Sir Austin Bradford Hill proposed nine criteria to help determine if an observed association is causal. These criteria are: Temporality, Strength, Consistency, Specificity, Dose-response relationship, Plausibility, Coherence, Experiment, and Analogy. Statistical significance, while important for determining if an observed association is likely due to chance, is not one of Hill's original criteria for causality. An association can be statistically significant but not causal, or it can be causal but not statistically significant (e.g., due to small sample size). Hill's criteria focus on the nature of the relationship itself, beyond mere statistical probability.
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