Establishing Causality in Medical Research

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Exploration of the challenges and significance of determining causality in medical studies, with examples such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the discredited claim regarding MMR vaccine and autism. Discussion on scientific methodologies for establishing causality, the impact of anecdotal reasoning on vaccine perceptions, insights into the COVID-19 response challenges, and reflections on breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals.

As a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee and a former member of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices to the CDC, Dr. Paul Offit has been in the room for the creation of policies that have affected hundreds of millions of people.

Four years after the outbreak of COVID-19, he reflects on our response to the pandemic: what went well and what didn't.

Shermer and Offit discuss: mRNA vaccines • loss of trust in medical and scientific institutions • overall assessment of what went right and wrong • mandates vs. recommendations • economic costs • lab leak hypothesis vs. zoonomic hypothesis • debating anti-vaxxers • treatments • high risk vs. low risk groups

Paul Offit is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. Offit has published more than 170 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC and WHO.