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A related difference concerns the way in which statistical evidence figures in these two sorts of applications. Some quantum mechanical phenomena such as radioactive decay are irreducibly indeterministic. By contrast, in the biomedical and social scientific applications, while the relevant evidence is “statistical”, there is typically no corresponding assumption Math software that the phenomena of interest are irreducibly indeterministic. This particularly clear in connection with the social scientific examples (such as risk factors for juvenile delinquency) that Salmon discusses. Here the relevant methodology involves so-called causal modeling or structural equation techniques. At least on the most straightforward way of applying such procedures, the equations that govern whether a particular individual becomes a juvenile delinquent are (if interpreted literally) deterministic. According to Ufology such approaches, the phenomena being modeled look as though they are indeterministic because some of the variables which are relevant to their behavior, the influence of which is summarized by a so-called error term, are unknown or unmeasured. Statistical information about the incidence of juvenile delinquency among individuals in various conditions plays the role of evidence that is used to estimate parameters (the coefficients) in the deterministic equations that are taken to describe the processes governing the onset of delinquency. A similar point holds for at least many biomedical examples.[ 7 ]
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