RESUMEN
Reanalysis and reinterpretation occur when a person other than the original investigator obtains an epidemiologic data set and conducts analyses to evaluate the quality, reliability or validity of the dataset, methods, results or conclusions reported by the original investigator. We propose ethical guidelines with regard to the duty of original investigators to cooperate with competent impartial reanalysis and for the sponsors of reanalysis and reinterpretation and the epidemiologists who carry it out. The rights and interests of these parties and of the public interest need to be protected.
Asunto(s)
Conducta Cooperativa , Estudios Epidemiológicos , Guías como Asunto , Relaciones Interprofesionales/ética , Humanos , Estados UnidosRESUMEN
A California Department of Health Services program dealt with possible health effects from Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMF) from power lines. With the advice of stakeholders, and well before any risk determinations were made, transparent policy analyses about the power grid and schools asked the question, "How confident must one be of how big an effect before one would adopt cheap or expensive EMF avoidance measures?" A risk evaluation was carried out with features that promoted transparency. It was formatted to provide a policy-neutral "degree of certainty of causality" to adherents of utilitarian, environmental justice, and libertarian policy frameworks. Though the program had many features advocated by adherents of the precautionary principle, it might be better characterized as following "Transparent Democratic Foresight Strategies," since no single principle justifies the strategies used in this participatory program, and it examined the pros and cons of options but made no recommendations, precautionary or otherwise.
