More reading - lots of big strange words and some statistics, but read slowly and carefully it does explain to us how valuable - or otherwise - those observational studies really are. And the end result is - not awfully because you can take the same results and the result will be very different depending on how the statistics app analyses them!
It has been said for years that the most important person in the research group is the stats advisor - because you can get the answer you want by choosing how you analyse the results ...
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PMRpro
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I remember a stats lecture at Uni where the lecturer was talking about Lies damn lies and statistics said he sadi statistically the safest thing to do is take a bomb on to a plane, because the odds that there will be two bombs on a plane are so much lower than there being one. I was born cynical but that cemented it in my mind. I wish I knew enough to be able to confidently say 'Yeah right' when I read some articles in newspapers. Experts disagree and contradict each other, not all studies are published, some sample sizes n= 3 or something. About the only one I really trust is Tim Spector but his answer is usually along the lines of 'we don't know yet'.
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