Politics Live today [BBC 2- 25Feb2020] brought up that old adage: “correlation is not the same as causation.” On this occasion it was deployed by panellist and Daily Telegraph journalist, Madeline Grant, as a push back against the findings of the Marmott Review which suggests that health in England is ‘faltering’ after 10 years of Conservative driven austerity. [1]

Ms Grant further suggested that the author of the Review, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, has an ideological axe to grind, and represents a left point of view, essentially unaltered from that of his previous report on the same public health topic, of 10 years ago.

Dame Helena Kennedy, also a panellist, was quick to point out that Professor Marmott has previously been critical of the Labour Party. I would also hazard, that to critique someone’s arguments on the basis that they are left wing is, in itself, an ideological argument.

Ms Grant’s insistence that Professor Marmott’s findings establish no causal link between austerity and a decline in public health is a poor defence of the policies of the coalition and Conservative Governments over the past 10 years. To establish that someone was in the room at the time of the murder does not, it must be admitted, prove that they committed the crime; but it certainly makes them a suspect.

Public health is a complex area of study. To establish, for example, a causal link between cuts to Sure Start [2] and subsequent health outcomes, is probably never going to be possible. Common sense tells me however, that the kind of things being offered in Sure Start, “initially targeted at the 20% poorest wards in England,” [3] were likely to lead to better health outcomes in the short, medium and long term. The onus, I would suggest, should be on those who cut the programme to disprove the common sense understanding, as supported by correlational evidence, of the impact it has had.

It’s true that common sense once told us that the world was flat, and we are all indebted to Christopher Columbus for putting the matter properly to the test; but common sense is the foundation of scientific hypothesis, and until arguments are developed or studies designed to overturn that common sense, it remains the proper basis on which to proceed. The existence of correlational evidence is important in that it may support, or on the other hand, challenge, our common sense understandings, and thus refine and develop them.

Common sense, to be sure, may be a disputed territory, and Madeline Grant’s common sense understanding of the issues most important in determining public health outcomes may reasonably differ from my own and those of Professor Marmott. An intelligent discussion can move our understanding of common sense forward. Accusations of ideological thinking, allied with what, in this case is a truism – that correlation is not causation – is not the basis of an intelligent discussion.