Concept · Cognitive Bias: Causal and statistical fallacies
Ignoring a common cause
Origin: Modern statistical reasoning
Biological Parallel
When bark beetles infest drought-stressed forests, tree mortality soars. The naive correlation: beetles *cause* tree death. The hidden common cause: water stress weakens both tree defenses and triggers beetle outbreaks. Climate is the confounding variable. Ecosystems are networks of shared causation—attributing outcomes to the most visible actor ignores the environmental scaffolding that enables every interaction.