Helping medical scientists analyse causal relationships
Arvid Sjölander works with statistical tools and mathematical models to help medical scientists make more reliable estimations of causal effects. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 3 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI’s installation ceremony booklet 2024
What are you researching?
“I’m a methodological researcher in biostatistics with a primary focus on causal inference in observational studies. Causal inference is a branch of statistics designed to sift out causal effects from other underlying factors affecting statistical relationships.”
Why is this important?
“Most medical research questions concern causal relationships. Say that we want to study if people who used facemasks during the Covid pandemic developed severe symptoms less often than those who didn’t. If we then observe a difference between the groups, we would typically want to know if it’s attributable to a protective effect of the mask or other differences between the groups, such as age or gender.”
How are you going about this?
“Most of my research is theoretical. I work with mathematical tools and statistical models rather than with real data. But I also support other researchers and assist them in their work.”
What are your main findings to date?
“In the past few years, I’ve been focusing on developing what are called sensitivity analyses, the aim of which is to give probable intervals for the strength of causal relationships. Since there can always be underlying factors, you can never say anything categorical about causal effects. But you might be able to make reasonable speculations. My aim is to help scientists make more reliable evaluations of the strength of such relationships.”
About Arvid Sjölander
Professor of Biostatistics at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Arvid Sjölander was born in 1978 in Stockholm. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in 2002, and in 2004 took a second degree in statistics from Stockholm University. In 2009 he earned a PhD in biostatistics from Karolinska Institutet, where he was made docent in 2013. Arvid Sjölander was appointed Professor of Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet on 1 August 2023.