What Is Bradford Hill Criteria?

Bradford Hill

The Bradford Hill criteria (also known as “Hill’s criteria”) are a set of nine criteria first proposed by the epidemiologist, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, in 1965 to evaluate the strength of a causal association between two variables. In the product liability context, plaintiff experts frequently utilize the Bradford Hill criteria to purportedly establish general causation. The Bradford Hill criteria include considerations such as the strength of association, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, and analogy. Several recent decisions in large federal multidistrict litigations have closely scrutinized and ultimately, excluded, improper Bradford Hill analyses conducted by plaintiff experts.