Assumptions kill

Sensitivity analysis: distributional assumptions and confounding assumptions.

In a presentation of various methods for assessing the sensitivity of regression results to unmeasured confounding, Lin, Psaty, and Kronmal (1998, Biometrics54, 948-963) use a conditional independence assumption to derive algebraic relationships between the true exposure effect and the apparent exposure effect in a reduced model that does not control for the unmeasured confounding variable. How...

DNA vaccines and apoptosis: to kill or not to kill?

The Journal of Clinical Investigation | July 2003 | Volume 112 | Number 1 RNase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 100:4102-4107. 14. Shinkura, R., et al. 2003. The influence of transcriptional orientation on endogenous switch region function. Nat. Immunol. 4:435–441. 15. Yu, K., Chedin, F., Hsieh, C.L., Wilson, T.E., and Lieber, M.R. 2003. R-loops at immunoglobulin class switch regions in the ch...

Do genes allow inflammation to kill or not to kill?

Philosophical Assumptions

The historical development of concepts of causality in philosophy is described. Since the Enlightenment and the growth of science, exponents of the two most important concepts, determinism and teleology, have been in conflict. At the inception of psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth century this conflict was particularly intense. It was the cause of the first major schism in psychoanalys...

A lysin to kill

An enzyme produced by a bacteriophage can enter human cells and kill intracellular Streptococcus pyogenes.