ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2018
On the Nature of Evidence and 'Proving' Causality: Smoking and Lung Cancer vs. Sun Exposure, Vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Towards primary prevention of multiple sclerosis.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2026Review
- Single-Inhaler Triple Therapy (SITT) for COPD: An Italian expert opinion paper on improving clinical outcomes and equity of therapeutic access.Multidisciplinary respiratory medicine · 2026Article
- MicroRNAs targeting TGF-β signaling exacerbate central nervous system autoimmunity by disrupting regulatory T cell development and function.European journal of immunology · 2024Article
- Article
- Lung Cancer Prevalence in Virginia: A Spatial Zipcode-Level Analysis via INLA.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2024Article
- Gas cooking and respiratory outcomes in children: A systematic review.Global epidemiology · 2023Review
- The effects of exposure to solar radiation on human health.Photochemical & photobiological sciences : Official journal of the European Photochemistry Association and the European Society for Photobiology · 2023Article
- The Dietary Guidelines Are Correct: Saturated Fat Should Be Limited and Replaced with the Proposed Alternatives to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Article
- A Narrative Review of the Evidence for Variations in Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentration Thresholds for Optimal Health.Nutrients · 2022Review
- Systematic survey of the causal language use in systematic reviews of observational studies: a study protocol.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Vitamin D, Autoimmune Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis.Calcified tissue international · 2020Review
- Flammer syndrome in multiple sclerosis: diagnostics, prediction, and personalization of treatments.The EPMA journal · 2019Article
- Environmental and genetic risk factors for MS: an integrated review.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
If environmental exposures are shown to cause an adverse health outcome, reducing exposure should reduce the disease risk. Links between exposures and outcomes are typically based on 'associations' derived from observational studies, and causality may not be clear. Randomized controlled trials to 'prove' causality are often not feasible or ethical. Here the history of evidence that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer-from observational studies-is compared to that of low sun exposure and/or low vitamin D status as causal risk factors for the autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis (MS). Evidence derives from
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.