Title: rules of practical causal inference
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - rules of practical causal inference
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.15006
Status: current

Definition
Fox’s rules of practical causal inference that are used in ecotoxicology (environmental epidemiology) to infer causality for toxicant exposure/effect scenarios.

Note
The rules apply the following criteria for objectively evaluating the relationship between a suspect cause and a chronic effect: (1) probability, (2) time order, (3) strength of association, (4) specificity, (5) consistency on replication, (6) predictive performance, and (7) coherence.

Source
- PAC, 2009, 81, 829. 'Glossary of terms used in ecotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2009)' on page 941 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-08-07-09)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15006/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15006/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/15006/xml

Citation: Citation: 'rules of practical causal inference' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.15006
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Accessed: 2026-04-19T01:31:08+00:00