Why Your Best Predictive Model Gives the Wrong Treatment Effect
Data Science Why Your Best Predictive Model Gives the Wrong Treatment Effect Why prediction-driven variable selection misses confounders and how Bayesian Adjustment for Confounding attempts to fix it. Ananya Bhattacharyya Jul 29, 2026 15 min read Share Image generated by AI A question that sounds easy but isn’t Model selection often chases the wrong goal. Let’s say we want to estimate the effect of an exposure on an outcome, e.g., air pollution on hospital admissions or a drug versus time to recovery.
- ▪Data Science Why Your Best Predictive Model Gives the Wrong Treatment Effect Why prediction-driven variable selection misses confounders and how Bayesian Adjustment for Confounding attempts to fix it.
- ▪Ananya Bhattacharyya Jul 29, 2026 15 min read Share Image generated by AI A question that sounds easy but isn’t Model selection often chases the wrong goal.
- ▪Let’s say we want to estimate the effect of an exposure on an outcome, e.g., air pollution on hospital admissions or a drug versus time to recovery.
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| Original publisher | Towards Data Science |
| Canonical URL | https://towardsdatascience.com/why-your-best-predictive-model-gives-the-wrong-treatment-effect/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-29T15:03:14.981Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-29T15:03:14.981Z |
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Data Science Why Your Best Predictive Model Gives the Wrong Treatment Effect Why prediction-driven variable selection misses confounders and how Bayesian Adjustment for Confounding attempts to fix it. Ananya Bhattacharyya Jul 29, 2026 15 min read Share Image generated by AI A question that sounds easy but isn’t Model selection often chases the wrong goal. Let’s say we want to estimate the effect of an exposure on an outcome, e.g., air pollution on hospital admissions or a drug versus time to recovery. We have observational data, one exposure variable, and a pile of candidate covariates. Some are confounders. Some are noise. Now the biggest question is — which ones go in the model? The usual reflex hands the choice to a selection rule.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Towards Data Science.
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