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5 tweets,
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1/5 The Backdoors, Frontdoors, IVs & Duplexes of the world are just specific identification (ID) strategies that should come later, in other words, the premise of the discussion seems ‘odd’ to me. First, one should model the phenomenon under investigation using its best science,
2/5 regardless of what her/his favorite ID strategies are. After having a model of reality (e.g., a causal DAG), she/he can go on and discuss what ID strategy is more suitable for answering the specific query. As I said, I find it a bit curious that CS folks &
3/5 methodologists are clearly against starting w/ any procedure (e.g., backdoor, g-computation), while some empirical scientists seem to be thinking first about these procedures, conflating ID strategy & model construction. In summary: model reality first, ID & estimation later.
4/5 Examples of discussions following this format are this very tweet conversation & also this long thread about astronomers unable to judge minimal variations of the IV settings here: bit.ly/2XhodUN .
5/5 There are more powerful ID strategies for linear causal systems going much beyond simple IVs (where exogeneity/exclusion need to hold), and therefore, should be more realistic, e.g., bit.ly/2XysDuE , bit.ly/2YEUKVN , bit.ly/2RZetNi . @analisereal
