ArticleGenetics research2013
The causal meaning of Fisher's average effect.
Article in Genetics research, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Causal attribution by the chain rule: unifying natural selection, learning, economics, and other disciplines.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Estimating the additive genetic variance for relative fitness from changes in allele frequency.Genetics · 2026Article
- The Economics and Econometrics of Gene-Environment Interplay.The Review of economic studies · 2026Article
- A genetic common factor underlying self-reported math ability and highest math class taken.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Causal interpretations of family GWAS in the presence of heterogeneous effects.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Causal interpretations of family GWAS in the presence of heterogeneous effects.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The association between saving disposition and financial distress: A genetically informed approach.Journal Of Economic Psychology · 2023Article
- Population phenomena inflate genetic associations of complex social traits.Science advances · 2020Article
- The accuracy of LD Score regression as an estimator of confounding and genetic correlations in genome-wide association studies.Genetic epidemiology · 2018Article
- The causal meaning of Hamilton's rule.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
- Uncovering the Genetic Architectures of Quantitative Traits.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2016Review
- The Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics.Current directions in psychological science · 2015Article
- Conditions for the validity of SNP-based heritability estimation.Human genetics · 2014Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In order to formulate the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, Fisher defined the average excess and average effect of a gene substitution. Finding these notions to be somewhat opaque, some authors have recommended reformulating Fisher's ideas in terms of covariance and regression, which are classical concepts of statistics. We argue that Fisher intended his two averages to express a distinction between correlation and causation. On this view, the average effect is a specific weighted average of the actual phenotypic changes that result from physically changing the allelic states of homologous genes. We show that the statistical and causal conceptions of the average effect, perceived as inconsistent by Falconer, can be reconciled if certain relationships between the genotype frequencies and non-additive residuals are conserved. There are certain theory-internal considerations favouring Fisher's original formulation in terms of causality; for example, the frequency-weighted mean of the average effects equaling zero at each locus becomes a derivable consequence rather than an arbitrary constraint. More broadly, Fisher's distinction between correlation and causation is of critical importance to gene-trait mapping studies and the foundations of evolutionary biology.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.