Comment by arjie
11 hours ago
I read the source
> Available evidence rules out natural phenomena as likely drivers, suggesting a large-scale pollution event and its associated mitigation measures most likely precipitated the declines...That the declines began shortly after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill points to that event as the most parsimonious explanation. These findings suggest that despite its immense size the deep-pelagic biome is vulnerable to human-induced disturbance and possesses limited resilience to facilitate recovery.
This means "the oil spill caused the declines". That is what this means in English.
It does, but it doesn't say it in plain English. It's the same with extreme weather events. Scientists never just plainly say that they were caused by global warming, because you obviously can't prove with absolute certainty that the same thing wouldn't have happened without global warming.
The problem is that bad-faith actors weaponize this language to fight against science, facts, and reality. At some point, the evidence is strong enough that it's fine to just plainly say "x caused y" even if there is a 0.0000000000001% probability that by random chance, y would have happened regardless.