Content tagged as 'Academic'

I have, for some time, wanted to respond to Sandro Galea’s essay on a Consequentialist Epidemiology, published in 2013 (!) in the American Journal of Epidemiology. It is hard to argue against the importance of consequentialism for academic epidemiology. It is equally hard to dismiss Galea’s concerns about our lack of influence with funders and policy makers. However, my views beyond this diverge from Professor Galea’s, and in the spirit of his “provocation,” I would like to respectfully offer an alternate perspective.

Is it ever ok to conduct an exploratory data analysis, for the purpose of “generating hypotheses”?

As of today I am a Senior Lecturer at the Clinical Research Facility Cork. I am feeling reflective. In the 5 short years following my PhD, I went from the USA, to England, to Brazil, to Ireland. I have gone from Lecturer, to Post-Doc, to Senior Lecturer, in that order. I started in pursuit of a career in public health nutrition, but now work primarily as a biostatistician conducting clinical research. It’s been a strange path, though strange paths in academia are starting to feel awfully normal. Apologies for my narcissism and any name dropping. I hope this is helpful.

Research data should be shared. This view is widespread in academia and common among research funders. Regardless, most research datasets remain locked away. Sometimes data are held back for less than admirable reasons, but they can also be held back with good intent. For example, access to data is sometimes restricted in order to maximize opportunities for early career researchers to publish papers using the data. I believe this is instead counter-productive for ECRs.

The image below is from the WHO, and I don’t like it.