S3E12: Start with the questions that are easy to answer and then move on to the more challenging questions

It’s hard to believe this is the final episode of season 3! In this season finale episode, we continue our discussion of topics related to Chapter 26 in Modern Epidemiology (4th Edition) with Dr. Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen. In this conversation we ask Dr. Tchetgen Tchetgen to help us better understand several issues related to interaction, including why it’s so important to study interaction.  He provides a helpful framework for thinking about interaction: start simple and then move on to more complex questions. As part of this framework, he emphasizes the distinction between total effects and main effects, how confounding plays into conversations about interaction, and the role of scale dependence when interpretating interaction.