 Thus, while in transforming data as collected into something useful for learning about phenomena, scientists often account for features of the data such as different types of noise contributions, and sometimes even explain the odd outlying data point or artifact, they simply do not explain every individual teensy tiny causal contribution to the exact character of a data set or datum in full detail. This is because scientists can neither discover such causal minutia nor would their invocation be necessary for typical research questions. The fact that it may sometimes be important for scientists to provide detailed explanations of data, and not just claims about phenomena inferred from data, should not be confused with the dubious claim that scientists could ‘in principle’ detail every causal quirk that contributed to some data (Woodward 2010; 2011).