For much of my career I have been very interested in causal methods to try and mimic randomized trials. But it is getting more and more clear to me that high quality descriptive epidemiology is the underpinning of a lot of public health and there is no clear trial analog. My recent foray into respondent driven sampling recruitment has been a real eye-opener.
@jacd Agreed! I still think the concept of randomization and mimicry has utility. Descriptive epi is a lot easier when we have a random sample
