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Are questions about medical research protocol on-topic?

Example: How is it determined that someone died from "air polution"?

I saw this question on another Stack Exchange site, and wondered, how do they even know that one person in China died from "air pollution"?

How do these "studies" that lump millions of people in to categories know how to classify the deaths? Do they categorically assume that everyone with asthma that died was "killed by air pollution"? if so, wouldn't all such statistics be overstated from the start?

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  • I would think it would be closed as to broad as the answer to how they get the answers would be very lengthy.
    – Joe W
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 0:55

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I wouldn't strictly dismiss a medical research question as off-topic, but we should definitely make sure that they are answerable (e.g. not too broad). So if a question links a specific article or a study and asks for an explanation, or the question is specific enough for a detailed, not too long answer, then it's fine. The important thing is that the question focuses on the part of research related to health. If it lists a set of numbers from a medical study and asks for clarification on statistics, I would refer them to a different SE site.

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