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Aspects of association to consider prior to the provisional inference of causation as proposed by Sir Austin Bradford Hill (Adapted from [1]) |
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| Criteria |
Description |
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| Strength |
Correlation or relative measures of effect (i.e. risk ratio) |
| Consistency |
Across variable studies in design, populations, settings, circumstances, and time |
| Specificity |
Intervention causes the effect |
| Temporality |
Intervention precedes effect |
| Biologic Gradient |
Dose-response curve between intervention and effect |
| Plausibility |
Based on the current biologic knowledge of mechanisms of disease |
| Coherence |
In the context of knowledge of natural history and related treatments |
| Experiment |
Prospective clinical investigations of hypotheses |
Bagshaw and Bellomo Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2008 3:23 doi:10.1186/1747-5341-3-23 |
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