BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Rothschild Public Lecture | Forty years of causal inference: Repor
 t of a great-grandfather - James Robins (Harvard University)
DTSTART:20260526T150000Z
DTEND:20260526T160000Z
UID:TALK246322@talks.cam.ac.uk
DESCRIPTION:Forty years ago\, the following disciplines had their own lang
 uages\, opinions and idiosyncrasies re causal inference: philosophy\, comp
 uter science\, sociology\, psychology\, statistics\, epidemiology\, politi
 cal science\, and economics. Today all speak a common language. Top journa
 ls have gone from knee-jerk rejection to active solicitation of articles o
 n causal inference. The ongoing rapid development of the field has been dr
 iven by:\n\nEnd of the historical suppression of causal language in statis
 tics and medicine (aside from randomized clinical trials)\;\nThe internet 
 making cross disciplinary understanding and collaboration easy\;\nThe need
  for individualized treatment regimes in Medicine\;\nTech companies realiz
 ing that optimizing profits depended on causal interventions rather than j
 ust prediction\;\nThe development of causal graphs that offers non-technic
 al users the ability to validly reason about complex causal systems\;\nThe
  existence of huge data sets leading to data driven science rather than hy
 pothesis driven science.\n\nIn my lecture\, I will give a history of stati
 stical methods for causal inference\, focusing on methods developed by mys
 elf and colleagues. I will explain why causal methods have had such a larg
 e impact in substantive areas in which confounding by time varying covaria
 tes is very strong\, as in studies of HIV-infected individuals. These caus
 al methods are also an integral part of the target trial methodology - a m
 ethodology that is altering the analytical paradigm for the estimation of 
 causal effects from longitudinal observational data in Medicine and Public
  Health. I will conclude with a discussion of the future of causal inferen
 ce in the coming age of AI.\nWhat is a Rothschild Distinguished Visiting F
 ellow? The fellowship allows pre-eminent mathematicians from around the wo
 rld to join a programme\, where they deliver keynote seminars at the Insti
 tute and give lectures across the UK.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR