Archives
The Hijacking of Fluorine 18.998, Part Two
Posted on September 21, 2019 7 Comments
NOTE: This is the second of a three-part series on fluoride in drinking water and a recent study about it. You can read part 1 here. You can read part 3 here. In the last blog post, I told you all about how fluoride has been added to potable water systems in the United States […]
The Hijacking of Fluorine 18.998, Part One
Posted on September 19, 2019 5 Comments
NOTE: This is the first of a three-part series on fluoride in drinking water and a recent study about it. You can read part 2 here. You can read part 3 here. There is a cultural controversy dating back several decades that is very similar to the anti-vaccine controversy that we are dealing with today. […]
Sample Sizes and Statistical Significance
Posted on July 16, 2019 2 Comments
Some dude said I didn’t know what I was talking about because, in his world, a small sample size with a statistical significance only gets more statistically significant if the sample size increases. He’s also an antivaxxer, so…
What if Vaccines Are Harmful?
Posted on April 13, 2019 2 Comments
If vaccines are as bad as anti-vaccine people and groups claim that they are, where is the evidence? We’ve seen other diseases and conditions be identified and dealt with. Why not these bad vaccine outcomes? Could it be that it’s not as bad as antivaxxers say it is?
Which Is Better? A False Positive? A False Negative? A True Positive? Or a True Negative?
Posted on August 28, 2018
When dealing with screening tests that are susceptible to giving false positives and false negatives, you need to take into account a number of different things. Most importantly, you need to put your findings into context.
A Quick Geographical Analysis of Homicides in Baltimore Before and During the Current Homicide Epidemic
Posted on November 16, 2017
There was a lot of police movement yesterday as I headed home. By the time I did get home, I found out via the news that a homicide detective had been shot in the head. His condition is very severe, and the prognosis is poor according to all reports. What a lot of people — […]
What we should have been doing all along: Translational Epidemiology
Posted on May 26, 2017
When I was applying to get into the DrPH program, the interviewer — who would later become my academic advisor — asked me for my thoughts on Translational Epidemiology. Translational Epidemiology (TE) is the use of epidemiology in different stages between identifying a population-level problem to identifying a solution for it, to evaluating what that […]
Non-Biostatistician, Non-Epidemiologist Tries to Complain About Biostats and Epi
Posted on April 29, 2017
Don’t you love it when people who don’t know better think that they know better, and then they end up making fools of themselves? There is a particularly interesting anti-vaccine man by the name of Brian S. Hooker. He has a doctorate in biochemical engineering, according to his Wikipedia page. Maybe you remember BS Hooker […]
Another day, another bad anti-vaccine study
Posted on May 27, 2016 6 Comments
Let’s say that you think food A caused disease B. To test your theory, you get cases of people who got B and controls of people who did not get B. Then you compare the odds of exposure to A. The ratio between the odds is called the odds ratio, and anything significantly different from […]
Where do you begin to understand Zika?
Posted on February 7, 2016 5 Comments
It’s all the rage these days to get worked-up about Zika. Just like last year with Ebola, this year we’re freaking out over a disease from “over there” coming “over here” and hurting Americans. Also, the observed association between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly is scaring the crap out of people. (It’s really scaring […]
EpidemioLogical 