Category: Epidemiology

Statins – The Cochrane Review

A recent Cochrane review of the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs in primary prevention has sparked some controversy.  The controversy is not so much over what the data says, but in what conclusions to draw from the data. Statin drugs have been surrounded by controversy for a number of reasons. On the one hand they demonstrably lower cholesterol, and the evidence has...

/ January 26, 2011

Obesity Denial

It seems that for every established science there is an ideological group who is motivated to deny it. Denialism is a thriving pseudoscience and affects any issue with the slightest political or social implications. Sometimes, even easily verifiable facts can be denied, as people seem willing to make up their own facts as needed. Denialists have an easy job – to spread...

/ January 5, 2011

A Disconnect between cell phone fears and science

Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family by Devra Davis, PhD is touted as a book about the issue of cell phones and health. It is instead a tract that conspiracy theorists will love that sheds no objective light on the often confusing scientific data in this area....

/ December 31, 2010

CAM Use by Brain Tumor Patients

A recent article in the journal Neurology reports the results of an observational study regarding the use of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by patients with an incurable brain glioma. They found that 40% of patients sought some type of CAM treatment. These results are in line with prior surveys, but require closer inspection. The study defined CAM as: Complementary therapy...

/ December 29, 2010

Freeways, autism, and correlation versus causation

I have a love-hate relationship with epidemiology. On the one hand, I love how epidemiology can look for correlations in huge sample sizes, sample sizes far larger than any that we could ever have access to in clinical trials, randomized or other. I love the ability of epidemiology to generate hypotheses that can be tested in the laboratory and then later in...

/ December 20, 2010