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causal explanations are oversimplifications

our theories about a particular cause and effect are inherently perceptual, infected by all the sensory cheats of vision

searching for correlations is a terrible way of dealing with the primary subject of much modern research: those complex networks at the centre of life

scientists have mostly managed to work around this mismatch as they've continued to discover new cause-and-effect relationships at a blistering pace. This success is largely a tribute to the power of statistical correlation, which has allowed researchers to pirouette around the problem of causation. Though scientists constantly remind themselves that mere correlation is not causation, if a correlation is clear and consistent, then they typically assume a cause has been found -- that there really is some invisible association between the measurements.

the reliance on correlations has entered an age of diminishing returns

all of the easy causes have been found, which means that scientists are now forced to search for ever-subtler correlations, mining that mountain of facts for the tiniest of associations

a cause is not a fact -- it's a fiction that helps us make sense of facts

a cause is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can see will always be bracketed by what we cannot

the average cost per approved molecule will top $3.8 billion (£2.46 million) by 2015. What's worse, even these "successful" compounds don't seem to be worth the investment.

We assume that more information will make it easier to find the cause

Our habits of visual conclusion-jumping take over. All those extra details end up confusing us; the more we know, the less we seem to understand.

a small subset of "nonspinal factors", such as depression and smoking, were most closely associated with episodes of pain

Given the increasing difficulty of identifying and treating the causes of illness, it's not surprising that some companies have responded by abandoning research.

We live in a world in which everything is knotted together, an impregnable tangle of causes and effects. Even when a system is dissected into its basic parts, those parts are still influenced by a whirligig of forces we can't understand or haven't considered or don't think matter.

Although our reliance on statistical correlations has strict constraints -- which limit modern research -- those correlations have managed to identify many essential risk factors, such as smoking and poor diet.

the R&D to discover a promising new compound now costs about 100 times more (inflation-adjusted) than it did in 1950. It also takes nearly three times as long.

even when we know everything about everything, we'll still be telling stories about why it happened