[suifbwish]

Oh absolutely. I often read scientific journal articles which make suggestions of direct relations between different factors when it’s very likely they are correlational.

Example: being overweight increases risk of heart disease.

Alternate Possibility: being inactive/not exercising increases risk of heart disease and being overweight tends to co-occur with not exercising.

In the above example it’s possible that an inactive person who is not overweight has similar liklihood of heart disease.