Show cover of Casual Inference

Casual Inference

Keep it casual with the Casual Inference podcast. Your hosts Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray talk all things epidemiology, statistics, data science, causal inference, and public health. Sponsored by the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Tracks

Sensitivity Analyses for Unmeasured Confounders | Season 4 Episode 7
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about confounding! ✍️ Lucy's new paper: Sensitivity Analyses for Unmeasured Confounders Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
38:46 3/14/23
Randomized Controlled Trials: Efficacy versus Effectiveness, Safety vs Safetiness | Season 4 Episode 6
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about randomized controlled trials, thinking about efficacy vs effectiveness and saftey vs safetiness. ✍️ Frank Harrell's blog post "Randomized Clinical Trials Do Not Mimic Clinical Practice, Thank Goodness" Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
67:25 2/28/23
The Value of Instrumental Variables with Maria Glymour | Season 4 Episode 5
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Maria Glymour, Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatstics at UCSF and incoming chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University. Maria successfully convinces Ellie and Lucy that instrumental variables can be very useful in epidemiology.  Follow up: ✍️ Andrew Heiss's blog post on marginal and conditional effects for GLMMs Follow along on Twitter: Maria Glymour: @MariaGlymour The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
60:22 12/10/22
Methods chat about personalized medicine and positivity in causal inference | Season 4 Episode 4
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about critiquing methods research, average treatment effects, and positivity violations! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
51:43 11/30/22
Hot takes and logistic regression love with Travis Gerke | Season 4 Episode 3
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Travis Gerke, Director of Data Science at The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC). This episode has lots of hot takes and lots of love for logistic regression! Follow along on Twitter: Travis Gerke: @travisgerke The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
54:20 11/16/22
Counterfactual Thinking: Biomarkers, Napster, and Ice-T | Season 4 Episode 2
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about counterfactuals! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
57:49 11/4/22
Population and Biomedical Data Science with Enrique Schisterman | Season 4 Episode 1
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat with Enrique Schisterman, Perelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania, about the future of epidemiology. Follow along on Twitter: Enrique: @eschisterman1 The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
54:51 10/13/22
What is the value of a p-value with Charlie Poole and Chuck Scales | Season 3 Episode 13
In this episode we play the audio from a recent panel discussion co-sponsored by UNC TraCS, Duke University and Wake Forest U CTSA Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) Cores. The panelists were Charles Poole (Associate Professor of Epidemiology, UNC) Lucy D'Agostino McGowan, and Charles Scales (Associate Professor of Surgery, Duke University) and it was facilitated by Marcella Boynton (Assistant Professor, General Internal Medicine, UNC/NC TraCS). 🎥 The video of the panel can be found here 🎞 Lucy's slides 📃 The ASA Statement on p-values 📃 The American Statistician issue on p-values following the SSI conference Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade
76:11 5/3/22
It Depends with Sander Greenland | Season 3 Episode 12
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Sander Greenland, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Statistics at UCLA. Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
87:55 4/18/22
The Intersection of Industrial Engineering and Causal Inference with Toyya Pujol | Season 3 Episode 11
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Toyya Pujol, Operations Researcher at RAND Corporation. Follow along on Twitter: Toyya: @toyyapujol The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats  
64:35 4/5/22
The Intersection of Machine Learning and Causal Inference with Maggie Makar | Season 3 Episode 10
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Maggie Makar, Presidential postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. Follow along on Twitter: Maggie: @Maggiemakar The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Slide link: https://bit.ly/3DnQai5 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade Edited by Quinn Rose: aspiringrobot.com
53:52 3/14/22
Artificial Intelligence, Personalized Medicine, and Causal Bounds with Judea Pearl | Season 3 Episode 9
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Judea Pearl, Chancellor professor of computer science and statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. 📄 Judea's recent papers 📖 Book of Why Follow along on Twitter: Judea: @yudapearl The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Slide link: https://bit.ly/3DnQai5 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade  
55:04 2/28/22
The history of John Snow, Cholera, and Cookies with Chris Schaich | Season 3 Episode 8
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with #EpiCookieChallenge winner, Chris Schaich about the epidemiologist John Snow. Dr. Schaich is an assistant professor at Wake Forest School of Medicine in the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center. Follow along on Twitter: Chris: @Chris_Schaich The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Slide link: https://bit.ly/3DnQai5 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade  
48:45 2/14/22
Asking questions that matter, getting answers that help | Season 3 Episode 7
  In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about their Spotify Wrapped for Casual Inference, and Ellie Murray talks about causal inference for complex data with the University of Minnesota’s epidemiology department. Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Slide link: https://bit.ly/3DnQai5 Transcript (auto-generated): https://bit.ly/3y4OskQ 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.  
71:47 12/5/21
A Casual Look at Causal Inference History | Season 3 Episode 6
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat about the history of causal inference, tracing the origins across disciplines from statistics to economics, epidemiology, and computer science, discussing contributions from Rubin, Robins, Pearl, and more! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
72:06 11/22/21
Hanging out in the data science trough of disillusionment with Hilary Parker | Season 3 Episode 5
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Hilary Parker about design thinking for data analysis, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the potential data behind baby Yoda. Follow along on Twitter: Hilary: @hspter The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
69:42 11/8/21
Metascience with Noah Haber | Season 3 Episode 4
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Noah Haber about metascience, causal language in the literature, and more! 🥇 Causal Inference Nobel Prize Press Release 📝 Causal and Associational Linking Language From Observational Research and Health Evaluation Literature in Practice: A systematic language evaluation 📝 What Should Researchers Expect When They Replicate Studies? A Statistical View of Replicability in Psychological Science 📝 Design principles of data analysis 📝 Causal language and strength of inference in academic and media articles shared in social media (CLAIMS): A systematic review 🔗 Reading past headlines [part 1] 🔗 Reading past headlines [part 2] Follow along on Twitter: Noah: @NoahHaber The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
68:13 10/25/21
Solving Optimization Problems in Healthcare and Disney Theme Parks with Len Testa | Season 3 Episode 3
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Len Testa, president of TouringPlans, about solving optimization problems in travel and healthcare. 📦 Lucy's R package with touringplans data Len's slide on model choices: Follow along on Twitter: Len: @LenTesta The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
57:57 10/11/21
Causal Inference and Network Science for Public Health with Ashley Buchanan | Season 3 Episode 2
In this episode Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray chat with Ashley Buchanan about causal inference with a focus on networks. Dr. Buchanan is an assistant professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Rhode Island. 🔗 Dr. Buchanan's website Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
59:48 9/27/21
Coronavirus Rapid Tests Sensitivity, Specificity, Messaging, and Use Cases | Season 3 Episode 1
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan do a series recap and then discuss sensitivity, specificity, and appropriate messaging in the context of coronavirus rapid tests. 📝 Evaluation of the Abbott BinaxNOW rapid antigen test for SARS-CoV-2 infection in children: Implications for screening in a school setting 📝 NY Times article: One in 5,000 🐦 Kareem Carr's tweet about omitted variable bias in randomized controlled trials 📝 Israeli data: How can efficacy vs. severe disease be strong when 60% of hospitalized are vaccinated? 🦠 A calculator that lets you estimate COVID risk [microcovid] In the (Local) News 📰 Will Podcasting and Social Media Replace Journals and Traditional Science Communication? No, but... Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
61:50 9/13/21
Our Michael Jordan Episode | Season 2 Episode 5
In this 23rd episode of Casual Inference Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat about fixed vs random effect, complete a statistics challenge, and talk about DAGs. 🐦 Tweet from @jtc475 about fixed vs random effects terminology 🎲 This is Statistics March Randomness Challenge 📝 Lucy, Kyra, and Ellie's paper "Quantifying Uncertainty in Infectious Disease Mechanistic Models" PeDAGogy Here are the two Bridgerton DAGs we discussed. 1. Tweet submitted by @IGMoore:  2. Tweet submitted by @AlenaSorensen Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
38:51 3/2/21
Health Policy with Julia Raifman | Season 2 Episode 4
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan chat with Julia Raifman about health policy, a recent study on unemployment insurance and food insecurity, and anti racism in academia. Dr. Raifman is an assistant professor of Health Law, Policy, and Management at Boston University. Her research focuses on how health and social policies drive population health and health disparities. 📝 Geoffrey Rose's paper Sick Individuals and Sick Populations 📝Julia’s recent paper - Association Between Receipt of Unemployment Insurance and Food Insecurity Among People Who Lost Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States PeDAGogy Come up with a Bridgerton DAG and share it with us on Twitter! Here is one for inspiration.   Me: "Hi please fund me to do innovative research" Also me: "Sure I'll lead a DAG discussion on the @PWGTennant et al. @IJEeditorial paper... I'd like to focus on how offensively hot the guy from Bridgerton is."@mrc_ieu and @BristolTARG PhD student Mark Gibson made my day! pic.twitter.com/CFOoYhMGjt — Gareth Griffith (@Garethjgriffith) February 1, 2021 Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Julia: @JuliaRaifman Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
65:40 2/8/21
Celebrating 100 years with a look forwards and back with the D'Agostinos | Season 2 Episode 3
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan chat with Ralph D’Agostino Sr. and Ralph D’Agostino Jr. about their careers in statistics, looking back at how things have developed and forward at where they see the world of statistics and epidemiology going. We’re excited to kick off the 100th year of the American Journal of Epidemiology with this episode. Ralph D’Agostino Sr. is a professor of Mathematics/Statistics, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology at Boston University. He has been the lead biostatistician for the Framingham Heart Study, a biostatistical consultant to The New England Journal of Medicine, an editor of Statistics in Medicine and lead editor of their Tutorials, and a member and consultant on FDA committees. His major fields of research are clinical trials, prognostic models, longitudinal analysis, multivariate analysis, robustness, and outcomes/effectiveness research.  Ralph D’Agostino Jr. is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science at Wake Forest University where he is the Director of the Biostatistics Core of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. Methodologically his research includes developing statistical techniques for evaluating data from observational settings, handling missing data in applied problems, and developing predictive functions to identify prospectively patients at elevated risk for future negative outcomes. Some of his recent work includes the development of methods using propensity score models to identify safety signals in large retrospective databases.  It also turns out they are Lucy’s father and grandfather, so we have 3 generations of statisticians on the pod! We also have Amit Sasson on to discuss the winning cookie from the #EpiCookieChallenge as well as her work in causal inference! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.  
62:56 1/21/21
The Most Ambitious Crossover | Season 2 Episode 2
In honor of the Society for Epidemiologic Research 2020 Meeting, the hosts of four epidemiology podcasts came together to record the first ever “crossover event” to talk about their experiences recording our shows and what podcasting can bring to the table for the field of epidemiology. Join the hosts of Epidemiology Counts (Bryan James), SERiousEPi (Matt Fox, Hailey Banack), Casual Inference (Lucy D’Agostino McGowan), and Shiny Epi People (Lisa Bodnar) as they engage in a fun and informative (we hope!) conversation of the burgeoning field of epidemiology podcasting, emceed by Geetika Kalloo.
52:25 12/15/20
Happy Anniversary to Us! | Season 2 Episode 1
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat about ecological studies, the new Pfizer vaccine interim analysis, and more! 📈 Vanderbilt University Department of Health Policy's COVID-19 Deaths in Tennessee and Adoption of Mask Requirements (h/t Peter Rebeiro)  📈 The original masks v no masks graph 🗞 Pfizer's press release about the interim analysis for their vaccine trial 📓 Pfizer's vaccine trial protocol PeDAGogy Here is the DAG from our peDAGogy segment: Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.  
54:49 11/13/20
Why Everyone is Excited About Causal Inference These Days with Roger Peng | Episode 18
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat about communicating uncertainty, how air pollution policy is determined, and whether causal inference is a fad with Dr. Roger Peng from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Roger: @rdpeng 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.  
59:27 10/30/20
Thinking About Schools Reopening From a Causal Perspective with Emily Oster | Episode 17
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan talk about the causal questions linked to schools opening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then they have Dr. Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown University, on to discuss her thoughts on and contributions to this area. 📄 Emily's Atlantic Piece Schools aren't super-spreader events 📊 COVID-19 School Response Dashboard Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Emily: @profemilyoster Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
74:51 10/16/20
An Ode to Generalized Linear Models | Episode 16
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan casually discuss linear versus logistic regression, prediction versus inference, generalized linear models, and more! 📄Robin Gomila's paper: "Logistic or linear? Estimating causal effects on experimental treatments on binary outcomes using regression analysis" 🐦 Robin's twitter thread about the paper Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
45:55 10/2/20
Methodological Advances in Causal Inference with Betsy Ogburn | Episode 15
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan discuss methodological advancement in causal inference with Dr. Elizabeth Ogburn from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 📄 Wang & Blei's The Blessings of Multiple Causes paper 🦠 COVID-19 Collaboration Platform 📈 COVID-19 Meta-dashboard of dashboards Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats Betsy: @BetsyOgburn 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
74:53 9/17/20
Casual Inference Live from SER | Episode 14
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan are live for Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) week! Follow along on Twitter: The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi Ellie: @EpiEllie Lucy: @LucyStats 🎶 Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade. 👩‍🎨 Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
50:35 6/24/20