EpiStack

H-31 - Nutritional-cohort diet-disease associations reflect cumulative bias and cannot support causal dietary claims

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Properties9
type
hypothesis
id
H-31
state
active
question
Can observational nutritional-cohort associations support causal dietary claims?
statement
The diet–mortality/CVD associations produced by observational nutritional-epidemiology cohorts reflect almost exclusively cumulative bias — extensive residual confounding among near-universally correlated dietary exposures, unmeasured time-varying behavioral/social factors, error-laden self-reported intake, and selective/non-prespecified analysis — rather than causal effects, so these cohorts cannot support the causal dietary claims (including about eggs) routinely drawn from them and folded into guidelines.
cluster
HC-15 - Whether nutritional-cohort associations can support causal egg-health claims
source
S-95 - The case that nutritional-epidemiology cohort methods need radical reform
locator
Viewpoint, thesis (paragraphs 1, 4-5)
quote
These implausible estimates of benefits or risks associated with diet probably reflect almost exclusively the magnitude of the cumulative biases in this type of research, with extensive residual confounding and selective reporting.

The central position of the Viewpoint and the named artifact of the “don’t trust these cohorts” pole. It is a candidate answer to the meta-level question of whether the egg-cohort evidence can carry causal weight; contested (directly rebutted by Satija et al.), hence a hypothesis, not an observation.

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