Hill's Criteria for Causation
Updated 2026-08-15
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Hill's criteria, proposed by Austin Bradford Hill, are nine standards for judging whether a factor and a disease are causally related: strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient or dose-response, plausibility, coherence, experimental evidence, and analogy. As a checklist for testing causation they are the systematic tool for separating correlation from cause and avoiding attribution errors.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Run the list: after observing a statistical association, check each criterion in turn. - Weight the strong ones: temporality and dose-response carry the most evidence. - Conclude on the whole: treat the set as the case rather than any single line.
Anchor fast decisions
A correlation can arise from many sources, only one of which is causation, and each criterion tests a different rival explanation. Temporality rules out reverse causation and dose-response rules out coincidence, so the criteria are strongest in aggregate, where each removes a different alternative and what is left is much more likely to be causal.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteriaverified
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