ArticleCold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine2021
The Meaning of "Cause" in Genetics.
Article in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Geneticists' Understandings of Genetic Causation.Behavior genetics · 2026Article
- Could interventions on physical activity mitigate genomic liability for obesity? Applying the health disparity framework in genetically informed studies.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Research Review: How to interpret associations between polygenic scores, environmental risks, and phenotypes.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2022Review
- Causal Inference with Genetic Data: Past, Present, and Future.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2022Review
- Half a century later and we're back where we started: How the problem of locality turned in to the problem of portability.Studies in history and philosophy of science · 2022Article
- Twins and Causal Inference: Leveraging Nature's Experiment.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2021Review
- Causal Effects of Genetically Predicted Iron Status on Sepsis: A Two-Sample Bidirectional Mendelian Randomization Study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
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Abstract
Causation has multiple distinct meanings in genetics. One reason for this is meaning slippage between two concepts of the gene: Mendelian and molecular. Another reason is that a variety of genetic methods address different kinds of causal relationships. Some genetic studies address causes of traits in individuals, which can only be assessed when single genes follow predictable inheritance patterns that reliably cause a trait. A second sense concerns the causes of trait differences within a population. Whereas some single genes can be said to cause population-level differences, most often these claims concern the effects of many genes. Polygenic traits can be understood using heritability estimates, which estimate the relative influences of genetic and environmental differences to trait differences within a population. Attempts to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying polygenic traits have been developed, although causal inference based on these results remains controversial. Genetic variation has also recently been leveraged as a randomizing factor to identify environmental causes of trait differences. This technique-Mendelian randomization-offers some solutions to traditional epidemiological challenges, although it is limited to the study of environments with known genetic influences.
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Registered trials
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