Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · Jun 19 Very interesting talk by @mendelrandom.bsky.social on the apparent effect of shingles vaccines on dementia. Clear discontinuity from shingles vaccines on shingles, but not on dementia, in this much larger follow up in England, using similar analytic choices as the Wales study that showed a benefit.
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I don't understand why you would expect a sudden discontinuity as dementia is a long accumulated process. At best a change in slope. Shingles itself is a single event and thus would immediately become less likely.
What’s his tl;dr? I’d love to watch, but it’s an hour long.
I thought you didn't accept RDs where age was a running variable? But you accept the ones that show a null effect? ;-)
(I'm sure the talk is interesting, but as someone without context it's sort of funny to see "treatment for condition 1 has no effect on condition 2" as a surprising effect!)
Worth noting that many (not all) of the observational studies so far have been funded by GSK, which sells the shingles vaccine. Vaccines are great and the shingles vaccine is also great (for shingles), but people have got to be a little more skeptical of observational studies funded by pharma IMHO.