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Professor George Davey Smith Richard Doll Seminar poster

Aetiological epidemiology is concerned with the identification of causal influences on disease risk. Randomized controlled trials are, when possible, the cornerstone of knowledge as to whether interventions based on aetiological studies are merited. It is not feasible to subject all of the many candidate causes to large-scale RCTs, however, even in situations where they are in principle possible.


Triangulation of evidence is an approach that attempts to formally combine findings from different domains to strengthen causal inference. Triangulation embraces the variety of evidence thesis, that inferential strength depends not only on the quantity of available evidence, but also on its variety: the greater the variety, the stronger the resulting support. An essential condition is that the systematic errors and biases are unrelated across different study types. For example, the effect of raising circulating HDL cholesterol on the risk of coronary heart disease can be estimated from RCTs or through Mendelian randomization using genetic variants related to HDL level. Both the results of RCTs and Mendelian randomization studies could be biased. However, the potential biases in one study design would not influence estimates from the other approach: the biases are unrelated to each other.

In observational epidemiology approaches that can be applied include the use of negative control exposures or outcomes; the deliberate use of data from contexts in which confounding structures differ; the use of instrumental variables and related approaches, such as regression discontinuity; quasi-experimental studies; the estimation of the expected magnitude of associations generated by confounding and the incorporation of mechanistic data, amongst others. Pre-registration of protocols for the triangulation of evidence increases confidence in the findings produced.

George Davey Smith was a member of the noise-terrorism outfit Scum Auxiliary in the early 1980s. Since artistic and commercial success eluded them, he has had to earn his living working as an epidemiologist in the provinces.

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