path analysis “doesn’t lend itself to ‘canned’ programs. The user has to have a hypothesis and must devise an appropriate diagram of multiple causal sequences.” Indeed, Crow put his finger on an essential point: path analysis requires scientific thinking, as does every exercise in causal inference. Statistics, as frequently practiced, discourages it and encourages “canned” procedures instead. Scientists will always prefer routine calculations on data to methods that challenge their scientific knowledge.
