IJE Advance Access originally published online on December 3, 2008
International Journal of Epidemiology 2009 38(1):3-6; doi:10.1093/ije/dyn253
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.
Editorial |
Epidemiological methods to tackle causal questions
MRC SGDP Centre, PO 80, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London, SE5 8AF, UK. E-mail: Camilla.azis@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Keywords Confounders, Growth Curves, Propensity Scores, Direct Acyclic Graphs, Natural Experiments, Experimental Medicine
Accepted 4 September 2008
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
It is a dull day when there is not at least one media report of a claim that research has identified some new environmental cause of disease. Such claimed causes concern a wide range of supposed hazards including medical interventions such as the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, the thimerasol (mercury) preservative in other vaccines, dietary factors of many different kinds (coffee, alcohol, food additives, etc.), prenatal stresses or the intra-uterine exposure to the effects of maternal smoking or ingestion of alcohol, use of mobile phones, and living near radiation sources—to mention just a few examples. It is problematic, however, that many of these claims are not confirmed by other research and some are even reversed. Unsurprisingly both professionals and the lay public have developed a scepticism about claims on environmental causes of disease. Because much of the evidence derives from epidemiological studies of one kind or another, epidemiological science itself has
Statistical innovations
Natural experiments
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