Mollie Wood

Not all heroes etc etc

But I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do.

DAG display

Rearranging variables can make this clearer. In plot below, it's relatively easy to see that total effect needs no adjustment, and that direct effect from A to Y needs to block the indirect path that traverses D and C. D is a collider, and C the child of the collider, hence adjustment on B is needed

This is a hell of a year to be staring down the tenure clock, having yet to secure 'R01 or equivalent' funding. I've submitted 10 proposals this year: 6 as PI, 2 foundations.

It's weird to feel both anxious about this, and also guilty for feeling anxious about this amid all the *gestures wildly*

I went to undergrad with a guy who thought eating was a waste of time, so he blended and drank all his meals. I can’t remember his name, but the tuna fish sandwich shakes will be branded into my brain until the day I die.

Researcher in PharmacoEpidemiology and Biostatistics (289818) | University of Oslo Job title: Researcher in PharmacoEpidemiology and Biostatistics (289818), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Tuesday, December 2, 2025

I'm hiring a researcher to work on several ongoing funded projects at the University of Oslo! Details below:
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Potential outcomes tabs in Outlook! DAGs in your Google query! Marginal structural models to help you plan your next vacation!

Not to mention "The journal is affiliated with the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society (NAFIPS)" !!

I have a weekly meeting with a USian who works in Norway and this is the first time our 10-minute politics-related therapy session at the top of the hour has been hopeful, so.

The official home of the Python Programming Language

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
🧵

Ah yes, let's try the "have you tried turning it off and on again" approach to fixing US healthcare.

A picture of a chocolate labrador curled up on a pile of throw pillows and looking sleepily at the camera

Weekly Ruport: bad news cycle means more emotional support pillows

As a post script, I also want to say that I find the “medically necessary” language around APAP use ridiculous and insulting. Do they think pregnant women are taking acetaminophen for fun? Or mistaking the pills for candy?

Prenatal paracetamol exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes in preschool‐aged children Background Recent studies have suggested an association between prenatal paracetamol exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. However, these findings may be confounded by unmeas...

PPE 2019 study: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ppe.12568

Neurodevelopmental problems at 18 months among children exposed to paracetamol in utero: a propensity score matched cohort study Abstract. Background: Previous studies showed that children exposed to paracetamol during fetal life might have an increased risk of neurodevelopmental pro

IJE 2015 study: academic.oup.com/ije/article/...

Annotations and Reflections Click on the article title to read more.

You wouldn’t know it from this thread, but other people have opinions about APAP in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes. @perdamkier.bsky.social in particular has written a lot about the topic, including this piece: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

...for specific conditions during pregnancy. Active comparator designs would strengthen these types of studies significantly, particularly for conditions where “no treatment” is not a realistic or ethical recommendation.

People taking high doses of APAP for long periods of time aren’t irresponsible, they’re desperate. Most frustratingly, APAP isn’t a particularly good drug for chronic pain conditions. All of which is to say: I think research needs to focus more on comparing clinically meaningful treatments...

Patterns and predictors of analgesic use in pregnancy: a longitudinal drug utilization study with special focus on women with migraine - BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth Background Few studies have investigated the drug utilization patterns and factors predicting drug use in pregnant women with migraine. This longitudinal drug utilization study aimed to describe patte...

And in this small study done in a single hospital in Norway, we saw many women switching from previous migraine treatments to APAP, and reporting high levels of pain not managed by APAP: bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Polypharmacy and comorbidities during pregnancy in a cohort of women with migraine - Mollie E Wood, Rebecca C Burch, Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, 2021 Objective To describe longitudinal patterns of medication use throughout pregnancy in women with migraine. Methods We used the IBM MarketScan healthcare claims...

But it is critical to understand what is driving high-dose, long-duration APAP use in pregnancy. In this descriptive study of migraine in pregnancy, we saw decreasing use of other drugs and increases in APAP: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

My pet hypothesis, for which I only have indirect evidence, is something like this: I think it is possible that very high doses of APAP over extended periods of time (i.e., 500+mg daily for multiple weeks) could cause neurodevelopmental differences in exposed fetuses.

Why is acetaminophen so hard to study? Reason 4: dose, duration, and timing of use are likely important, which amplifies the measurement problem (Reason 1), makes the confounding problem worse (Reason 2), and is further hampered by the selection problem (Reason 3).

...how do we think about the counterfactual here? The children with prenatal APAP exposure might not have been born, had their parent not used APAP.

Why is acetaminophen so hard to study? Reason 3: studies of neurodevelopment almost always condition on a live birth. But untreated fever in early pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, so...

...much of the use for pain conditions is among people who were managed on a different (more effective) drug before pregnancy and then switched when they became pregnant.

Why is acetaminophen so hard to study? Reason 2: there is a huge range of reasons for using APAP, all of which have different relationships with neurodevelopment. People take APAP for pain and fever, yes, but...

Some studies have used biomarkers (urine, meconium), but APAP is metabolized quickly so these measures are only a snapshot for specific time windows.

Why is acetaminophen so hard to study? Reason 1: it’s hard to measure. Acetaminophen (APAP) is available over the counter and by prescription, alone or in combination with other medications. Studies often rely on parental recall, which varies in accuracy, or prescription fills, which miss OTC use.

I’ve also written a commentary about some of the challenges (posted here by @dremilyrsmith.bsky.social ) bsky.app/profile/drem...

I’ve published 2 papers on acetaminophen in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes, both as methods supervisor for a doctoral student who was the first author, from the MoBa study. I’ll drop the links at the end of the thread- both are open access either via PMC or the journal website.