The importance of critical review
In public health school we have this great exercise that we all hate in the beginning (I secretly enjoyed every minute of it) and then grow to either love, or at least tolerate because it takes us much less time than it did at first. We call this necessary exercise the critical review, and it's the best way (in my opinion) to learn Epidemiology (to read more about this "ology", click here). Simply put, Epidemiology is the science of public health.
And what, exactly, is an Epidemiologist?
When people ask me what exactly it is that Epidemiologists do, I refer them to news bites like this headline from the health section of the NY Times today: "Waist Size Linked to Longevity." Epidemiologists are the ones who thought up, designed, carried out and, with the help of biostatisticians (statistics folk who focus on health), analyzed the study(ies) that ultimately produced that headline.
The reality of any science
Epidemiologists are, however, fallible human beings like the rest of us. To boot, they don't get to conduct experiments in a perfectly controlled lab. Instead, they study people and what happens to them, and they must often "make do" with the data they are able to generate (this is not to say that Epidemiologists aren't really good at what they do, but they face many challenges in their work). For this reason, we are taught from the very beginning to critically review any and all articles we read before we assume it proves any point. This is very important! We are dealing with people and their health, after all.
And so, I begin this blog
One of my biggest pet peeves, as a student of public health, is that news bites often don't give the full story behind a research article and can be very misleading. News bites are also often taken as fact, rather than what they are: one more drop in the bucket of accumulated research. Einstein spoke to the importance of accumulated research when he noted:
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.With this blog I hope to bring the mysteries of public health research to light, and bring us all closer, blog post by blog post, to a better understanding of our health and the care we receive.
