TY - JOUR PY - 1992// TI - Smoking as "independent" risk factor for suicide: illustration of an artifact from observational epidemiology? JO - Lancet A1 - Smith, G. D. A1 - Phillips, A. N. A1 - Neaton, J. D. SP - 709 EP - 712 VL - 340 IS - 8821 N2 - Two widely used criteria for determining whether an association between a risk factor and a disease is causal are dose response and independence from other factors. Data from a large US risk factor study (MRFIT) throw up a relation between cigarette smoking and suicide that meets these criteria, yet appears to be biologically implausible. It is likely that many more such associations, for other exposures and other diseases, are equally spurious, but are protected by their lack of obvious implausibility.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0140-6736 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -