Exposure to risks throughout life results in a wide variety of outcomes. Objectively judging the relative impact of these risks on personal and population health is fundamental to individual survival and societal prosperity. Existing mechanisms to quantify and rank the magnitude of these myriad effects and the uncertainty in their estimation are largely subjective, leaving room for interpretation that can fuel academic controversy and add to confusion when communicating risk. We present a new suite of meta-analyses—termed the Burden of Proof studies—designed specifically to help evaluate these methodological issues objectively and quantitatively. Through this data-driven approach that complements existing systems, including GRADE and Cochrane Reviews, we aim to aggregate evidence across multiple studies and enable a quantitative comparison of risk–outcome pairs. We introduce the burden of proof risk function (BPRF), which estimates the level of risk closest to the null hypothesis that is consistent with available data. Here we illustrate the BPRF methodology for the evaluation of four exemplar risk–outcome pairs: smoking and lung cancer, systolic blood pressure and ischemic heart disease, vegetable consumption and ischemic heart disease, and unprocessed red meat consumption and ischemic heart disease. The strength of evidence for each relationship is assessed by computing and summarizing the BPRF, and then translating the summary to a simple star rating. The Burden of Proof methodology provides a consistent way to understand, evaluate and summarize evidence of risk across different risk–outcome pairs, and informs risk analysis conducted as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study.

一生中暴露于风险会导致各种各样的结果。客观判断这些风险对个人和人口健康的相对影响对于个人生存和社会繁荣至关重要。现有的对这些无数影响的大小及其估计的不确定性进行量化和排名的机制在很大程度上是主观的，这给解释留下了空间，这可能会引发学术争议，并在沟通风险时增加混乱。我们提出了一套新的荟萃分析（称为证明负担研究），专门用于帮助客观和定量地评估这些方法论问题。通过这种数据驱动的方法来补充现有系统（包括 GRADE 和 Cochrane 评价），我们的目标是汇总多项研究的证据，并实现风险-结果对的定量比较。我们引入了证明责任风险函数（BPRF），它估计最接近与可用数据一致的原假设的风险水平。在这里，我们说明了用于评估四个示例性风险结果对的 BPRF 方法：吸烟和肺癌、收缩压和缺血性心脏病、蔬菜消费和缺血性心脏病、以及未加工的红肉消费和缺血性心脏病。通过计算和总结 BPRF，然后将摘要转换为简单的星级评级，可以评估每种关系的证据强度。证明负担方法提供了一种一致的方法来理解、评估和总结不同风险结果对的风险证据，并为作为全球疾病、伤害和风险因素负担研究的一部分进行的风险分析提供信息。