• The Cutter’s Symposium consists of lectures on preventive medicine.

• These are organized by the Department of Epidemiology and are held once or twice a year, funded by a bequest from John Clarence Cutter.

• During this year’s lecture, the importance of confounding factors in nutritional studies was discussed.

• In the 1970s, researchers discovered a link between ingesting fats and oils and the development of cancer.

• But since then, researchers have demonstrated that this relationship does not hold up.

• It is a common practice that those who follow a healthy diet, also have a healthy lifestyle.

• Hence, if the other factors of a healthy lifestyle aren't taken into consideration, spurious associations between diet and disease may be found.

• Various software and tools have been developed to address this confounding effect.

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