PEDIATRICS Vol. 93 No. 4 April 1994, pp. 593
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BRADFORD HILL ON CAUSALITY

When Bradford Hill's famous case-control study of the association between smoking and lung cancer was criticized, he listed the inferences used to establish causality,

Strength of association

Consistency

Specificity

Relationship in time

Biological gradient

Biological plausibility

Coherence of evidence

Experiment

Analogy

and said, "None of these nine viewpoints can bring indisputable evidence for or against a cause and effect hypothesis and, equally, none can be required as a sine qua non. What they can do, with greaten or less strength, is to help answer the fundamental question—is there any other way of explaining the set of facts before us, is there any other answer equally, or more, likely than cause and effect?