TY - JOUR
KW - Epidemiology
KW - General Medicine
AU - Braithwaite RS
AU - Ban K(
AU - Stevens ER
AU - Caniglia EC
AB - Investigators performing epidemiological research frequently form hypotheses based on data availability. One might ask how it could be otherwise. After all, what is the point of forming hypotheses if they can’t be tested? But when questions are identified to suit available data rather than data being identified to suit important questions, commonalities in measured and unmeasured variables extend across multiple studies and lead to a confirmation bias. Expected relationships are confirmed, and unexpected relationships remain undiscovered, even when their unveiling would have important informational value. We argue that this confirmation bias results from a structural cause, in particular misalignment of epidemiological research priorities with the social utility of research.
BT - International Journal of Epidemiology
DO - 10.1093/ije/dyab091
LA - eng
N2 - Investigators performing epidemiological research frequently form hypotheses based on data availability. One might ask how it could be otherwise. After all, what is the point of forming hypotheses if they can’t be tested? But when questions are identified to suit available data rather than data being identified to suit important questions, commonalities in measured and unmeasured variables extend across multiple studies and lead to a confirmation bias. Expected relationships are confirmed, and unexpected relationships remain undiscovered, even when their unveiling would have important informational value. We argue that this confirmation bias results from a structural cause, in particular misalignment of epidemiological research priorities with the social utility of research.
PB - Oxford University Press (OUP)
PY - 2021
T2 - International Journal of Epidemiology
TI - Rounding up the usual suspects: confirmation bias in epidemiological research
UR - https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/ije/dyab091/37629897/dyab091.pdf&hl=en&sa=T&oi=ucasa&ct=ufr&ei=fgOZYK-9NMPtmQH3_qPYDg&scisig=AAGBfm2gsUZ_N55s3-gCCoJLquv01yDt-g
SN - 0300-5771, 1464-3685
ER -