As an editor I often see authors fall into a trap of stressing some fancy statistical technique for estimating causal effects. Often neglected are the necessary assumptions to map the data to the estimand. @pausalz.bsky.social and I wrote about it here www.bmj.com/content/391/... #EpiSky

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that causal inference mak you more certain about causation. It sometimes can but often it just shows you all the ways your study could be spectacularly wrong.

THE HISTORY OF HIV | Explore four decades of the HIV story, from the first cases to breakthroughs in prevention, science, and South Africa’s fight against the virus: www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/11/25/a...

Going to start referring to myself as a causalologist

DIVE IN | Spotlight has launched a new HIV dashboard and graph generator based on Thembisa model data, making key HIV statistics easier to access for the public and healthcare professionals. Find out more: shorturl.at/GrZyF Join our mailing list: shorturl.at/Ntzoa

This week's episode is on the Manipulation Theorem, which is not well-known in the broader causal community, but has hugely influenced philosophers. I cover hard vs soft interventions, why causation doesn't require human agents, and whether causation requires open systems. youtu.be/fg1ApidilVM

In longitudinal studies, dropout leads to a monotone missing data pattern. We show in a new article that monotonicity sometimes enables and sometimes prevents the identification of  the full law, i.e., the joint distribution of actual variables and response indicators. openreview.net/pdf?id=kVthd...

Happening at 4.15pm at our department today: @herbps10.bsky.social and @idiaz.bsky.social presenting on strategies to overcome positivity violations for complex, possibly longitudinal exposures 👇

🗓 Today, at 4:15 pm he gives a joint talk with Iván Díaz @idiaz.bsky.social (NYU Grossman School of Medicine) on Causal Inference Based on Machine Learning for Complex Longitudinal Exposures at the Institute for Statistics @lmumuenchen.bsky.social www.cas.lmu.de/de/veranstal...

How should we deal with missing data when using TMLE? Find out in our new working paper, led by Christoph Wiederkehr: arxiv.org/pdf/2510.22202 Pro Tip: Check out Box 1 for a summary! (...more surprising than you may think...)

My own TLDR for the message from this paper: statsepi.substack.com/p/sorry-what...

𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: We are offering several PhD positions across our various research areas, open to highly qualified candidates. ‼️ The application portal will be open from 15 October to 14 November 2025. Find out more: mcml.ai/opportunitie...

🚨Job alert🚨 Premium tenure-track (ass to full prof) in "𝐌𝐋 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬" @unituebingen.bsky.social made possible by @ml4science.bsky.social Spread the word and feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the position or the environment. Link: shorturl.at/QHZ5G

NEW PAPER! (in press in EPIDEMIOLOGY) Have you wondered: - How to specify a target trial: as an ideal trial or something else? - What biases do target trial emulations and actual RCTs share? - How does it all relate to potential outcomes? Read here! 👉 arxiv.org/abs/2405.10026 #EpiSky #CausalSky

The CAUSALab Methods Series @ki.se is back! Fall 2025 lineup kicks off Sep 23 with Vanessa Didelez (BIPS), “Causal mediation and separable treatments in time-to-event analyses.” All talks are virtual, except for Nov. 4, 2025 hybrid session. Learn more & register: hsph.harvard.edu/research/cau...

[TRAILER]🎥 Addiction is a film created by high school learners from @IkamvaYouthSA Masiphumelele, Fish Hoek. It tells the stories of young people who have struggled with substance abuse. Film by: Anovuyo Gazi, Mamoya Mohapi and Mmamei Mofokeng Full video: youtube.com/watch?v=ob47...

I think missing data is a CI problem (counterfactual is "would have observed the data") but not the opposite. E.g., recasting mediation analyses etc as a missing data problems seems contrived.

[TRAILER] Beyond The Fear unfolds through the voices of women like Zimkitha, her mother, and local resident Noluvo, each navigating a landscape shaped by fear, grief, and survival. Part of the Learner Doccies pilot in Xhora Mouth with Bulungula Incubator. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnIQ...

🎉 Honored to receive the IJAR Young Researcher Award (🥈) The award is given to researchers who demonstrate excellence at an early stage of their scientific careers, sponsored by the International Journal of Approximate Reasoning (IJAR). isipta25.sipta.org/awards

@xkcd.com again provides for your meta-science slides (link xkcd.com/3117). I do wish we'd stop talking about a "crisis", bc it's been here for generations. Ppl used to pipette by mouth ffs. Enrico Fermi won a Nobel prize for a false result. But that doesn't mean we can't do better going forward.

🚨 New paper in Statistics in Medicine! We compare TMLE vs CV-TMLE in tricky simulations: ✅ Misspecification ✅ Limited overlap ✅ High dimensions ✅ Super Learner + cross-validation Who performs best? Read it: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #CausalInference #TMLE #CVTMLE

MUST READ | South Africa is staging a sequel to Mbeki-era denialism, only this time, the science, solutions, and costs are clearer, argues Professor @francoisventer.bsky.social‬. @groundup.org.za www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/07/16/f...

1/ NEW R PACKAGE! For estimating the impact of potential interventions on multiple mediators in countering exposure effects (led by @cttc101.bsky.social) - Paper👉 tinyurl.com/ye26jsps - Package👉 tinyurl.com/yuh4kens Thread shows published examples of how the method can be used! #EpiSky #CausalSky

NOW PUBLISHED! Featured article + 6 Commentaries + Rejoinder: “On the Uses and Abuses of Regression Models: A Call for Reform of Statistical Practice and Teaching” with my colleague John Carlin tinyurl.com/2z2tmkhh @cebu-melbourne.bsky.social @vicbiostat.bsky.social #EpiSky #CausalSky #StatsSky

THE WAIT BEGINS | Six months of HIV protection in a single shot. When will it arrive in SA and at what cost? Find out: shorturl.at/AphjB Join our mailing list: shorturl.at/Ntzoa

Why is it different? Do-PFN is a radical new approach to causal inference, replacing standard assumptions of a ground-truth causal model (Pearl) or structural assumptions (Rubin) with a prior over SCMs—our modeling assumptions lie in our synthetic data-generating process. [6/8]

also from the meme archives

I feel like all the debates in the 20th century were for nothing sometimes. People used to argue that Bayes couldn't work. The James-Stein estimator was a big deal! Everything uses gradients now and is inherently about regularization. Let the 20th century go, I say.

Have you wondered what an artificial neural network really does (and how it might just be regression all the way down)? Well I have a new AJE Classroom paper on the basics of how neural networks work academic.oup.com/aje/article/...

INACTION? While HIV projects unravel, President Cyril Ramaphosa and the GNU are nowhere to be seen. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, once praised for his HIV leadership, offers no leadership, communication, or urgency, argues Professor Francois Venter. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/04/23/f...

Great article from @spotlightnsp.bsky.social, with contributions from CIDER's Kim Anderson and @leighjohnsoncpt.bsky.social, explaining some of the complex dynamics of paediatric HIV in South Africa. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/05/26/a...

Wir suchen jemanden, der im WS 25/26 unseren vakanten Lehrstuhl für Statistik und Quantitative Methoden in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften vertritt. Auch die Dauerstelle wird bald ausgeschrieben. Wir freuen uns über nette, engagierte Kollegen! Gerne teilen... Link im nächsten Post.

Ok frequentists, let’s call a truce. This has gone too far.

Join us in beautiful Oslo! Associate Professor @ocbe.bsky.social @uio.no Deadline May 18th www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

How do we answer #causal questions when assumptions are violated? @jeremylabrecque.bsky.social (Erasmus MC) continues the 2025 Methods Series @ki.se 📆 May 20, 2025 ⏰ 15.00 CEST/9.00 ET 📍 All Methods Series talks virtual Register to attend online 👇 stats.sender.net/forms/e7JD1d...

Open permanent position as researcher in causal inference for infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health! Deadline May 16. www.finn.no/job/fulltime...

Check out the last Methods Series talk now on YouTube: youtu.be/QuQnZ4don54?...

Our new preprint provides more detail on previously reported impacts of HIV funding cuts: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

NEW PAPER: Updated CONSORT-2025 for reporting randomised trials is now available in the @bmj.com @jama.com , @thelancet.bsky.social, @plos.org and @naturemedicine.bsky.social —> www.bmj.com/content/389/... #openscience #transparency #medsky #statssky #episky

She uses an analysis of the gender pay gap using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to illustrate these points, building on her prior work on defining & identifying estimands when targeting mediating mechanisms of social disparities. (arxiv.org/abs/2411.07368)

Another nice #EuroCIM2025 poster by Christiane Didden. She presents the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition & how we think about the “explained” part of disparities—specifically in the context of the gender pay gap....

EuroCIM2025 came to an end! Thank you to all speakers, participants, and partners who made this year's conference a success. See you next year in Oxford!

📣 📣NEW PAPER providing guidance on best practice for using multiple imputation when estimating interventional mediation effects, considering missingness mechanism, multiple imputation model specification, & variance estimation #CausalSky #EpiSky Read more 👇🏽 journals.lww.com/epidem/abstr...

The second edition of The Effect is now available for preorder! This version has a whole new chapter on Partial Identification, a considerable update on staggered treatment and control variables in DID, and zillions of other little updates throughout. www.routledge.com/The-Effect-A...

Happy birthday, p = 0.05! I had a short introductory lecture in statistics for biologists this morning, and then it dawned on me that p = 0.05 is celebrating its hundredth birthday this year.

Next week, we will talk about the delta method and how that allows us to use the sandwich to estimate the variance with things like g-computation of IPW

New paper! We extend my prior work on prognostic adjustment to work with generalized linear models. This is a nice way to gain power in randomized trials (eg with binary outcomes) by leveraging historical data in a way that does not sacrifice type I error control. arxiv.org/abs/2503.22284

📢New working paper with Tomasz Olma and Daniel Wilhelm, take a look! arxiv.org/pdf/2503.217... We propose a powerful nonparametric test of independence of one random variable from a large pool of other random variables.

3-year PhD position @ocbe.bsky.social in beautiful Oslo. We are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate interested in statistial applications and occupational epidemiological research Join our team! Deadline: April 21 More information: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

[TRAILER] Mothers At Risk: Pregnant and Fighting TB Follows four women from Khayelitsha, Cape Town, who had to navigate TB diagnosis, treatment & motherhood. The film was produced in collaboration with A/Prof Emma Kalk from @uctcider.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7toY...