Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42308034›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026

Reclassification and weighting of multiple causes of death: US death certificates 2003-2023.

Michael Levitt, Ben Marten, Gal Oren, John P A Ioannidis

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Reclassification and weighting of multiple causes of death: US death certificates 2003-2023.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Michael LevittDepartment of Structural Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305.ORCID 0000-0002-8414-7397
Ben MartenMortality Watch, St. Petersburg, FL 33711.
Gal OrenDepartment of Structural Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305.
John P A IoannidisMeta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305.ORCID 0000-0003-3118-6859

Funding

Emergent Properties of Complex Systems: From Atoms to Macromolecules; from Humans to SocietiesR35GM122543 · NIGMS · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · PI MICHAEL LEVITT · 2017 to 2026
$5.1M
Data science tools to identify robust exposure-phenotype associations for precision medicineR01ES032470 · NIEHS · HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL · PI MANRAI, ARJUN KUMAR, PATEL, CHIRAG J. · 2021 to 2025
$3.5M
DOD | USN | Office of Naval Research (ONR) N000142412687HHS | NIH | National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (DEHS) R01ES032470NIEHS NIH HHS R01 ES032470NIGMS NIH HHS R35 GM122543
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Death certificates record causes of death as reported by certifiers (Entity Axis) and as standardized by mortality coding rules (Record Axis). Conventional statistics reduce these to a single underlying cause, ignoring other contributing conditions; weighting schemes can instead distribute the burden across all listed causes. We evaluated reclassification from Entity to Record axis and weighting across all 56,986,831 US death certificates from 2003 to 2023, mapping International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 codes to 14 broad disease categories and testing three weighting schemes: W1 (50% to the underlying cause, 50% shared equally among contributing causes), W2 (equal weighting across all causes), and W2A (equal weighting at the ICD-10 code level). Entity and Record Axes agreed on underlying cause in 48,313,403 deaths (84.8%) by broad category and 39,260,709 deaths (68.9%) by ICD-10 code (

Indexed as

Death CertificatesCause of DeathCOVID-19HumansInternational Classification of DiseasesUnited Statescause of deathCOVID-19death certificatemortalityvital statistics

Identifiers

PMID42308034
PMCPMC13291531

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

None linked

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.