A pooled analysis is a statistical technique for combining the results of multiple epidemiological studies. It is one of three types of literature reviews frequently used in epidemiology, along with meta-analysis and traditional narrative reviews. Pooled analyses may be either retrospective or prospective. [1] It is often used when the results of individual studies do not allow for a firm conclusion to be drawn. [2] Unlike meta-analyses, pooled analyses can only be conducted if the included studies used the same study design and statistical models, and if their respective populations were homogeneous. If individual-level data from the included studies is available, the result of a pooled analysis can be considered more reliable. [3]
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting measurements that are expected to have some degree of error. The aim then is to use approaches from statistics to derive a pooled estimate closest to the unknown common truth based on how this error is perceived. It is thus a basic methodology of Metascience. Meta-analytic results are considered the most trustworthy source of evidence by the evidence-based medicine literature.
In published academic research, publication bias occurs when the outcome of an experiment or research study biases the decision to publish or otherwise distribute it. Publishing only results that show a significant finding disturbs the balance of findings in favor of positive results. The study of publication bias is an important topic in metascience.
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, commonly called secondhand smoke (SHS) or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the active smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke diffuses into the surrounding atmosphere as an aerosol pollutant, which leads to its inhalation by nearby bystanders within the same environment. Exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke causes many of the same diseases caused by active tobacco smoking, although to a lower prevalence due to the reduced concentration of smoke that enters the airway. The health risks of secondhand smoke are a matter of scientific consensus, and have been a major motivation for smoke-free laws in workplaces and indoor venues, including restaurants, bars and night clubs, as well as some open public spaces.
The National Survey of Health & Development is a Medical Research Council (MRC) longitudinal survey of people born in Britain in March 1946. It is "the longest continually running major birth cohort study in the world and is one of the longest-running studies of human development. "
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World is a book by Steven Berlin Johnson in which he describes the most intense outbreak of cholera in Victorian London and centers on John Snow and Henry Whitehead.
In epidemiology, reporting bias is defined as "selective revealing or suppression of information" by subjects. In artificial intelligence research, the term reporting bias is used to refer to people's tendency to under-report all the information available.
A forest plot, also known as a blobbogram, is a graphical display of estimated results from a number of scientific studies addressing the same question, along with the overall results. It was developed for use in medical research as a means of graphically representing a meta-analysis of the results of randomized controlled trials. In the last twenty years, similar meta-analytical techniques have been applied in observational studies and forest plots are often used in presenting the results of such studies also.
Genetic epidemiology is the study of the role of genetic factors in determining health and disease in families and in populations, and the interplay of such genetic factors with environmental factors. Genetic epidemiology seeks to derive a statistical and quantitative analysis of how genetics work in large groups.
The International Journal of Epidemiology is a bimonthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering research in epidemiology. It is the official journal of the International Epidemiological Association and is published by Oxford University Press. The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics. The editor-in-chief is Stephen Leeder.
John P. A. Ioannidis is a Greek-American physician-scientist, writer and Stanford University professor who has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and clinical research. Ioannidis studies scientific research itself, meta-research primarily in clinical medicine and the social sciences.
In epidemiology, information bias refers to bias arising from measurement error. Information bias is also referred to as observational bias and misclassification. A Dictionary of Epidemiology, sponsored by the International Epidemiological Association, defines this as the following:
"1. A flaw in measuring exposure, covariate, or outcome variables that results in different quality (accuracy) of information between comparison groups. The occurrence of information biases may not be independent of the occurrence of selection biases.
2. Bias in an estimate arising from measurement errors."
Birth cohort studies in Britain include four long-term medical and social studies, carried out over the lives of a group of participants, from birth. Two of these studies have continued for over 50 years.
James William Bruce Douglas was a British social researcher. Douglas was responsible for the National Survey of Health & Development that in turn led to other national birth cohort studies, such as the National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study and the Millennium Cohort Study.
HUNT Biobank is a biorepository, located in Levanger, Norway. It was established in conjunction with the cohort study Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT). The biobank is part of HUNT Research Centre, which is responsible for collecting and providing access to the data and samples from the health study, and the research centre is part of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Causal inference is the process of determining the independent, actual effect of a particular phenomenon that is a component of a larger system. The main difference between causal inference and inference of association is that causal inference analyzes the response of an effect variable when a cause of the effect variable is changed. The science of why things occur is called etiology, and can be described using the language of scientific causal notation. Causal inference is said to provide the evidence of causality theorized by causal reasoning.
Eran Shor is an Israeli-Canadian sociologist and a Professor of Sociology. He is the William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. His research interests include the causes and effects of political conflict and violence, ethnicity and nationalism, the sociology of health, and the media coverage of women and ethnic minorities. He focuses on the relationship between states’ counterterrorist policies and their respect for human rights and civil liberties. His research methods include computational analysis of big data, cross-national regression analysis and meta-analyses, as well as in-depth qualitative methods and content analysis.
In genome-wide association studies, genome-wide significance is a specific threshold for determining the statistical significance of a reported association between a given single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and a given trait. The most commonly accepted threshold is p < 5 × 10−8, which is based on performing a Bonferroni correction for all the independent common SNPs across the human genome. If a p-value is found to be lower than this threshold in a genome-wide association study, the null hypothesis of no true SNP-association will typically be rejected. However, there has been some criticism of this threshold, with a 2012 study suggesting that a significant number of associations with p-values just above this threshold are genuine, replicable associations. The authors of this study concluded that their finding "...suggests a possible relaxation in the current GWS threshold." More recently, it has been suggested that the conventional threshold should be modified to take into account the increasing prevalence of low-frequency genetic variants in genome-wide association studies.
Ioanna Tzoulaki is a professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. She investigates prognostic risk factors and models for chronic diseases and meta-epidemiology. In 2019 she received a Greek L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.
Sir Nasarvanji Hormusji Choksy was an Indian medical doctor who worked in Bombay. He was titled Khan Bahadur and knighted in 1929 for his contributions to public health, particularly for his work in dealing with smallpox, leprosy, tuberculosis, and plague. He contributed to medical advance with his approach to clinical trials in testing plague vaccines.
Murielle Bochud is a Swiss physician who is the co-chief of the Department of Epidemiology and Health Systems at the Unisanté in Lausanne. Her research considers the epidemiology of cardio-metabolic diseases and genetic epidemiology.