流行病病因推断510班.pptVIP

* 病因推断标准的第一个里程碑，由Henle(1840)首先提出，Koch后来扩展形成的 The most famous criteria by which an agent is defined as the necessary cause of a disease are the Henle-Koch postulates. * A few statisticians and epidemiologists have advocated a counterfactual definition of causation. A counterfactual statement draws a contrast between one outcome given certain conditions and another outcome given alternative conditions. For example, “if an hour ago I had taken two aspirins instead of just a glass of water, my headache would now be gone.” Thus, Rubin defines the causal effect of treatment T, compared to absence of treatment, as the outcome given T minus the outcome given the absence of T. （治疗的作用＝治疗后的结局－不治疗时的情况）The definition requires a ceteris paribus (其它因素都相同) condition that everything else is held constant. 因果关系中的虚拟事实理论:近年来,在因果理论中对因果关系的定义大多基于虚拟事实理论 ,这种哲学思想的主要内容可简单表述为:在观察到“事件c 发生的条件下发生了事件e”这一事实时,由于这一过程的不可逆性,在实际中无法观察到“事件c 没有发生时事件e 的情况”。因此,所谓的“事件c 是事件e 的原因”是基于以下的虚拟事实条件:“如果事件c 不发生,则事件e 也不会发生。” Counterfactuals can be either deterministic or probabilistic. The aspirin counterfactual can be revised to read: “If an hour ago I had taken two aspirins instead of just a glass of water, I would be much less likely to still have a headache.” Some recent philosophical accounts of probabilistic causation incorporate counterfactuals. For example, under Cartwright’s definition C causes E if the probability of E given C is greater than the probability of E given the absence of C, while all else is held constant. A counterfactual definition is not inconsistent with the necessary cause, sufficient component cause, or probabilistic cause definitions. Rather, counterfactuals articulate an additional attribute that we suspect will enhance any definition of causation by strengthening the distinction between causation and mere correlation. While some commentators have emphasised the role of counterfactuals more than others, none have argued that causes do not behave according to counterfactuals. Neverthele