Loneliness may warp our genes, and our immune systems
npr.org
npr.org
They forgot that immune activity and gene expression are reported to be seasonal[1]. They should control for week of year that data was collected. If, for example, people who come by in the winter months are scored as "lonely" more often, this would correlate with expression levels of various genes even if the two are largely unrelated.
> What Canli finds really interesting about Cole's results is that people who felt lonely one year had increased gene activity around inflammation and norepinephrine later on. And people who had increased inflammation felt lonelier the next year. "It's a two-way street," he said. "Loneliness predicted biological changes, and biological changes predicted changes in loneliness."
Canli as quoted clearly does understand the difference, because he states that one predicts the other, which is distinguishing it from causation. But the article as written implies causation without any justification for this additional leap.