#EpiSky ? I love this question. Beautiful studies in epi? What even makes a beautiful study in epi? Exceptional, unexpected data? Clean identification? Rich theoretical relevance? Or just straight up health impact? - ThreadSky

mariaglymour.bsky.social • 68 days ago

#EpiSky ? I love this question. Beautiful studies in epi? What even makes a beautiful study in epi? Exceptional, unexpected data? Clean identification? Rich theoretical relevance? Or just straight up health impact?

Reposted from Manjari Narayan | @Neurostats

🧪 In your field, tell me about an experiment or empirical paper broadly construed you find beautiful!

Inspired by a paper from the #PhilSci feed. #neuroskyence #dataskyence #MLSky #StatSky 🧬💻

Comments

gsociology.bsky.social•67 days ago

A beautiful paper in epi, or in any field, is one that contributes to our health and well being. 😊

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

For me, a beautiful empirical #EpiSky study: 1) addresses an important Epi Q (a little subjective) 2) about which there is reasonable doubt & 3) provides an answer so definitive (eg, clean identification, eliminates other explanations) that it clears reasonable doubt and shifts the paradigm. 🧵1/x

neurostats.org•68 days ago

This type of beautiful experiment is definitely one Ivanova talks about!

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

A few of my examples: the retrospective cohort study of Epstein-Barr virus infection and later risk of MS (multiple sclerosis) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=eb+virus+military+ms&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1735332621679&u=%23p%3DHtXBl7LO1scJ
2/x

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

Others will disagree, but the CVD results from the Women’s Health Initiative RCT. A different design would’ve answered more relevant clinical questions, but this study upended the received wisdom that hormonal supplementation of older women was an unadulterated panacea. JAMA 2002

3/x

neurostats.org•68 days ago

📌 It is a bit interesting to see that many women's health papers on HRT going back to emphasizing positives. I think some might be re-making old mistakes. Any recent work addressing this?

whitneyepi.bsky.social•56 days ago

@neurostats.org This podcast episode (part of a series) is excellent primer on history of science and usage of HRT in US over past 100 years, including context of WHI study. https://pca.st/episode/813eefde-bcae-4a2b-b60d-4a55512d8d0f

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

Yes. After the WHI, I think many doctors withheld menopausal hormone therapy from people where the risk-benefit was good (eg, peri- and early menopausal symptomatic folks). Maybe pendulum swinging back too far again. But could just be my social media feed. No specific papers come to mind.

mariaglymour.bsky.social•68 days ago

This issue of revisiting menopausal hormone therapy was just discussed in the Free Associations podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-150-menopausal-hormone-replacement-therapy/id1281113532?i=1000681429303
@mattpfox.bsky.social

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

The Oregon Health Study (Randomized design leveraging staggered rollout of #ACA Medicaid expansion in Oregon) Before this study, the serious Republican talking point was that Medicaid would make life worse for uninsured people bc charity care is so generous. 4/x
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23635051/

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

And one of my all-time FAVORITE papers! An empirical paper that also provides gorgeous evidence for an important #EpiSky theory, Fundamental Causes. I really do find this paper beautiful (Parisa Tehranifar, et al 2009) 5/x https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19789367/

whitneyepi.bsky.social•67 days ago

I thought of more!

In late 1900s, studies of racial differences (generations of Japanese immigrants vs. White multi-generational US residents on US West Coast) in getting breast cancer

Was the dif genetics or environment?
Br Cancer tracked w generations in US, NOT Japanese vs European DNA
6/x

jlynch13.bsky.social•68 days ago

I don’t get to teach epi bc I’m a political scientist, but I teach this paper and for the students who get it, it’s mind-blowing.

eyesup00.bsky.social•68 days ago

I thought that many now are disregarding this study?

whitneyepi.bsky.social•56 days ago

This is a really good podcast ep from two gynecologists on the history of HRT, what the WHI study didn’t and didn’t find, etc. clear and thorough https://pca.st/episode/813eefde-bcae-4a2b-b60d-4a55512d8d0f

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

1/2 The RCT answered what it was designed to answer. But, yes, 20+ years later, the meaning of the results remains controversial. It’s not that the study was badly done. Instead I’d say, 1) results were wrongly interpreted in many clinical scenarios, partially bc 2) RCT answered an imp but narrow Q…

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

2/2 When the results to that narrow Q were SOOOO different than what had been thought, MD community freaked out and stopped prescribing for more common scenarios too. I don’t blame the study for that, but I do fault funding infrastructure that left a vacuum re: other clinical scenarios

zetkin.bsky.social•68 days ago

Debbie's colleague @mendel_random used to say that seeing if a drug for some disease or other makes people less likely to have car accidents ( HRT did as I remember)

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

A negative control study, I think. They are very elegant but can be complex to find a good (methodically) test case. Car accidents can be good for some drugs but not all.

srijon77.bsky.social•68 days ago

I love coming back to Steve Wing’s “Whose Epidemiology, whose health?” for its rich theoretical relevance and clarity!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9595342/

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

❤️❤️❤️

anecdatally.bsky.social•68 days ago

I worry this will get my epi card revoked, but I love this paper (even though the authors are, I think, health economists): https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-abstract/38/5/1224/666020?redirectedFrom=fulltext. Just a really elegant use of administrative data.

neurostats.org•68 days ago

📌

mariaglymour.bsky.social•68 days ago

Love this. They are sociologists. Bearman co-directed my post doc program - our 1st seminar we discussed "when do you know you are done with a research question?" Bearman's answer was (I'm paraphrasing 20 years later): "when the answer is beautiful." That may be the soc vs epi distinction!

anecdatally.bsky.social•68 days ago

"When the answer is beautiful" is much better than my current approach, which is roughly "when I can't stand to look think about it any more" 😅

swissepi.bsky.social•60 days ago

#EpiSky This one would be in the category "rich theoretical relevance", offering a bright view💡 on adjustment and maladjustment https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-law-and-medicine/article/abs/statistics-adjusted-statistics-and-maladjusted-statistics/EF5F786854424CF17AAC4B8D1352A40A# #PopHealthLab @societyforepi.bsky.social

ikashnitsky.phd•68 days ago

Oh! I can share a very non-canonical one yet definitely one of the most impressive studies in #epi & #demography of the recent years. Incidentally, it was written by two science journalists, one with a biology background, another with ML/DS background. Curious? I'll find out in a moment 🙃

ikashnitsky.phd•68 days ago

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/07/10/bring-out-your-dead

Here you have a non-trivial application of data that nobody knew was available to scrape and use — Probate Registry

Using excess deaths methodology, exactly the one that was sharpened during c19 years, they estimated the mass of extra young male morality in Russia 🎯

ikashnitsky.phd•68 days ago

I believe the identity of the main author — Alexander Ershov — is no longer secret since he (w/ academic coauthors @hippopedoid.bsky.social @alexeyb.bsky.social @tmikhail.bsky.social + A Raksha) wrapped the estimate into an academic paper 📜

https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xcrme

ikashnitsky.phd•67 days ago

Turns out Alex has a bsky account but hasn't started really using yet. Welcome 🙌

@alex-ershov.bsky.social

zetkin.bsky.social•68 days ago

"Those confounded vitamins" by Debbie Lawlor et al

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

Nice choice! Here’s a link for interested https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)16260-0/abstract

neurostats.org•68 days ago

📌

zetkin.bsky.social•68 days ago

Glad you like it too.

federicoandrade.bsky.social•68 days ago

I vote for this classic: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-abstract/30/3/427/736897?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Elegant, clear, simple. One of those I enjoy going back to 😊

neurostats.org•68 days ago

📌

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

It’s such a good paper. The two-part construction is weird, but the ideas are so beautiful. If the original prompt hadn’t said experimental or empirical, G. Rose would have been top of my list. Now seeing the “broadly construed,” I agree it’s a great one to include here!

cpemmerson.bsky.social•68 days ago

Great choice I try and reread every year.

One definition of a classic epi paper for me is that it is immediately clear how it's relevant to public health in practice, but also repays repeated deep reading

cpemmerson.bsky.social•68 days ago

When they shut down the physical library where I worked, I nabbed the Rose's book length version, which still repays reading...

cpemmerson.bsky.social•68 days ago

... and somehow only this year found Keyes and Galea, which also brilliantly takes on the concept of shifting the curve and brings in causal architecture

cpemmerson.bsky.social•68 days ago

.... Although came to it via this paper which I have also read many many times

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5130600/

neurostats.org•68 days ago

📌

whitneyepi.bsky.social•68 days ago

📌

cpemmerson.bsky.social•68 days ago

(apols for crashing a Serious Epi Thread, loving seeing what people whose books and papers have influenced me are sharing - god bless bsky - these are papers that help me, a generalist PH practitioner, keep that practice connected to theory and wider, more ambitious, perspectives)

tylergjamesphd.bsky.social•68 days ago

📌

addiehd.bsky.social•68 days ago

Doll and Hill paper! https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/8279644/mod_resource/content/1/LEITURA%20COMPLEMENTAR_casocontrole_Doll%20Hill%201952.pdf

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply