Kaufman J S, Cooper R S
Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Maywood, IL 60153, USA.
Public Health Rep. 1995 Nov-Dec;110(6):662-6.
Epidemiologic studies of racial differences sorely lack sound and explicit hypotheses. Race is a social convention, not a biological concept. Its careless use in epidemiology demonstrates a failure to generate appropriate hypotheses to study its role in health. Studies of hypertension in blacks illustrate the point. Two underlying pitfalls plague hypothesis generation: directionality involving the null and alternative hypotheses and circularity, where efforts to understand social factors have the effect of emphasizing racial differences. The proper prescription is to identify explicitly the hypotheses of interest, including their origins and implication.
关于种族差异的流行病学研究严重缺乏合理且明确的假设。种族是一种社会约定，而非生物学概念。在流行病学中对其随意使用表明未能生成适当的假设来研究其在健康方面的作用。对黑人高血压的研究就说明了这一点。假设生成存在两个潜在的陷阱：涉及原假设和备择假设的方向性以及循环性，即试图理解社会因素反而会强化种族差异。正确的方法是明确识别感兴趣的假设，包括其来源和含义。
