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IJE Advance Access originally published online on September 22, 2009
International Journal of Epidemiology 2009 38(5):1193-1196; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp292
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2009; all rights reserved.

Commentary: ‘Smoking and lung cancer’—the embryogenesis of modern epidemiology

Jan P Vandenbroucke

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands. Email: j.p.vandenbroucke@lumc.nl

Accepted 30 July 2009

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

The reading of paper by Cornfield et al.1 on ‘Smoking and Lung Cancer’ is a real treat to anyone who is interested in the roots of causal reasoning in today's epidemiology. It is surprising how much was already known: basic notions about confounding, selection and other biases, genetic influences, misclassification, the nature of observational evidence and the threshold for action when evidence is not perfect. All these ideas are present in the paper—not with their present-day names, but with a clear exposé about the concepts in crisp language, as they pertained to the 1950s debate on smoking and lung cancer. These ideas still figure as essential topics for discussion in today's textbooks. A reading of the paper makes clear how much modern epidemiology was formed by the discussions about smoking and lung cancer. In this commentary, I have tried to elucidate key aspects of the paper, to indicate how . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   A sensitivity analysis that still reverberates
 

   Real-life causal reasoning
 

   ‘Doubt is our product’
 

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Related articles in Int. J. Epidemiol.:

Commentary: Smoking and lung cancer: reflections on a pioneering paper
David R Cox
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1192-1193. [Extract] [Full Text]  

Commentary: Cornfield on cigarette smoking and lung cancer and how to assess causality
Marcel Zwahlen
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1197-1198. [Extract] [Full Text]  



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G. Davey Smith
Smoking and lung cancer: causality, Cornfield and an early observational meta-analysis
Int. J. Epidemiol., October 1, 2009; 38(5): 1169 - 1171.
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