We thank Dr Teschke for her letter (Teschke, 2016) regarding our recent meta-analysis of mesothelioma among motor vehicle mechanics (Garabrant et al., 2016) and her thoughtful remarks on the interpretation of epidemiologic studies. We note that she has no criticisms of our paper, but focuses on how epidemiological evidence should be interpreted in legal cases, a topic beyond the scope of our published paper. We also wish to restate that we viewed her case–control study (Teschke et al., 1997) as one of the methodologically strong studies of mesothelioma risks among motor vehicle mechanics. Dr Teschke first asks whether studies of motor vehicle mechanics are the appropriate setting to examine the risks of mesothelioma from chrysotile exposure. This is not the question that our meta-analysis set…