Toward eradicating misconceptions on matching in etiological studies

Excerpt

I read with great interest a scholarly essay by Mansournia, Jewell, and Greenland (MJG) on case–control matching [1]. I applaud the authors’ efforts, but I believe eradication of misonceptions surrounding the topic of matching requires a more radical measure—namely, abandonment of the commonly perceived (yet conceptually untenable) duality of the principal types of etiologic study: the ‘cohort’ study and the ‘case–control’ study [2]. But if one is not prepared to leave this duality behind, I believe it important to at least adopt the modern conceptions of these studies, as their original conceptions have considerably evolved in the last few decades [2, 3]. …