Epidemiology Discussion - Forum Post on Epidemiology

Running head: EPIDEMIOLOGY DISCUSSION 1
Forum Post on Epidemiology
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EPIDEMIOLOGY DISCUSSION 2
Trending Discussion on Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the branch of medical science that discusses the incidence of
diseases, its distribution, potential control methods, and other relevant health factors for the
diseases. The following section will discuss three current internet discussion posts on the
field of epidemiology and perform analysis of the posts to determine its relevancy and
importance in the public health sector.
Post Analysis
The first article by Adam (2019) on Nature.com discusses the gene-based Mendelian
randomization that has been used by scientists for too long now and how it is revolutionizing
the field of epidemiology. According to the author of the post, Mendelian randomization
offers a modest way of distinguishing between the causation from correlation currently.
However, before the advancement of genetics and its integration in the field of epidemiology,
scientists have used observation-based logical explanations for too long to determine and
differentiate between the terms ‘causation’ and ‘correlation’. With the integration of genetics,
the field of epidemiology has significantly improved, as genetic differences stand as proxies
for environmental exposure and remove confounding variables from analyses.
Mendelian randomization comes with several biases and the author picks several
methods including better data organization as a method to remove such biases. The article is
of great use to get a complete understanding of the use of Mendelian randomization in
epidemiology and relevant limitations to this study method, in addition to several solutions
for battling biases in the present time.
Another post on The-Scientist.com by Gorman (2020) discusses the same topic of
Mendelian Randomization in the field of epidemiology. However, the post has a greater focus
on the limitations of the study type and offers a critical analysis to determine the validity of
this genetic study type and its use in the field of epidemiology. Observational studies are