ArticleEuropean journal of epidemiology2015
The current deconstruction of paradoxes: one sign of the ongoing methodological "revolution".
Article in European journal of epidemiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
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- BMI and Mortality: The Diabetes-Obesity Paradox Examined in a Large US Cohort.Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity : targets and therapy · 2025Article
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- Perspectives on the Future of Epidemiology: A Framework for Training.American journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Causal Inference in Environmental Epidemiology: Old and New Approaches.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2019Article
- The influence of immigrant generation on obesity among Asian Americans in California from 2013 to 2014.PloS one · 2019Article
- Epidemiology at a time for unity.International journal of epidemiology · 2018Article
- 'The obesity paradox': a reconsideration of obesity and the risk of preterm birth.Journal of perinatology : official journal of the California Perinatal Association · 2017Article
- Cancer subtypes in aetiological research.European journal of epidemiology · 2017Article
- Job Strain and Casual Blood Pressure Distribution: Looking beyond the Adjusted Mean and Taking Gender, Age, and Use of Antihypertensives into Account. Results from ELSA-Brasil.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2017Article
- For and Against Methodologies: Some Perspectives on Recent Causal and Statistical Inference Debates.European journal of epidemiology · 2017Article
- Caution: work in progress : While the methodological "revolution" deserves in-depth study, clinical researchers and senior epidemiologists should not be disenfranchised.European journal of epidemiology · 2016Article
- Communicating causality.European journal of epidemiology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The current deconstruction of paradoxes is one among several signs that a profound renewal of methods for clinical and epidemiological research is taking place; perhaps for some basic life sciences as well. The new methodological approaches have already deconstructed and explained long puzzling apparent paradoxes, including the (non-existent) benefits of obesity in diabetics, or of smoking in low birth weight. Achievements of the new methods also comprise the elucidation of the causal structure of long-disputed and highly complex questions, as Berkson's bias and Simpson's paradox, and clarifying reasons for deep controversies, as those on estrogens and endometrial cancer, or on adverse effects of hormone replacement therapy. These are signs that the new methods can go deeper and beyond the methods in current use. A major example of a highly relevant idea is: when we condition on a common effect of a pair of variables, then a spurious association between such pair is likely. The implications of these ideas are potentially vast. A substantial number of apparent paradoxes may simply be the result of collider biases, a source of selection bias that is common not just in epidemiologic research, but in many types of research in the health, life, and social sciences. The new approaches develop a new framework of concepts and methods, as collider, instrumental variables, d-separation, backdoor path and, notably, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). The current theoretical and methodological renewal-or, perhaps, "revolution"-may be changing deeply how clinical and epidemiological research is conceived and performed, how we assess the validity and relevance of findings, and how causal inferences are made. Clinical and basic researchers, among others, should get acquainted with DAGs and related concepts.
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