How does COMARE evaluate inconsistent epidemiological studies?
When a particular topic is evaluated by COMARE, all the available evidence from epidemiological studies has to be considered. The published studies are looked at individually and examined for the quality of data and the rigour of the analysis. Questions to be considered include, what was the power of the study? Was it seriously flawed by bias in its design, was the effect of possible confounding factors adequately addressed? One of the major problems with human studies is that no two people will have received exactly the same radiation exposure. Sometimes the exposure is not known at all and some surrogate measure has to be used, such as the number of years of work in proximity to a source or the distance of residence from that source. The total available evidence is then weighted according to its quality and an overall assessment is made. Greater weight is given to studies where the radiation exposure is more accurately known and particularly to those studies where there is a quantita
