Values, errors, and precautions.
In the environmental health literature, errors in interpreting studies or data are not infrequent. Many are of the Type II variety. Common solecisms of this type are: treating the criterion of p < 0.05 as a sacrament; demanding complete confounder control; arguing for the existence of phantom confounders; arguing that the effect size is trivial; building nonveridical models; arguing for no effect from inadequate sample size; demanding causal proof; arguing that causality is reversed; conducting a ballot of published studies. These are examined in this paper.
Needleman
Herbert L
HL
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. hlnlead@pitt.edu
D004782:Environmental Health; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012308:Risk Management; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014481:United States