John Belmont

A great blue heron standing on a partially submerged branch.

A great blue heron, looking great.
Southeast Texas, October 04, 2025.

#Herons #Birds #Photography #NaturePhotography #BirdPhotography #BirdWatching

The screenshots are so cool (discussed mortality up to the end of 2023)

Interview in late 2025 discusses excess deaths (estimated as 2% by the interviewee and attributed to long covid) and drops in mortality due to glp1ra estimated to be ~6% by 2030.

insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/s...

I highly recommend this talk for anyone doing applied quantitative research! It was by far the best talk at #EuroCIM2025!

Pediatricians Are Rapidly Losing Incentives to Offer Vaccines The Trump administration’s crackdown is turning a difficult profession into an impossible one for some doctors.

Pediatrics has long endured a workforce shortage. Now the Trump administration’s crackdown on vaccines is turning a difficult profession into an impossible one. @katherinejwu.com spoke with pediatricians about the looming crisis their jobs may face:

An “immigration judge” is not an actual judge in the judicial branch. They are a DOJ employee.

As Judge Young, an actual judge, made clear in one of the truly essential parts of his Tuesday ruling. www.lawdork.com/p/judge-will...

the discussion of drop out in this is the most interesting part to me (and they use m-DAGs!), but just skimming it, I think they’ve considered only a case with every conceivable arrow affecting dropout which makes the summary table a little unfair IMO.

Hat needs to be bigger

Disection table

The Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio, built in 1637 at the original location of the University of Bologna. The university dates from 1563.

Pink Brugmansia - they love the warm damp mornings 🌱

Pink Brugmansia - they love the warm damp mornings 🌱

The estimands framework: a primer on the ICH E9(R1) addendum Estimands can be used in studies of healthcare interventions to clarify the interpretation of treatment effects. The addendum to the ICH E9 harmonised guideline on statistical principles for clinical ...

this paper by Brennan Kahan et al (where et al includes Tim) is pretty good I reckon: www.bmj.com/content/384/...

Clearing slots for Kristi Noem

Ellie Murray, ScD (@elliemurrayscd) It’s September which means RFK Jr will soon be releasing his promised report on the ‘causes’ of autism. We can prepare by learning some key types of research bias.

substack.com/@elliemurray...

There are so many things that trained medical personnel see and hear and feel that don’t get recorded in textbooks or the patient medical records. AI could assist in following guidelines. Not close to being able to practice by itself.

So much for the exclusion restriction I guess 😘

Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) here. RFK Jr. is a clear and present danger to all Americans, and to the world. He is a menace and a threat to life, health, and liberty, a mockery of a Health Secretary, and a true enemy of the people. Fire him now.

FOX: Do you agree with Florida ending all childhood vaccine mandates?

MEHMET OZ: I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations

Pulmonary sarcoidosis in the Nordic countries 1950-1982. Epidemiology and clinical picture The review is based on studies from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during 1950-1982. In general sarcoidosis was slightly more frequent in females than in males, especially after 40 years of age. The majority of cases were diagnosed bef...

ICYMI: Pulmonary sarcoidosis in the Nordic countries 1950-1982. Epidemiology and clinical picture

TARGET 2025 Statement This Special Communication introduces the Transparent Reporting of Observational Studies Emulating a Target Trial (TARGET) 2025 guideline, a consensus-based guidance for reporting observational studie...

The TARGET reporting guidelines for target trial emulation studies have arrived!

#EpiSky #CausalSky

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Epidemiology of pathologic myopia in UK adults with high myopia Aims To conduct the first cross-sectional epidemiological investigation of pathologic myopia (PM) in UK adults with high myopia.Methods Fundus photographs of 3024 highly myopic eyes (spherical equivalent refraction (SER) ≤–5.00D) from 2000 randomly sampled adults (aged 40–70 years) in the UK Biobank were double graded by an ophthalmic reading centre using the Meta-analysis for Pathologic Myopia framework. Adjudication was performed by one of two retinal specialists. Multivariable mixed-effects logistic regression was used to explore potential risk factors and fundus biomarkers—initially adjusting for SER, age and sex, before including these and other variables with p

Ophthopedia Update: Epidemiology of pathologic myopia in UK adults with high myopia: Aims

To conduct the first cross-sectional epidemiological investigation of pathologic myopia (PM) in UK adults with high myopia.Methods

Fundus photographs of 3024 highly myopic… #Ophthalmology #Ophthotwitter #BJO

Its probably nothing, but if it is... A rare copy number variant appears to significantly reduce the risk of schizophrenia.

I wrote about a rare genetic variant (a CNV) that appears to reduce the risk of schizophrenia diagnosis by ~5x, and why that's not as unambigously amazing as it sounds, but potentially still a pretty big deal.

Majorities of adults see decline of union membership as bad for the U.S. and working people The share of U.S. workers who belonged to a union in 2024 stood at 9.9%, down from 1983 when 20.1% of American workers were union members.

60% of US adults say the decline of union membership is bad for the country.

The new NIH grant review format and the iron law of unintended consequences The NIH introduced a revised approach to the peer review of grant applications in the most recent summer review rounds. The Simplified Peer Review Framework has a number of new features, some of wh…

The new NIH grant review format and the iron law of unintended consequences drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/t...

RCT probably not feasible or ethical.

Would be good to see independent data sets. Perhaps immune correlates of disease risk and vaccine response.

I don’t think you will see a DAG solution because they aren’t solutions. Without mentioning an entire stream of CI, Potential Outcomes, whose practitioners take a dim view of DAGs as anything more than pedagogy.

Geneticists argue about common and rare variants. Also an ‘everyone’s right’.

DAGs are a nice planning tool. Geneticists don’t typically use them, but maybe they should. DAG factorization leads naturally to expectations and regression equations.

There are no perfect models. Sometimes the process is useful for defining where you won’t be confident.

Lifting Universal Masking in Schools — Covid-19 Incidence among Students and Staff | NEJM In February 2022, Massachusetts rescinded a statewide universal masking policy in public schools, and many Massachusetts school districts lifted masking requirements during the subsequent weeks. In...

This publication uses a difference in difference analysis to address a difficult question www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of...

Interested in your critique of this study which used a regression discontinuity approach www.nature.com/articles/s41... important to understand pitfalls

There are many publications that use Mendelian Randomization (Instrumental Variable) to assess potentially causal biomarkers.

I would guess you had other kinds of treatment variables in mind.