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JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 1999 91(22):1914-1916; doi:10.1093/jnci/91.22.1914
© 1999 by Oxford University Press
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Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 91, No. 22, 1914-1916, November 17, 1999
© 1999 Oxford University Press

NEWS

Debate Swirls Around the Science of Epidemiology

Charles Bankhead

Public health journals regularly include articles that take swipes at the methods, the direction, the role, and the purpose of epidemiology. Many of the articles, often written by epidemiologists and other public health practitioners, have provocative titles such as "Questioning Epidemiology: Objectivity, Advocacy, and Socially Responsible Science" or "Epidemiology and the Web of Causation: Has Anyone Seen the Spider?"

"These debates have been going on for decades," said Jonathan Samet, M.D., chairman of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore. "Certainly, these questions are fundamental to all scientific disciplines. Epidemiology is not unique."



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  		Dr. Jonathan Samet

 
A headline in a recent issue of Public Health Reports posed an especially harsh question: "Epidemiology: Second-Rate Science?" . . . [Full Text of this Article]

"Causal Inference"

Weak Science?

Competing Interests


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