Epidemiology
[back] Medical study ploys

"Epidemiology is like a bikini. What is revealed is interesting. What is concealed is crucial"
“Any competent epidemiologist can employ particular tricks of the trade when certain results are desired.” Review: Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health by David Michaels

Epidemiologic Evidence Is Insufficient To Prove There Is No Link Between The MMR Vaccine And Autism By Clifford G. Miller

See: Vaccines don't cause autism studies

"The late Sir Richard Doll, perhaps the world's most famous epidemiologist had taken large amounts of undeclared money from Monsanto."---[Aug 2008] An Interest in Conflict? by Martin Walker MA

As most scientists know, statistics-based epidemiological studies cannot “contradict a link”; they can only assess the probability that there may be a link. Moreover, epidemiological studies, by their population-based nature, cannot generally find statistical significance when the effect (link) is confined to some small segment of that population.  Key realities about autism, vaccines, vaccine-injury compensation, Thimerosal, and autism-related research----Gary S. Goldman, Ph.D & P.G. King PhD

Cawadias (1953) has said that "the history of medicine has shown that, whenever medicine has strayed from clinical observation, the result has been chaos, stagnation, and disaster."--British Medical Journal, Oct 8th, 1955, p.867 (Quoted in Clinical Medical Discoveries by Beddow Bayly)

"How do you react when your own government lies to you systematically about life-and-death questions? As I have noted earlier, the answer is political action in the state legislatures, and one weapon in the hands of the public is an understanding of the pseudo-science and pseudo-epidemiology represented by articles like this one."--Harris Coulter http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/coulter/sids.html

There have never been any safety studies done for any vaccine in use today that would meet the criteria of scientific proof. All we have are epidemiologic studies, which are indicators but not proof in and of themselves. [Oct 2004] Letter to the British Medical Journal by Harold E Buttram, MD,

Before we continue, a word about epidemiological studies. Epidemiological studies, also called population studies, are the poor cousin of true clinical trials. They are not controlled studies done under set scientific conditions, but rather attempts at verifying a hypothesis just by counting the incidence of a certain disease or condition within a certain population. The problem is that results from epidemiological studies are subject to widespread interpretation, depending on who's doing the counting, who decides the criteria for what gets counted, who publishes the results, etc. For this reason, epidemiological studies can be used to "prove" two completely divergent hypotheses.
    In the exploding vaccine industry today, epidemiological studies are quickly becoming the standard to validate our need for more vaccines, because they're faster, cheaper, and capable of supporting practically any required outcome. HPV - The First Cancer Vaccine Dr Tim O'Shea