OBJECTIVE We have previously shown that racial composition of behavioral intervention groups does not affect achieved weight loss. However, it is unclear if the race of the interventionist affects intervention outcomes. The objective of this analysis is to estimate the impact of race concordance between participant and interventionist on weight change in the initial weight loss phase (phase I) ...

We argue that Koch's postulates are best understood within an interventionist account of causation, in the sense described in Woodward (2003). We show how this treatment helps to resolve interpretive puzzles associated with Koch's work and how it clarifies the different roles the postulates play in providing useful, yet not universal criteria for disease causation. Our paper is an effort at rat...

OBJECTIVE To compare outcomes associated with expectant vs. interventionist care of severe preeclampsia in observational studies. DATA SOURCES Medline (01/1980-07/2007), bibliographies of retrieved papers, personal files, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. STUDY SELECTION Expectant or interventionist care of preeclampsia at <34 wk. TABULATION, INTEGRATION, RESULTS: Data abstraction in...

Woodward’s interventionist theory of causation is beset by a problem of circularity: the analysis of causes is in terms of interventions, and the analysis of interventions is in terms of causes. This is not in itself an argument against the correctness of the analysis. But by requiring us to have causal knowledge prior to making any judgements about causation, Woodward’s theory does make it mys...

This paper describes in overview the complexity of the impact of information technology and telecommunications on rural, regional and remote communities. It defines an extensive and broad-ranging programme of research, which ultimately focuses on maintaining, ideally enhancing, the sustainablity of the Victorian city of Warrnambool through a strategic approach to the so called “Internet Revolut...

Intervention theories of causality define a relationship as causal if appropriately specified interventions to manipulate a putative cause tend to produce changes in the putative effect. Interventionist causal theories are commonly formalized by using directed graphs to represent causal relationships, local probability models to quantify the relationship between cause and effect, and a special ...

inference is of course appealing. However, pragmatism cannot be really considered as a scientific method; it is essentially a practice. Further, this approach remains relatively vague, which is problematic as there is no point in estimating a causal effect that is not well defined, especially for ‘policy makers who will be unable to translate [this vague causal effect] into effective interventi...