Quote of the day: choice/choice architecture

I am reading City Cycling, the new book on transportational cycling edited by Professor John Pucher of Rutgers and Professor Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech Alexandria.  So far (I've read 7 chapters), my favorite chapters are "Bicycle Infrastructure for Mass Cycling" and "Cycling Safety."

The chapter on "Cycling Safety," in discussing the difficulties of identifying etiology through observational studies quotes from an article (surprisingly about housing tenure) by Karen Westmont (Urban Affairs Review, 39:4: 522; 2004) where she wrote about selection bias and:

muddling characteristics of the chooser with the benefits of the choice.

This is a real problem when analyzing the impact of sustainable transportation modes, mixed use development, school choice, charter schools, and urban education reform, and other "controversial" initiatives.