It might even lead to worse outcomes in the current case, if it turns out that the reason Water signs do better with treatment A in this data set is that the assignment of subjects to treatments in the study was in some way related to their date of birth.
If I have good reasons to believe that factor X doesn’t cause events of class Y, and I have data that seems to demonstrate that factor X is causing an event of class Y in one particular case, and I don’t have the time to explore that data further, I ought to take seriously the theory that the causation is not what it seems to be.
It might even lead to worse outcomes in the current case, if it turns out that the reason Water signs do better with treatment A in this data set is that the assignment of subjects to treatments in the study was in some way related to their date of birth.
If I have good reasons to believe that factor X doesn’t cause events of class Y, and I have data that seems to demonstrate that factor X is causing an event of class Y in one particular case, and I don’t have the time to explore that data further, I ought to take seriously the theory that the causation is not what it seems to be.