Statistics are descriptive, not predictive--period.

I'm continually surprised at how many people either don't know, or don't internalize, that. Look at how often "risk factors"--which are a descriptive concept--are converted to advice--which is predictive.

Doing so in the absence of a causal hypothesis is a basic violation of "correlation does not equal causation."

If you want to construct a scientific theory you must be able to articulate some predictive tests, and that means you must hypothesize a causal mechanism.