If you're not convinced that the reporters are trying to suggest causation with the word "predicts", try swapping the two terms. Would they write a headline, "Longer life predicts creativity"?
If the statistics show that creative people are correlated with longer life, but that longer life is only correlated with creativity if factors X, Y, Z are also present (but not necessarily just X, Y, Z without creativity), then it would be correct to say "creativity predicts longer life" but not "longer life predicts creativity"; while not implying any causation.
Also it could be that some long living people are creative and all creative people are long living; while creative still not being a cause of the longer life. (let's say all creative people eat peanut butter sandwiches, and it was infact the peanut butter that caused a longer life.)
"The weatherman predicts the weather". Are you saying in this sentence, causation is implicitly referenced?
It doesn't work the other way because of temporal constraints, not causality. A person's creativity happens before their longevity is determined. Similarly, you wouldn't write "election predicts poll results."
That said, if I was looking at records of the deceased and first discovered a person's age at time of death, then I could use the correlation to predict that I am likely to further find that they were creative.
Comments
"is correlated with".
If you're not convinced that the reporters are trying to suggest causation with the word "predicts", try swapping the two terms. Would they write a headline, "Longer life predicts creativity"?
If the statistics show that creative people are correlated with longer life, but that longer life is only correlated with creativity if factors X, Y, Z are also present (but not necessarily just X, Y, Z without creativity), then it would be correct to say "creativity predicts longer life" but not "longer life predicts creativity"; while not implying any causation.
Also it could be that some long living people are creative and all creative people are long living; while creative still not being a cause of the longer life. (let's say all creative people eat peanut butter sandwiches, and it was infact the peanut butter that caused a longer life.)
"The weatherman predicts the weather". Are you saying in this sentence, causation is implicitly referenced?
...
It doesn't work the other way because of temporal constraints, not causality. A person's creativity happens before their longevity is determined. Similarly, you wouldn't write "election predicts poll results."
That said, if I was looking at records of the deceased and first discovered a person's age at time of death, then I could use the correlation to predict that I am likely to further find that they were creative.