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RE: The Study of Human Behavior: Causation and correlation in the social sciences
If a science dealing in human behavior does not deal in what determines human behavior, then I don't know in what sense it could be called a science.
Something being scientific simply means that it follows the scientific method of observation-->hypothesis-->test-->refine. Science tends to not prove many things but rather determines the most likely cause. Natural sciences can get rather close to causal relationships because many things are the same across the board, such as how an acidic hydrogen reacts in water. But humans are not the same across the board, thus correlation is the only thing that can be determined.
I agree, but the idea of correlation itself relies on the idea of a cause of some sort. Even if two clocks are synchronized and so always tell the same time without any causal relation between them, still the hand that synchronized them is the cause of their telling the same time. As science advances, we'll figure out what causes the differences among those individuals and then we'll be talking about causes.
You are correct in that correlation implies that there is a cause. But as I stated previously, human behavior is too varied to map a cause, only causation can be established.