Cause and Effect

I like this topic as it is very relevant to my work at the Faison School for Autism. As a teacher at Faison I wear several hats, one of which is the hat of a behavioralist. Often I am looking for setting events and/or antecedents to problem behaviors a student emits. These behaviors impede the students academic progress at best and present unsafe and in some cases life-threatening scenarios at worst. In many ways I try to understand what the cause of such intense behavioral outbursts. With this information, I can make informed decisions on modifying a student's work cycle, daily routine, social interactions, etc.

This understanding of cause and effect research is very beneficial on an individual level. It's a key component to what I do as a professional. When discussing this in the realm of social science, or applying it to larger populations as a whole, I feel you do yourself a disservice. As I stated earlier, cause and effect research is most effective on a case-by-case basis. Not everyone is going to experience and recieve stimuli in the same fashion and not everyone is going to have the same perspective or respond with the same affect.

Developing causal relationships on a large scale has got to be one of the hardest undertakings a researcher can do. In fact, it may be borderline impossible as there never seems to be definitive proof even after years of research has been conducted. Not everyone agrees about cigarettes and cancer, there's still a quiet debate over the concept of global warming/climate change and the validity of that theory based on a cause and effect relationship.

This cause based research may also feature questionable ethics. These are the ones that have the research attempt to make a universal claim -- such as the role vaccinations play in autism diagnoses. A bold and almost reckless conclusion such as that provides people with hope only and the role of research has little to do with hope.