I'm looking to develop some (internal lab group) guidelines for lab notebooks for epi/biostats/stats projects. Does anyone have good resources on this? There is lots of wet-lab stuff, but I have seen less for epi research (but I think that record keeping is important to do)

I recently wrote about how applied causal inference can align with what Feynman called "cargo cult science"; namely, when we state identification assumptions without interrogating them. I use an example from nutritional epidemiology to convey the problem: miceandtigers.substack.com/p/cargo-cult...

I often come across: expressing the effect estimate in terms of SD makes it more interpretable. But I rarely find that this is actually the case unless we're talking about a latent variable or some scale that is really uninterpretable.

In this day and age, the first two comments by the reviewers should disqualify their reviews.

Made it to Phoenix 🌵☀️ & ready to kick off #SER2026 with a session on peer review for epi ECRs tomorrow (Tues) at 8:30AM with the fabulous @tfeend.bsky.social!

Yeah, it kinda stinks

If you can't attend the ABC's workshop, all the materials are available online: github.com/pzivich/ABCs...

Causal inference with data that is MC (missing completely)

Robeyns in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... (for the trillionth time)

Just say no to gift authorship.

I don’t know much of the context or backstory here but this seems to me like a model example of how to engage with online critique So rare to see it makes you stop and do a double take

it’s disgusting that UCSF welcomed back vinay prasad with open arms to teach public health after what he did at the FDA

Like every research tool, the problem is not the tool but the human. LLMs are compatible with whatever kind of science *you* believe in and practice. If you believe in being patient and self-critical, LLMs can help you do that. If you believe in rushing to publish more beans, they do that too.

Re-upping for the Monday morning crowd.

Interested in doing a PhD with me in epidemiology on causal inference and triangulation? In beautiful Rotterdam no less. www.werkenbijerasmusmc.nl/en/vacancy/1... Pro tip: if you get to the interview stage, there WILL be a question about ice hockey

Things that you didn't know were AI: The Dewey decimal system Stata's merge command Clippy Ctrl + Z

Kalshi now allows you to place Pascal’s Wager

Is novelty really a “key ingredient” for high quality research? To me quality and novelty are independent qualities.

As a field, I think we would be much better at causal inference if it was more broadly understood what a descriptive question actually is

Interesting to see the reviewer comments here which mirrored some of my own initial thoughts on the abstract. "Creativity, serendipity, and discovery" in questioning and interpretation are good things, while opaque, unreported "exploration" in methods is bad. Preregistration/RR addresses the latter.

Funny (and sad) story that some students didn’t get into this course this year because it was listed as “Casual Thinking” and by the time they realized the course was already full.

Ooh! www.euractiv.com/news/europea...

The two things I like most about this: 1) The starting point is a published discussion section. They don't have to start from scratch. 2) The tracked changes make it easy to follow the students' thinking. Sometimes a paragraph only needs a tweak. Sometimes entire additional paragraphs are needed

As a course assignment, I had students rewrite the discussion section from an actual paper (using track changes) and incorporate information from a DAG and bias analyses they ran. Some of these are among the best discussion sections I've ever seen!

If you did, for instance case-cohort sampling and estimated an effect size, you can report that as a RR or an exposure OR (odds of exposure among cases vs non-cases). But that number CANNOT be called an outcome OR which is is how everyone would interpret it if you reported a just “an OR”.

The “case control OR” being referred to in this article is not a thing you should care about at all. When the author finds, eg, that the “cc OR” is collapsible it’s because its only valid interpretation is as an RR which is collapsible. There’s no mystery here. academic.oup.com/ije/article/...

If I learned anything from Groundhog Day it’s that counterfactuals are deterministic, not stochastic.

When you think about it, it’s super weird when article titles are just two variables. Like this one: “adiposity and the risk of aortic aneurysm” Is this a causal study? Descriptive? Predictive? It’s impossible to tell. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I will never ceased to be amazed when people get an effect size like a risk ratio of 1.5 and then say "there was no effect" because it wasn't significant. Cults should be taking notes on how we can get people to say things like 1.5=1!

If you want to give $$ to support prenatal & infant health, what would be the best time in pregnancy? @dkarasek.bsky.social examines this question using natural experiment related to timing of anti-poverty benefits: authors.elsevier.com/c/1n60~2gOwG... @mdrc-news.bsky.social @ohsunews.bsky.social 1/

kagi really is that good y’all. big stress reliever to have a proper search engine again. (i don’t take compensation for posts as a rule, this is just me wanting them to have a solid subscriber base so they can offer the service long-term)

Happy #ClinicalTrials Day Trial design and conduct is no place for novices with best intentions. Patient participants make sacrifices. Medical progress holds its breath. Large sums of public and private money is invested. So get it right, from the start. statsepi.substack.com/p/dealing-wi...

Some day in the not too distant future journals will just publish titles of papers, no details, everything in supplement.

Why we should rethink causal mediation, and what to do instead? Come to hear the answer from Vanessa Didelez at the next CIIG seminar! The seminar will be hybrid. If you are in London, come join us in person at UCL! Otherwise, you can join on Zoom as usual. Registration links in comment below.

Eurovision Song Contest starting tonight! 🇪🇺🎤🤩

So I wrote part of a peer review in the wrong textbox (for a different article) and now I can't find it at all. Hope I didn't send it to the wrong review.

Proof the laws of physics have no arrow of time. From just this image I'd bet a lot of money that Greenway is sliding toward the bottom of the image and yet...

Lol

The NHL playoffs finish so late in the year that Europe has time to finish its own playoffs AND play the world championship. A bit silly really. #gohabsgo

A slide from this talk I'm giving on Monday. The conclusion will be a set of questions that one must be able to answer to ask associational research questions. The ball is in your court association people!

Well that's the last time I give a bunch of useful feedback in peer review. The authors keep requesting me as a reviewer! UGH

Done with my last talk before leave! This one was fun and I'm glad I added Columbo last minute. Slides here, in case you're curious: juliarohrer.com/wp-content/u...

I think one of the healthiest realizations I had in my life regarding engagement with sociopolitical discourse is that you can, actually, just pursue the good as you see it

This is the first of these memes that get.

the real danger is infraprocessed food

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

My forthcoming book has a chapter on the role of luck in science that looks at forms of luck rarely discussed in history of science. Epistemic luck is all over science.

Can accommodate some more people at this Introduction to INSPECT-SR workshop tomorrow (April 30th). Book here or email/ message me directly: www.trybooking.com/uk/GATM It says (N America) because the time was chosen for that region, but all welcome