Thank you for the logic lesson.
Correlation absolutely can imply causality when we're dealing with situations that are well understood. For instance, me drinking chinese grain alcohol correlates strongly with me getting massively wrecked and hitting on bar girls.
>Her shortness will have been due to other factors,
>such as perhaps a lack of protein when she was a
>child.
That's not an 'other factor' but precisely what I was getting at in the first place?
>Sounds like she has osteoporosis, something that
>affects people in all
>walks of life, not just agricultural workers.
More than one factor may have caused her deformity, but once again I'm going to go way out on a limb here and claim that decades of working bent over in a field contributed.
If proof is required that working in a stopped posture for long periods of time can contribute to permanent spinal injury they can take a look at this long, boring epidemiological study of back injuries and accelerated aging of the spine in california farm workers who used short-handled hoes at work. Text search for "musculoskeletal disorders of the back"
http://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/handweedingISOR.doc
Sheesh.
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