For the past few years we have identified the top ten stories in epidemiology from back issues of the newsletter and other sources. In a new twist for 2011, we offer our top ten quotes from the stories published during the year in the newsletter. Here they are:

“There are no Republican or Democratic thermometers”

Richard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography climate scientist, speaking at a Congressional hearing seeking to make a point that scientific validity has nothing to do with political viewpoints.

“Freedom to wallow in poverty is not among those freedoms most cherished.”

Michael Marmot, commenting in the Yale School of Public Health Magazine on the nature and causes of health disparities

“Advancing justice in health by reducing health disparities is the “acid test” of the value of epidemiology to health.”

Rodolfo Saracci, Statement included in a book review.

“The major factors that brought health to mankind were epidemiology, sanitation, vaccination, refrigeration, and screen windows.”

Former Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado as quoted by Jon Samet in an address on Big Epidemiology at the NIH

“It is very important for the public to understand that the greatest strength of epidemiology is also its greatest weakness”.

Jan Vanderbroucke, Leiden University Medical Center and the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Netherlands commenting in an interview about the Public Epidemiology Library in The Epidemiology Monitor

“The work of epidemiology is related to unanswered questions, but also to unquestioned answers.”
Patricia Buffler, University of California epidemiologist speaking at the North American Congress of Epidemiology in Montreal in June 2011

“As our world continues to generate unimaginable amounts of data, more data lead to more correlations, and more correlations can lead to more discoveries.”

Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute, who gave the Pumphandle Lecture of the John Snow Society at the London School Of Hygiene

 

“Health and disease are the good and bad effects of where you are in the hierarchy, mediated by the effects of chronic stress.”

Michael Marmot speaking in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service in the US

 

“Its methods may be scientific, but its objectives are often thoroughly human.”

Alex Broadbent, University of Johannesburg philosopher commenting on epidemiology in The Epi Monitor

 

“Epidemiology is in large part a collection of methods for finding things out on the basis of scant evidence, and this by its nature is difficult.”

Alex Broadbent, University of Johannesburg philosopher commenting on epidemiology in The Epi Monitor