通过数据删减检测因果推断的脆弱性,发现关键敏感数据片段。
Stress-Testing Causal Claims via Cardinality Repairs
- 基于数据条目或模式删除,识别影响因果结论的小规模数据集。
- 在四个真实数据集上验证,少量数据移除即可显著改变因果估计。
- 适合关注因果推断可靠性、数据质量风险的研究者与决策者。
基于观测数据的因果分析支撑医疗、公共政策和经济等领域的重大决策,但其结论可能极为脆弱:微小的数据错误——如重复记录或录入错误——可能导致因果关系发生剧烈变化。本文提出SubCure框架,通过基数修复实现因果结论的鲁棒性审计。给定一个因果查询和目标效应范围,SubCure识别出需删除的少量元组或子群体,使其估计值落入指定范围。该过程不仅量化因果结论对数据扰动的敏感性,还定位驱动结论的具体数据区域。我们在元组级与模式级删除设定下形式化该问题,并证明二者均为NP完全。为应对大规模数据,我们引入机器遗忘技术,实现无需从头训练的因果估计增量更新。在四个涵盖不同应用领域的现实数据集上评估显示,SubCure能揭示紧凑且高影响力的子集,其移除可显著改变因果结论,暴露出传统方法忽略的脆弱性。结果表明,基数修复是一种强大且通用的工具,可用于压力测试因果分析,防范由常见数据缺陷引发的误导性结论。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Causal analyses derived from observational data underpin high-stakes decisions in domains such as healthcare, public policy, and economics. Yet such conclusions can be surprisingly fragile: even minor data errors - duplicate records, or entry mistakes - may drastically alter causal relationships. This raises a fundamental question: how robust is a causal claim to small, targeted modifications in the data? Addressing this question is essential for ensuring the reliability, interpretability, and reproducibility of empirical findings. We introduce SubCure, a framework for robustness auditing via cardinality repairs. Given a causal query and a user-specified target range for the estimated effect, SubCure identifies a small set of tuples or subpopulations whose removal shifts the estimate into the desired range. This process not only quantifies the sensitivity of causal conclusions but also pinpoints the specific regions of the data that drive those conclusions. We formalize this problem under both tuple- and pattern-level deletion settings and show both are NP-complete. To scale to large datasets, we develop efficient algorithms that incorporate machine unlearning techniques to incrementally update causal estimates without retraining from scratch. We evaluate SubCure across four real-world datasets covering diverse application domains. In each case, it uncovers compact, high-impact subsets whose removal significantly shifts the causal conclusions, revealing vulnerabilities that traditional methods fail to detect. Our results demonstrate that cardinality repair is a powerful and general-purpose tool for stress-testing causal analyses and guarding against misleading claims rooted in ordinary data imperfections.
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