Thinking Clearly about Association Studies (Risk Factors and Causal Salad included)

Blah- Jiaqi, you should write a book about your experiences some day

Choosing not to draw a DAG because 1) you don’t know how; 2) are afraid it will delay your manuscript/publication; and/or 3) are afraid that a DAG could force more careful covariate adjustment and generate a less eye-catching result is one thing. These are passive errors- errors of omission. But the scenarios you describe go way beyond this- they represent an active effort to distort study results. This egregious type of behaviour most definitely reflects a personal failure on the part of the researcher.

I’m sure your experiences are not unique and they certainly don’t restore confidence in the observational research ecosystem.