Replication and Evidence Factors in Observational Studies

af Paul Rosenbaum

Outside of randomized experiments, association does not imply causation, and yet there is nothing defective about our knowledge that smoking causes lung cancer, a conclusion reached in the absence of randomized experimentation with humans. How is that possible? If observed associations do not identify causal effects in observational studies, how can a sequence of such associations become decisive? Two or more associations may each be susceptible to unmeasured biases, yet not susceptible to the s... (Læs mere)