Human & experimental toxicology
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This paper identifies deficiencies in some current practices of causation and risk evaluation by toxicologists and formulates an evidence-based solution. The practice of toxicology focuses on adverse health events caused by physical or chemical agents. Some relations between agents and events are identified risks, meaning unwanted events known to occur at some frequency. ⋯ Toxicology is maturing from a derivative science largely devoted to routinized performance and interpretation of safety tests, to a discipline deeply enmeshed in the remarkable advances in biochemistry and molecular biology to better understanding the nature and mechanism of adverse effects caused by chemicals. It is time for toxicologists, like scientists in other fields, to formalize a method for differentiating settled toxicological knowledge of risk from mere nomological possibility, and for communicating their conclusions to other scientists and the public. It is time for EBT.