Smoking as "independent" risk factor for suicide: illustration of an artifact from observational epidemiology?

摘要: Two widely used criteria for determining whether an association between a risk factor and disease is causal are dose response independence from other factors. Data large US study (MRFIT) throw up relation cigarette smoking suicide that meets these criteria, yet appears to be biologically implausible. It likely many more such associations, exposures diseases, equally spurious, but protected by their lack of obvious implausibility.