https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589117/

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Hill's Criteria is a collection of nine informal guidelines ("viewpoints" as supposed to requirements) used to determine whether a causal relationship exists within an observed association.  Initially, five out of the nine viewpoints were proposed by the surgeon general's advisory committee, to which Bradford Hill later added four more.  Hill's Criteria is not meant to be the necessary conditions to support or refute a cause-and-effect hypothesis.  The debate over the causality between cigarette and lung cancer prompted the criteria, which were used for the proponent of the causal relationship to justify their claim that cigarette smoking is indeed causally related to lung cancer.  

Hill's Criteria

Detailed introduction of Bradford Hill criteria

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, October 2005, 83 (10): https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/83/10/792.pdf

Title: "Association or causation: evaluating links between “environment and disease”
Authors: Robyn M. Lucas & Anthony J. McMichael 



Reference for Hill's Criteria 

- Strength of the association 
- Consistency 
- Specificity of the association
- Temporal relationship 
- Coherence 
- Biological gradient
- Plausibility
- Experiment
- Analogy


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