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I do not use
the term “hero” lightly. But another hero, and a contemporary one in
epidemiology, is the physician-scientist, Barry Marshall, who hails from my
hometown of Perth, Western Australia. His “ah-ha” experience in the
laboratory led him to the radical hypothesis that peptic ulcers resulted
from infection by the bacterium, Helicobacter pylori. For the cause
of science, Marshall became ill as a consequence of drinking a solution
contaminated with this bacterium, and also endured ridicule from the global
medical establishment for his discovery. Fortunately for him, professional
vindication came while he was still a young man.
Irrespective of the method or source of formulation, the term hypothesis is
in disfavor among contemporary risk factor epidemiologists. Indeed, related
to a sometime contentious biostatistical issue, epidemiologists strongly
prefer to say that they are evaluating research questions rather than
testing hypotheses. However, even if the hypothesis is no longer a central
concept in epidemiologic research in the formal sense, it is still useful to
gain insight on how analytic epidemiologists inform their thinking.
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