But Roberts does not mention the follow-up research by a more experienced team of scientists which found that the original study's conclusion was "not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in their paper, especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations".
Furthermore, the influence of trends on correlation skill is reduced, thereby avoiding high correlations that can arise from the trend.
The first question to consider is the influence of trends in place and time of death on hospital mortality statistics.
The first question, the influence of trends in place and time of death on hospital mortality statistics, will be addressed by classifying death cases after an hospital admission for these conditions according to time and place of death.
In our introduction we identified three problems connected to the calculation of mortality indicators: influence of trends in place and time of death on mortality statistics, discrepancy between cause of admission and cause of death and administrative difficulties with the follow-up of patients after discharge.
For example, increases in rainfall have been shown to correlate with WPE, while the influences of trends in temperature are less clear10.
However, the EMD method can eliminate the influences of trends' magnitude and series' length, so it has more effective power for trend identification.
As a result, it is suggested that series' trend can be directly identified by the MK test but need not do pre-whitening; moreover, the influences of trends' magnitude should be carefully considered for trend identification.
Currently, however, the influence of exposure trend and elimination kinetics on CSTD-derived trends is unclear, and a range of different interpretations exists in the literature.
