Comment: Will Competition-Winning Methods for Causal Inference Also Succeed in Practice?

Abstract

First, we would like to congratulate the authors for successfully hosting the causal inference data competition (referred to as Competition henceforth) and contributing a unique and thought-provoking article to the literature. The authors have provided a comprehensive and timely platform to evaluate the ever-growing number of methods used for covariate adjustment in observational studies. In our comment, we don’t generally question the results of the competition, but we do wish to emphasize several other key elements about the role statistics plays in causal inference and observational studies.