Bradford Hill criteria

The Bradford Hill criteria, otherwise known as Hill's criteria for causation, are a group of nine principles that can be useful in evaluating epidemiologic evidence of a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect and have been widely used in public health research. They were proposed in 1965 by the English epidemiologist Sir Austin Bradford Hill, although Hill did not use the term "criteria" himself and instead described nine "viewpoints from all of which we should study association before we cry causation." Modern interpretations of Hill's viewpoints focus on this more nuanced framing, in line with Hill's original assertion that "none of my nine viewpoints can bring indisputable evidence for or against the cause-and-effect hypothesis and none can be required as a sine qua non."

In 1996, David Fredricks and David Relman remarked on Hill's criteria in their pivotal paper on microbial pathogenesis.