
Casual Inference
Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray
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Top 10 Casual Inference Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Casual Inference episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Casual Inference for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Casual Inference episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

What Sports and Feminism can tell us about Causal Inference with Sheree Bekker & Stephen Mumford | Season 5 Episode 9
Casual Inference
06/12/24 โข 49 min
Sheree Bekker & Stephen Mumford are Co-directors of the Feminist Sport Lab and have a book coming soon: โOpen Play: the case for feminist sportโ, coming Spring 2025. Reaktion Books (UK), University of Chicago Press (US).
Sheree Bekker: Associate Professor, University of Bath, Department for Health,
Stephen Mumford, Professor of Metaphysics, Durham University A
- Author of Dispositions (Oxford, 1998), Russell on Metaphysics (Routledge, 2003), Laws in Nature (Routledge, 2004), David Armstrong (Acumen, 2007), Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion (Routledge, 2011), Getting Causes from Powers (Oxford, 2011 with Rani Lill Anjum), Metaphysics: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012) and Causation: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2013 with Rani Lill Anjum). I was editor of George Molnar's posthumous Powers: a Study in Metaphysics (Oxford, 2003) and Metaphysics and Science (Oxford, 2013 with Matthew Tugby).
- Feminist Sport Lab: https://www.feministsportlab.com
- Causation: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Mumford & Rani Lill Anjum: https://academic.oup.com/book/616
- Faye Norby, Iditarod champion & epidemiologist: https://www.kfyrtv.com/2024/03/28/faye-norby-finishes-iditarod-trail-womens-foot-champion/?outputType=amp
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDadeEdited by Cameron Bopp

02/21/24 โข 17 min
Ellie and Lucy kick off the season and introduce our new executive buzzer, Melita! Melita is a masters student in statistics at Wake Forest University and will be helping out with the podcast (and keeping Lucy and Ellie from using too much jargon!)
Pros & Cons of RCT paper:
- Fernainy, P., Cohen, A.A., Murray, E. et al. Rethinking the pros and cons of randomized controlled trials and observational studies in the era of big data and advanced methods: a panel discussion. BMC Proc 18 (Suppl 2), 1 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12919-023-00285-8
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDadeEdited by Cameron Bopp

Health Policy with Julia Raifman | Season 2 Episode 4
Casual Inference
02/08/21 โข 65 min
In this episode Ellie Murray and Lucy DโAgostino McGowan chat with Julia Raifman about health policy, a recent study on unemployment insurance and food insecurity, and anti racism in academia. Dr. Raifman is an assistant professor of Health Law, Policy, and Management at Boston University. Her research focuses on how health and social policies drive population health and health disparities.
๐ Geoffrey Rose's paper Sick Individuals and Sick Populations
PeDAGogy
Come up with a Bridgerton DAG and share it with us on Twitter! Here is one for inspiration.
Me: "Hi please fund me to do innovative research" Also me: "Sure I'll lead a DAG discussion on the @PWGTennant et al. @IJEeditorial paper... I'd like to focus on how offensively hot the guy from Bridgerton is."@mrc_ieu and @BristolTARG PhD student Mark Gibson made my day! pic.twitter.com/CFOoYhMGjt
โ Gareth Griffith (@Garethjgriffith) February 1, 2021Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Julia: @JuliaRaifman
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
๐ฉโ๐จ Our artwork is by Allison Horst.

Immortal Time Bias | Season 5 Episode 3
Casual Inference
03/20/24 โข 34 min
- The Clone-Censor-Weight Method in Pharmacoepidemiologic Research: Foundations and Methodological Implementation: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40471-024-00346-2
- Immortal time in pregnancy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36805380/
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDadeEdited by Cameron Bopp

05/29/24 โข 51 min
Erick Scott is founder of cStructure, a causal science startup. Erick has expertise in medicine, public health, and computational biology.
- [email protected]
- โA causal roadmap for generating high-quality real-world evidenceโ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10603361/
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDadeEdited by Cameron Bopp

05/16/24 โข 59 min
Nima Hejazi is an assistant professor in biostatistics at Harvard University. His methodological work often draws upon tools and ideas from semi- and non-parametric inference, high-dimensional and large-scale inference, targeted or debiased machine learning (e.g., targeted minimum loss estimation, method of sieves), and computational statistics.
- Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers by Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44955325
- Nima is on Twitter/X as @nshejazi ( https://twitter.com/nshejazi) and my academic webpage is https://nimahejazi.org
- Recent translational review paper (intended for the infectious disease science community) I was involved in describing some causal/statistical frameworks for evaluating immune markers as mediators / surrogate endpoints: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38458870/
- The tlverse software ecosystem is on GitHub at https://github.com/tlverse and the tlverse handbook is freely available at https://tlverse.org/tlverse-handbook/
- Dr. Hejazi annually co-teaches a causal mediation analysis workshop at SER, and notes from the latest offering are freely available at https://codex.nimahejazi.org/ser2023_mediation_workshop/
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDadeEdited by Cameron Bopp

02/06/20 โข 79 min
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat with Whitney Robinson from the Departments of Epidemiology at University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health
Here are some links to the content we talk about in this episode:
๐ Jeffrey Rose article (reprint)
๐ Chandra Fordโs public health praxis paper
๐ Whitneyโs paper with Tyler VanderWeele on race as a cause
๐ Miguel Hernanโs paper on well-defined interventions: Does water kill?
๐ NIH funding paper
๐ป Acadames podcast
๐ Miguel Hernanโs AJE paper on selection bias without colliders
๐ฐ Local news
- We talk about novel Coronavirus and how you can get answers to your questions
- ๐We also chat about the infectious disease listserv ProMed Mail
- ๐ And the BlueDot โartificial epidemiologistโ.
PeDAGogy:
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
- Whitney: @WhitneyEpi
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
๐ฉโ๐จ Our artwork is by Allison Horst.

Science Communication with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz | Episode 05
Casual Inference
01/09/20 โข 83 min
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan chat with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist studying at the University of Wollongong and a science communication writer for the Guardian, Observer, and more!
Here are some links to the content we talk about in this episode:
๐ Gideon's post on relative versus absolute risk
๐ฆ Gideon's twitter account @justsaysrisks
๐Gideon's Sensationalist Science Podcast
โ๏ธ Gideon on Medium
๐ง Email Gideon for advice on getting started in Sci Comm: [email protected]
๐ฉโ๐ซ PeDAGogy
- We discussed a paper recently published in BMJ on the association between arts engagement and mortality
- Andrew Heiss tweeted a DAG with a proposed relationship between opera and longevity
- Robert Platt also tweeted about this, suggesting that there may be an explanation other than confounding
๐ฐ Global news
- The New York Times wrote an article on the BMJ paper that we discussed in peDAGogy
- Here is some info on the BMJ Christmas Issue
- Lucy and Jeff Leekโs clickbait-y Ted-ed lesson on clickbait
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
- Gid: @GidMK
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.๐ฉโ๐จ Our artwork is by Allison Horst.

The Most Ambitious Crossover | Season 2 Episode 2
Casual Inference
12/15/20 โข 52 min
In honor of the Society for Epidemiologic Research 2020 Meeting, the hosts of four epidemiology podcasts came together to record the first ever โcrossover eventโ to talk about their experiences recording our shows and what podcasting can bring to the table for the field of epidemiology. Join the hosts of Epidemiology Counts (Bryan James), SERiousEPi (Matt Fox, Hailey Banack), Casual Inference (Lucy DโAgostino McGowan), and Shiny Epi People (Lisa Bodnar) as they engage in a fun and informative (we hope!) conversation of the burgeoning field of epidemiology podcasting, emceed by Geetika Kalloo.

Casual Inference Live from SER | Episode 14
Casual Inference
06/24/20 โข 50 min
Ellie Murray and Lucy D'Agostino McGowan are live for Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) week!
Follow along on Twitter:
- The American Journal of Epidemiology: @AmJEpi
- Ellie: @EpiEllie
- Lucy: @LucyStats
๐ถ Our intro/outro music is courtesy of Joseph McDade.
๐ฉโ๐จ Our artwork is by Allison Horst.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Casual Inference have?
Casual Inference currently has 64 episodes available.
What topics does Casual Inference cover?
The podcast is about Mathematics, Podcasts, Epidemiology and Science.
What is the most popular episode on Casual Inference?
The episode title 'Community Engagement, Health Disparities, and Measure Development with Melody Goodman | Episode 13' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Casual Inference?
The average episode length on Casual Inference is 58 minutes.
How often are episodes of Casual Inference released?
Episodes of Casual Inference are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Casual Inference?
The first episode of Casual Inference was released on Nov 1, 2019.
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