title: If it is published in the peer-reviewed literature, it must be true?
abstract: Epidemiological research correlating cancer rates in a population of patients with radiation doses from medical X-rays is fraught with confounding factors that obfuscate the likelihood that any positive relationship is causal. This is a review of four studies involving some of those confounding factors. Comparisons of findings with other studies not encumbered by similar confounding factors can enhance assertions of causation between medical X-rays and cancer rates. Even so, such assertions rest significantly on opinions of researchers regarding the degree of consistency between findings among various studies. The question as to what degree any findings truly represent cause and effect will likely still meet with controversy. The importance of these findings to medicine should therefore not lie in any controversy regarding causation, but in what the findings potentially mean with regard to benefit and risk for patients and the professional practice of medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging, The University of Texas - Houston Medical School, 6431 Fannin St, MSB 2.130B, Houston, TX, 77030, USA, Louis.K.Wagner@uth.tmc.edu.
authors.forename: Louis K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Wagner
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D015984:Causality; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D009381:Neoplasms, Radiation-Induced / Q000453:epidemiology*; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*