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Full-Text Articles in Epidemiology
Teaching For Epidemiological Literacy: Description, Prescription, And Critical Thinking, Peter J. Taylor
Teaching For Epidemiological Literacy: Description, Prescription, And Critical Thinking, Peter J. Taylor
Working Papers on Science in a Changing World
This working paper describes contrasting ideas for a sequence of topics as presented to students in a graduate course on epidemiological literacy. The premise of the pedagogical approach is that researchers develop their epidemiological thinking and practice over time through interactions with other researchers who have a variety of in-practice commitments, such as to kinds of cases and methods of analysis, and not simply to a philosophical framework for explanation. In descriptively teasing out what epidemiologists do in practice through a topic-by-topic presentation, I am prescriptively encouraging discussants to draw purposefully from across the range of topics and contrasting …
Heterogeneity, Not Randomness, Sets Challenges For Quantitative Genetics And Epidemiology: A Response To Davey Smith’S “Gloomy Prospect”, Peter J. Taylor
Heterogeneity, Not Randomness, Sets Challenges For Quantitative Genetics And Epidemiology: A Response To Davey Smith’S “Gloomy Prospect”, Peter J. Taylor
Working Papers on Science in a Changing World
Social epidemiologist Davey Smith (2011) argues that epidemiologists should accept a gloomy prospect: considerable randomness at the individual level means that they should keep their focus on modifiable causes of disease at the population level. The difficulty epidemiology has had in moving from significant population-level risk factors to improved prediction of cases at an individual level is analogous to the lack of success in the search for systematic aspects of the non-shared environmental influences that human quantitative genetics claims overshadow common environmental influences (e.g., the family’s socioeconomic status which siblings have in common). This article responds to the argument and …
Troubled By Heterogeneity? Control, Infrastructure & Participation In Social Epidemiology And Life Course Development, Peter J. Taylor
Troubled By Heterogeneity? Control, Infrastructure & Participation In Social Epidemiology And Life Course Development, Peter J. Taylor
Working Papers on Science in a Changing World
This working paper presents the panels of a poster prepared for a conference, “Complex Systems, Health Disparities, and Population Health: Building Bridges,” held at NIH in Bethesda, MD in February 2014. Just as poster presenters hope viewers stop and talk, my aim in sharing the panels as a working paper is to elicit more conversation about different kinds of heterogeneity and the ways they are addressed or suppressed in social epidemiology and life course development. The thinking behind this concern is as follows. The two foundational developments of modern biology—the theories of evolution by natural selection and the genetic basis …
Heterogeneity And Data Analysis, Peter J. Taylor
Heterogeneity And Data Analysis, Peter J. Taylor
Working Papers on Science in a Changing World
This working paper is a discussion paper for a September 2011 meeting of the research group of Prof. Di Cook on data visualization and exploratory data analysis at Iowa State University. A taxonomy of eleven kinds of heterogeneity is presented, followed by a set of vignettes that illustrate some of the meanings and sketch some implications, then a series of images that illustrate the heterogeneities. Several of the vignettes speak to a broad contention about heterogeneity and control: In relation to modern understandings of heredity and development over the life course, research and application of resulting knowledge are untroubled by …
Heterogeneity, Control, Social Infrastructure, And Possibilities Of Participation: Their Interplay In Modern Understandings Of Heredity And In Interpretation Of Science, Peter J. Taylor
Working Papers on Science in a Changing World
This working paper is a prospectus for research, writing, and engagement. It consists of vignettes, sketches of lines of inquiry, and proposals for engagement, all of which concern modern understandings of heredity and development over the life course as well as the social interpretation of science. The various items address a range of areas of science and of its interpretation: heritability studies, the social uses of genetic information, gene-by-environment interaction, personalized medicine, IQ paradoxes, racial group membership, biobanks, and life events and difficulties research. Fresh perspectives in these areas are opened up by examining the ways that research and application …