Casual Inference

Carly Brantner is an assistant professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics at Duke University and Duke Clinical Research Institute.

Resources from this episode:

• multicate: R package for estimating conditional average treatment effects across one or more studies using machine learning methods
• PCORnet® Front Door: Access point for potential investigators, patient groups, and other stakeholders to connect with PCORnet and get support for potential research studies
• Patient-Centered Outcomes Data Repository (PDOCR): De-identified data from 24 (and counting) PCORI-funded studies

Follow along on Bluesky:

• Carly: @carlybrantner.bsky.social
• Ellie: @epiellie.bsky.social
• Lucy: @lucystats.bsky.social

  🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

Andrew Heiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

• Vincent's "What is your estimand" section in his {marginaleffects} book: https://marginaleffects.com/chapters/challenge.html#sec-goals_estimand
• Article on defining estimands: https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224211004187
• Andrew's marginal effects post: https://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2022/05/20/marginalia/
• Andrew's post on "fixed effects" and mariginal effects across different disciplines: https://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2022/11/29/conditional-marginal-marginaleffects/

Follow along on Bluesky:

• Andrew: @andrew.heiss.phd
• Ellie: @epiellie.bsky.social
• Lucy: @lucystats.bsky.social

  🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

In this episode Lucy and Ellie dig into a recently publicized paper, "Vaccination and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Study of Nine-Year-Old Children Enrolled in Medicaid", which has gained attention after being promoted by RFK Jr. as evidence that vaccines cause autism.   

Ellie breaks down her Substack critique of the study. Together, she and Lucy discuss the methodological flaws and what a better version of this study might look like.  

• Vaccination and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Study of Nine-Year-Old Children Enrolled in Medicaid: https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/vaccination-and-neurodevelopmental-disorders-a-study-of-nine-year-old-children-enrolled-in-medicaid/
• RFK Jr is promoting a new study claiming "vaccines cause autism" but it doesn't add up. Literally [Ellie's substack]: https://epiellie.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-is-promoting-a-new-study-claiming

 

Follow along on Bluesky:

• Ellie: @epiellie.bsky.social
• Lucy: @lucystats.bsky.social

 

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

Vincent Arel-Bundock is a professor at the Université de Montréal, where he studies comparative and international political economy.

• Vincent's website: https://arelbundock.com/
• Vincent's book "Model to Meaning: How to Interpret Statistical Models With marginaleffects for R and Python": https://marginaleffects.com/

    Follow along on Bluesky:

• Vincent: @vincentab.bsky.social
• Ellie: @epiellie.bsky.social
• Lucy: @lucystats.bsky.social

    🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

Noah Greifer is a statistical consultant and programmer at Harvard University.

Episode notes:

• WeightIt package: https://ngreifer.github.io/WeightIt/
• MatchIt package: https://kosukeimai.github.io/MatchIt/
• Noah's awesome Stack Exchange post: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/544958

Follow along on Bluesky:

• Noah: @noahgreifer.bsky.social
• Ellie: @EpiEllie.bsky.social
• Lucy: @LucyStats.bsky.social

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

 

 

 

Lucy and Ellie chat about large language models, chat interfaces, and causal inference.

• Do LLMs Act as Repositories of Causal Knowledge?: https://arxiv.org/html/2412.10635v1

Follow along on Twitter:

• The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi

• Ellie: @EpiEllie

• Lucy: @LucyStats

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. Edited by Cameron Bopp.

Lucy chats with Len Testa about a recent analysis he did which combined over 150 publicly available data sources to answer a question about the affordability of Disney World.

• Len's Deep Dive Post on the Touring Plans Blog [Blog Post]
• Wall Street Journal Artcile, "Even Disney Is Worried About the High Cost of a Disney Vacation" [Article]

Follow along on Bluesky:

• Len: @lentesta.bsky.social

• Ellie: @EpiEllie.bsky.social

• Lucy: @LucyStats.bsky.social

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade

Alyssa Bilinski, Peterson Family Assistant Professor of Health Policy, and Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, at Brown University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on developing novel methods for policy evaluation and applying these to identify interventions that most efficiently improve population health and well-being.

Episode notes:

• PNAS paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2302528120

• Shuo Feng's pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.08.24305335v1

• Our uncertainty paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33475686/

Follow along on Twitter:

• Alyssa: @ambilinski

• The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi

• Ellie: @EpiEllie

• Lucy: @LucyStats

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
Edited by Cameron Bopp

Edward Kennedy Associate Professor, Department of Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon.

• ehkennedy.com

• Evaluating a Targeted Minimum Loss-Based Estimator for Capture-Recapture Analysis: An Application to HIV Surveillance in San Francisco, California: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/193/4/673/7425624

• Doubly Robust Capture-Recapture Methods for Estimating Population Size: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01621459.2023.2187814

Follow along on Twitter:

• The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi

• Ellie: @EpiEllie

• Lucy: @LucyStats

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
Edited by Cameron Bopp

Sheree Bekker & Stephen Mumford are Co-directors of the Feminist Sport Lab and have a book coming soon: "Open Play: the case for feminist sport", coming Spring 2025. Reaktion Books (UK), University of Chicago Press (US).

Sheree Bekker: Associate Professor, University of Bath, Department for Health,

• Centre for Qualitative Research

• Centre for Health and Injury and Illness Prevention in Sport

Stephen Mumford, Professor of Metaphysics, Durham University  A

• Author of Dispositions (Oxford, 1998), Russell on Metaphysics (Routledge, 2003), Laws in Nature (Routledge, 2004), David Armstrong (Acumen, 2007), Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion (Routledge, 2011), Getting Causes from Powers (Oxford, 2011 with Rani Lill Anjum), Metaphysics: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012) and Causation: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2013 with Rani Lill Anjum). I was editor of George Molnar's posthumous Powers: a Study in Metaphysics (Oxford, 2003) and Metaphysics and Science (Oxford, 2013 with Matthew Tugby).

• Feminist Sport Lab: https://www.feministsportlab.com

• Causation: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Mumford & Rani Lill Anjum: https://academic.oup.com/book/616

• Faye Norby, Iditarod champion & epidemiologist: https://www.kfyrtv.com/2024/03/28/faye-norby-finishes-iditarod-trail-womens-foot-champion/?outputType=amp 

Follow along on Twitter:

• The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi

• Ellie: @EpiEllie

• Lucy: @LucyStats

🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
Edited by Cameron Bopp