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Meta-Analysis
. 2021 Apr;49(2):103-109.
doi: 10.1111/cdoe.12617. Epub 2020 Dec 26.

A scoping review of Table 2 fallacy in the oral health literature

Aderonke A Akinkugbe  1   2   3 , Alyssa M Simon  2 , Erica R Brody  4
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

A scoping review of Table 2 fallacy in the oral health literature

Aderonke A Akinkugbe et al. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Background: Coined by Westreich and Greenland in 2013, Table 2 fallacy refers to the practice of reporting estimates of the primary exposure and adjustment covariates derived from a single model on the same table. This study seeks to describe the extent to which Table 2 fallacy is present in the oral health literature and provide recommendations on presenting findings from multivariable-adjusted models and/or interpretation of adjustment covariate estimates that are not the primary exposure.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review in PubMed and Scopus of human observational studies published in 4 oral health journals (JDR-CTR, CDOE, JPHD, BMC Oral Health) starting in 2013 until the end of 2018. The resulting articles were exported into Excel and were either included or excluded for full-text review based on six criteria. After categorizing the articles, we exported and summarized the results in SAS.

Results: A total of 1358 articles were initially screened of which 937 articles were excluded based on title or abstract for being animal studies, systematic reviews or meta-analysis, prediction models or descriptive studies. The remaining 421 articles were eligible for full text reviewed of which, 189 (45%) committed Table 2 fallacy. The prevalence of table 2 fallacy appears high in the oral health literature.

Conclusions: The problem of presenting multiple effect estimates derived from a single model in the same table is that it inadvertently encourages the reader to interpret all estimates the same way, often as total effects. Implications and recommendations are discussed.

Keywords: directed acyclic graph; oral health research; table 2 fallacy.

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References

REFERENCES

    1. Westreich D, Greenland S. The table 2 fallacy: Presenting and interpreting confounder and modifier coefficients. Am J Epidemiol. 2013;177(4):292-298.
    1. Robins JM, Greenland S. Identifiability and exchangeability for direct and indirect effects. Epidemiology. 1992;3(2):143-155.
    1. Sr C, Ma H. Fallibility in Estimating Direct Effects. Int J Epidemiol. 2002;31(1):163-165.
    1. Greenland S, Pearl J, Robins JM. Causal diagrams for epidemiologic research. Epidemiology. 1999;10(1):37-48.
    1. Akinkugbe AA, Sharma S, Ohrbach R, Slade GD, Poole C. Directed acyclic graphs for oral disease research. J Dent Res. 2016;95(8):853-859.

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