Division of Psychiatry Inaugural Lecture - Prof Neil Davies

Title: Causes, consequences and everything in between

Abstract

Once you start thinking about causation, it’s hard to think about anything else (or maybe that’s just me?) How do we know if a drug or vaccine really prevents disease? How do our families affect our chances in life? (Better obviously, so my boys advise!) Only by understanding cause can we hope to understand the world, and effectively intervene to improve health and well-being.

However, this is easier said than done. Randomized controlled trials can provide a gold standard of causal evidence but are expensive, slow and very narrow in scope. For many important questions, we have no trials—or worse, we can’t have them for ethical or practical reasons. Observational studies offer an alternative, and we now have more data than ever before on risk factors and health outcomes, including population-scale datasets covering millions of individuals.

In this lecture, I’ll discuss how we can use natural experiments to learn more about the causes of disease and ill-health in the population. Apparently, I’m also expected to explain what caused me to be here, and its consequences.

Neil Davies completed his PhD in epidemiology at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit in Bristol in 2012. He spent ten years developing and applying methods for causal inference using both healthcare and genetic data. In 2022, he joined the UCL Division of Psychiatry and School of Statistical Science as a Professor of Medical Statistics, where he now leads MRC and Wellcome-funded projects on psychosis, depression, anxiety, and ADHD, and is a Principal Scientist at the Adolescent Health Study. He co-leads the Within Family Consortium and works with collaborators from around the world. He has occasionally been vexed by, and occasionally vexed, pension funds.

Prof Neil Davies UCL Profile.

This is a hybrid event at Leolin Price Lecture Theatre, Wellcome Trust Building (30 Guildford Street) & online via Zoom. A drinks reception will follow after the lecture.

Please register via Eventbrite to secure a place or receive the Zoom Webinar details.

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Host or Publisher UCL Division of Psychiatry