Nelb: Diagnosis 2008: Infected by political plague
The news coverage about the presidential election has reached epidemic proportions. Even when there is nothing substantial to report, journalists resort to endless analysis of the candidates’ strategies and tactics. In the end, all this back and forth is enough to make your head spin.
Rather than add to this deluge of analysis in this column, I’ll try to offer a different perspective on interpreting the dynamics and the stories of the presidential election — the public health perspective. Just like infectious diseases spread from person to person, the information and ideas of the...
Whilst this is an interesting piece by Robert Nelb, I must take exception to the use of epidemiology in this context.
The tool of epidemiology has often been used in the real world setting in an effort to understand the cause of adverse outcomes or observations where the possibility of an more robust randomised experiment would not be possible to explain cause.
This has always been the Achilles Heel of the science of epidemiology and is a aspect of the subject that rightly deserves much criticism and needs further insight.
Epidemiology should aspire to scientific objectivity. It must see the obligation to conduct observational studies only where more robust intervention studies are not possible. There should be no point in applying epidemiological techniques in the areas where experimental techniques would never be possible. This risks reduces the 'science of epidemiology' to nothing more than hearsay and the opinions of the next best person.