2021年8月,我们在《环境健康》杂志上发布了用于检测滥用流行病学方法的工具包,旨在为透明地评估流行病学研究提供组织框架。一具证据,以及由此产生的结论。津田等人。,第一组以系统的方式利用工具包,提出了修改建议。
在Tsuda等人提出的修改中。,我们同意,重新安排工具包的A部分以反映流行病学研究过程的顺序将有助于其有用性。将工具包扩展或适应其他学科将是有价值的,但需要输入特定学科的专门知识。我们告诫不要使用工具包的各个部分来产生计数或累积分数,因为没有一个项目是关于重要性或影响的加权。相反,我们建议以视觉方式表示研究如何满足Toolkit项目,例如用于显示Cochrane综述中纳入研究的偏倚风险标准的热图.我们建议将工具包纳入被称为“法医流行病学”的子专业中,“以及在研究生培训课程中,继续教育项目,和会议,认识到这是被广泛接受的流行病学研究伦理准则的延伸。
我们欢迎来自研究界的关于加强工具包的方法的反馈,因为它被应用于更广泛的研究和学科组合。有助于其作为生活工具/工具的价值。Tsuda等人对工具包的应用。说明了这个框架对透明评估的有用性,以系统的方式,流行病学研究,关于因果关系的结论,和政策决定。
我们注意到我们的工具包有,最近,启发具有保护生物学领域特定学科专业知识的作者,以使其适用于生物科学。
In August 2021, we published in Environmental Health a Toolkit for detecting misused epidemiological methods with the goal of providing an organizational framework for transparently evaluating epidemiological studies, a body of evidence, and resultant conclusions. Tsuda et al., the first group to utilize the Toolkit in a systematic fashion, have offered suggestions for its modification.
Among the suggested modifications made by Tsuda et al., we agree that rearrangement of Part A of the Toolkit to reflect the sequence of the epidemiological study process would facilitate its usefulness. Expansion or adaptation of the Toolkit to other disciplines would be valuable but would require the input of discipline-specific expertise. We caution against using the sections of the Toolkit to produce a tally or cumulative score, because none of the items are weighted as to importance or impact. Rather, we suggest a visual representation of how a study meets the Toolkit items, such as the heat maps used to present risk of bias criteria for studies included in Cochrane reviews. We suggest that the Toolkit be incorporated in the sub-specialty known as \"forensic epidemiology,\" as well as in graduate training curricula, continuing education programs, and conferences, with the recognition that it is an extension of widely accepted ethics guidelines for epidemiological research.
We welcome feedback from the research community about ways to strengthen the Toolkit as it is applied to a broader assemblage of research studies and disciplines, contributing to its value as a living tool/instrument. The application of the Toolkit by Tsuda et al. exemplifies the usefulness of this framework for transparently evaluating, in a systematic way, epidemiological research, conclusions relating to causation, and policy decisions.
We note that our Toolkit has, most recently, inspired authors with discipline-specific expertise in the field of Conservation Biology to adapt it for use in the Biological Sciences.