Thread by @societyforepi

Today's #SERiousEpi journal club is kicking off with a brief overview of a recent paper by @_MiguelHernan and @sandrogalea on social epidemiology and causal inference.

In that paper, the authors identify 3 misconceptions:
*that social exposures are somehow qualitatively different than other exposures
*that the primary goal of causal inference is to identify causes
*that causal inference requires manipulation of causes.

In response to this paper, @WhitneyEpi and @zinzinator reflect on these misconceptions. They respond that:
*individual-level exposures *are* different from social exposures
*in social epi, we *do* want to identify causes
*context and social dynamics matter in social epi

A second response by Tyler Vanderweele calls out the importance of not boiling exposures down to their composite parts. Complex exposures are important, especially in social epidemiology and we need to address that by being clear about the exposures we're really interested in.

Finally, John Jackson and @oacarah point out that causal methods help us rule out alternate explanations to get closer to understanding causes, and working together with methods & subject matter experts on identifying hypothetical interventions can move the field forward.

Oops, broke my thread:

Now turning to the discussion. John Jackson challenges us to think about how discrimination & minority status are built into society, and @oacarah reminds us that everything we do is social epi (even the fact that we're having this journal club over Zoom & not in person at SER!)