[holub008]

Perhaps it's because I don't frequent the literature, but I interpret that as "T Gondii. may [provided by our level of statistical certainty in MANCOVA] produce changes". Otherwise, what's the point of performing a statistical analysis? Moreover what's the value of any assertion if it can be guarded by an unbounded-uncertainty keyword "may".

[ascar]

I think that's a classic case of reading between the lines and making implications where one shouldn't. If I'm using words that state uncertainty, it is because I am not certain, but only say it is a possibility. A research result that shows there is a correlation is already interesting without establishing or confirming causation. Their wording is exactly saying that. Without that paper we wouldn't even know there is a correlation!

How else would you like them to state that without being overly verbose?

[holub008]

> How else would you like them to state that without being overly verbose?

"Our results suggest that some sexually transmitted parasites, such as T. gondii, may be correlated with appearance and behavior of the human host."

I appreciate your viewpoint. I would counter it by saying that there are two sources of uncertainty here: choice of model & sampling variance. It's my opinion that in scientific writing, one should be precise with which source of uncertainty they are guarding. If I'm allowed to group these together, why can't I make a similar statement of causation of any old spurious correlation - when obviously my model is bad?

Considering this example again - isn't it arbitrary that the authors get to choose which hypothesis (among many, like attractive people being predisposed to own cats) they get to claim "may" be demonstrated?

Similar line of discussion: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/04/04/thinking-p...