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IJE Advance Access originally published online on May 24, 2006
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(3):513-514; doi:10.1093/ije/dyl101
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2006; all rights reserved.

Editorial

Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler

Rodolfo Saracci

Division of Epidemiology, IFC-National Research Council, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: saracci@hotmail.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Can complexity theory throw some different light on the aetiology of complex diseases,1 currently explored mostly by the probe of molecular genetics?2 Epidemiology, particularly as developing in the last half a century, has been dealing with disease aetiology—‘a priori’ not known whether simple or complex—with quite simple tools from an epistemological viewpoint. Observational epidemiology studies of aetiological factors are conceived, and whenever feasible carried out, as association studies at the individual level. An association and its nature, causal or non-causal, is researched within the same individuals of one or more exposures of interest with an outcome adjusting for other exposures, which may distort (confound) the association. This basic and invariant study concept has been developed into a vast and sound array of methods of study design and statistical analysis aimed at (i) making it applicable within a variety of purely observational circumstances and (ii) approaching the same study . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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