Monthly Archives: August 2022

S2E14: Confounding will never go away – with Maya Mathur



In this episode of Season 2 of SERious Epidemiology, Hailey and Matt connect with Dr. Maya Mathur for a discussion on confounding. We talk about different ways of thinking about confounding and we discuss how different sources of bias can come together. We talk about overadjustment bias, a topic we all feel needs more attention. We discuss e-values, and have Dr. Mathur explain their practical utility and also how complicated they are to interpret. And we discuss bias analysis for meta-analyses.

Article mentioned in this episode:

Schisterman EF, Cole SR, Platt RW. Overadjustment bias and unnecessary adjustment in epidemiologic studies. Epidemiology. 2009 Jul;20(4):488-95. doi: 10.1097/EDE.0b013e3181a819a1. PMID: 19525685; PMCID: PMC2744485.


S2E13: Confounding: Ten thousand arrows going into a bunch of squiggly things



In this episode of Season 2 of SERious Epidemiology, Hailey and Matt discuss confounding and whether confounding is hogging the spotlight in epi methods and epi teaching. We debate the value of all the different terms for confounding in the world of epi and beyond and struggle to define them all. We talk about different definitions for confounding and we differentiate between confounders and confounding. We talk about the 10% change in estimate of effect approach and its limitations and we talk about different strategies for confounder control. And Hailey coins the term “DAGmatist”.

We reference the paper below:

VanderWeele, T.J. and Shpitser, I. (2011). A new criterion for confounder selectionBiometrics, 67:1406-1413.