The unreasonable effectiveness of a biased logistic regression procedure in the analysis of pair-matched case-control studies

We examine the rationale of prospective logistic regression analysis for pair-matched case-control data using explicit, parametric terms for matching variables in the model. We show that this approach can yield inconsistent estimates for the disease-exposure odds ratio, even in large samples. Some special conditions are given under which the bias for the disease-exposure odds ratio is small. It is because these conditions are not too uncommon that this flawed analytic method appears to possess an (unreasonable) effectiveness. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.