On risk factor, and its essential meaninglessness

Perhaps the title should be: Its essential over-abundant meaningfulness, because it refers to so many different things, and thereby has little communication value outside the tribe of epidemiologists (JCA : 28 April 2017).

Words lose their value when you must define them clearly each time you use them. As with 'addict' or 'addiction' or 'going crazy,' here we have a term that, by itself, carries little or no information value.

December 2016, BMJ: A 'taboo' against using 'risk factor' in research reports, 

 

See Section 1.12.3.4 in this book chapter from 1998:

Anthony & Van Etten, 1998

Thanks to friend, David Vlahov, for bringing the BMJ article to my attention!