Thinking Clearly about Association Studies (Risk Factors and Causal Salad included)

This sounds perfectly valid (if you can hold the claim of it being a good enough control arm). The intention of any such study would in “my” framework still be clearly causal and calling it association would in my understanding only muddy the water. Do you agree with the notion that there’s no association for its own sake and everything is either descriptive/predictive/causal?