product is an epistemic filter, not a supplement shop. An edge is allowed onto the atlas only when we can name its design class.

The four stamps

MECHANISM

Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Still read the caveats.

MENDELIAN

Mendelian randomization. Good against confounding; not magic against pleiotropy.

LOOP

Each side moves the other. A single arrow is the wrong picture.

SMOKE

The association does not survive the backdoor. Usually SES, outdoor time, or healthy-user bias.

What we will not do

  • Promote a bivariate observational correlation as a treatment effect.
  • Hide an interaction (T × cortisol) inside a slogan.
  • Cite a paper we have not opened. Camerer did not run the testosterone ultimatum RCT; Eisenegger, Fehr and colleagues did.
  • Pretend Inquire is full do-calculus. It is a backdoor scan on a curated graph.
  • Give medical, legal, or financial advice.

How a new edge gets in

Extract X, Y, effect size, p-value if reported, design class, and N. Attach the DOI or PMID. Name confounders. Prefer RCTs and Mendelian randomization when they exist; keep observational work when it is the literature, and stamp it honestly. Future ingestion from PubMed and Semantic Scholar will write into the same contracts. Until then the seed inpackages/contracts/src/data/seed.tsis the source of truth. The public bibliography is /sources. The screenshotable grade table is /matrix.