[Calavar]

> In general, if you can think of an obvious confounding factor in about five seconds, then it’s a safe assumption that professional researchers thought of it too.

I work in academic medicine. I read a lot of papers. This is not at all a given in my experience, except maybe in the tippy top journals (Nature, NEJM). When in doubt, read the paper, see if they mention the confounder you thought of.

[oldgradstudent]

Not even NEJM:

Recent letter to the editor in NEJM about that paper that showed 90% drop in Covid-related mortality after the first booster:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683

It turns out that there was also a similar non-disclosed drop in non-Covid-related mortality. Either we discovered a magic elixir, or the entire effect is probably just confounding.

The original authors even say in their response that

> However, boosters were generally not administered to hospitalized patients who were at high risk for death from any cause.

They never even attempted to control for it.

Edit: at least NEJM accepts letters to the editor about the crap it publishes.

[Iulioh]

>it’s a safe assumption that professional researchers thought of it too.

It's a safe assumption that they though of it

BUT

Testing for it and getting useful data of something like a survey is a different story.

For example for a thing like that a survey could do more harm than good if the principles aren't really strict.

It wouldn't surprise me that some researchers could have just ignored not measurable data like that for the analysis. (staring if ofc)