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Randomised Badger Culling Trial—no effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle: comment on Mills, Woodroffe and Donnelly (2024a, 2024b)

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Peer-reviewed

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https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/385424

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 Bibliographic metadata (12.41 KB)

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Article

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Authors

Torgerson, Paul R  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4277-9983

Abstract

        Substantial problems remain with the Mills
        et al
        . (Mills CL, Woodroffe R, Donnelly CA. 2024
        R. Soc. Open Sci.
        11
        , 240385. (doi:10.1098/rsos.240385) and Mills CL, Woodroffe R, Donnelly CA. 2024
        R. Soc. Open Sci.
        11
        , 240386. (doi:10.1098/rsos.240386)) re-evaluations of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) data. These include: (i) analysis of counts rather than rates; (ii) overfitting; (iii) modelling of ‘confirmed’ herd breakdowns rather than total herd breakdowns; and (iv) errors in the Bayesian analysis of the data. More plausible approaches to RBCT data analysis, including analysis of total breakdown incidence, strongly suggest that there is no effect of proactive badger culling on the herd incidence of bovine tuberculosis, either within cull areas or in neighbouring areas.

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Peer reviewed: True


Publication status: Published

Keywords

badger culling trial, randomized, cattle, statistical analysis, epidemiology, tuberculosis

Journal Title

Royal Society Open Science

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2054-5703

Volume Title

12

Publisher

The Royal Society

Publisher DOI

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241609

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