There's a lot of good philosophy of (social) science thinking in this piece by #KevinMunger https://crookedtimber.org/2024/07/03/does-social-media-cause-anything/
Text: “Evidence-based policymaking” at the scale of responding to social media is simply the fantasy of policy without politics — in the cybernetic terminology of Dan Davies’ fantastic recent book about Stafford Beer, it is an “accountability sink.” Technocratic politicians love it: they don’t have to be leaders, merely followers of the evidence—if things turn out poorly, well, that’s just how science works, it never claims to be perfect, merely self-correcting. It certainly wasn’t my fault—what do you want me to do, ignore the evidence?