This week we saw something new: A president of the United States behind a podium, and flanked by the heads of the FDA, the Department of Health, and the NIH, and they were all doing research translation.

Well that’s my job, dammit. So today we’ll do a prelude and prep session for our next episode, which will be a review and discussion of the six studies that underpinned that press conference. We’ll translate those studies so readers and listeners can decide for themselves.

This week, however, we need to lay a little groundwork. So we’ll talk about an observational study just published in a major journal, a study that examined radiation doses in children due to medical imaging (primarily CAT scans) and their association with cancers like leukemia in the decade that follows.

This is a blockbuster article, bound to become a standard bearer, the paper that governments and medical societies and other organizations will cite when they craft recommendations for how to approach medical imaging in children.

But like all observational studies, this excellent study has critical attributes that should make us wonder whether CAT scans and cancers have virtually anything to do with each other. Which is why it’s a perfect foundation for next week’s episode.

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