Epi News Briefs 6/18/01

 

Editor's Quote of the Week "We don't always put our money where our graphs are." Lynn Paxton, CDC, speaking on the global AIDS situation at the Congress of Epidemiology in Toronto, June 2001

A full report on the Congress of Epidemiology 2001 will appear in the July issue of The Epidemiology Monitor. Subscribe now to obtain full coverage, including scores of photos taken at the Congress.

Congress of Epidemiology Attracts 1700 To Toronto

Epidemiologists from 33 countries gathered in record breaking numbers in Toronto on June 13, 2001 for what Congress organizer Michael Bracken called the “1st World Congress of Epidemiology” and the “largest gathering ever” of epidemiologists. Jack Siemiatycki, president of the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics called it “the Woodstock of Epidemiology.” According to Bracken, exactly 1700 epidemiologists officially registered for the Congress, and organizers were obviously pleased their vision of unifying the profession came true, even if only for three or four days in a beautiful lakeside city with warm, sunny weather. Also, the gamble appeared to be paying off as the record attendance held the promise of new revenues for the four epidemiology organizations (ACE, APHA, CSEB, and SER ) which sponsored the Congress.

Epidemiologic Methods Plenary Most Talked About Session At The Congress

The most provocative and talked about session at the Congress was the first plenary session on methods in epidemiology entitled “The Need To Improve Study Design, Analysis, And Reporting In Risk Factor Epidemiology.” The session was provocative because it included criticisms of epidemiologists and called for practitioners of epidemiology to be more explicit about the uncertainties surrounding their findings. The first part of the two part session included papers by Clarice Weinberg on “Neglected Designs In Epidemiology, by Sander Greenland (chair) on why “Data Say Nothing About Epidemiologic Associations, and Charles Poole on “Why Published Epidemiology Is Really Junk Science.”

Greenland’s point was that, contrary to popular belief, data say nothing in and of themselves. Only data + assumptions about errors and biases yield inferences, he said, and he urged his colleagues to get a better quantitative sense of the uncertainty that routinely surrounds their epidemiologic findings. Poole pointed out how statistically significant estimates are often overestimates of true values and therefore not “best estimates” as is often assumed. He warned that significant estimates might be “flashes in a pan which are fools’ gold,” and urged epidemilogists to preferentially report the precision rather than the statistical significance associated with their estimates.

Epidemiology Awards Given At Congress Luncheon

Multiple awards were given at the Congress of Epidemiology, including the Abraham Lilienfeld award to Brian MacMahon, Harvard University, and Anthony Miller, University of Toronto, and the best student paper award to Dora Il’yasova, University of North Carolina. Student prizes were also awarded to Unhee Lim, Cornell Univesity, and Rui Jiang, Harvard University, as first and second runner ups, respectively. Honorable mention was given to Jennifer Peck, University of North Carolina, and Tien Yin Wong, University of Wisconsin.

Walter Willett accepted the prize on behalf of Brian MacMahon and said that MacMahon developed chronic disease epidemiology as we know it today and trained a whole generation of epidemiologists. He credited MacMahon with developing teaching materials which are “not surpassed even up to now”.

Co-winner Anthony Miller was present to accept his award. He was credited with creating the Canadian Cancer Institute and developing the first National Death Index in Canada. In accepting the award, Miller expressed his gratitude for the interactions he has had over the years with colleagues at high levels of the US health establishment which enriched his program in Toronto, he said.

 

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