LAUSR

Measurement error is pervasive in epidemiologic research. Epidemiologists often assume that mismeasurement of study variables is non-differential with respect to other analytic variables and then rely on the heuristic that "non-differential misclassification will bias estimates towards the null." However, there are many exceptions to the heuristic for which bias towards the null cannot be assumed. In this paper, we compile and characterize seven exceptions to this rule and encourage analysts to take a more critical and nuanced approach to evaluating and discussing bias from non-differential mismeasurement.