[ RadSafe ] AW: How much of RSH still exists?

[John Jacobus]

Rainer,
I note that you have been critical of the Cardis
paper.  Have you contact the journal editors about the
lack of raw data?  If so, what was their response? 
Since this is a retrospective study, would the data
not be in the references cited? 

--- Rainer.Facius at dlr.de wrote:

> Ludwig:
> 
> You most appropriately remark "this paper ... does
> not give the cancer
> incidences in the various dose groups."
> 
> The Cardis BMJ 2005 paper is essentially an extended
> abstract if you
> relate it to the amount of data that it comprises. 
> 
> Unfortunately, in some recent epidemiologic studies
> the journal editors
> allowed the authors to present only the values of
> fit parameters and
> model statistics without the tables displaying the
> raw numbers. In all
> larger worker studies where these raw numbers had
> been presented, i.e.,
> in each dose category the number of observed and the
> number of expected
> cases of a given cancer (or disease), these data are
> perfectly
> compatible with a "no-effect" model in the dose
> ranges given. 
> 
> Hopefully, the journal editors where by the end of
> this or the beginning
> of the next year the full papers of the Cardis study
> will be published
> will insist that these raw data are presented too.
> Otherwise it will be
> impossible to critically evaluate these papers,
> which in turn is
> equivalent to these papers being a wasted effort -
> to print them and to
> read them.
> 
> It might be well worth the effort that those who
> know where these papers
> have been submitted contact the journal editors with
> respect to the
> presentation of raw data.
> 
> Best regards, Rainer
> 
. . .


+++++++++++++++++++
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tired anything new."
-- Albert Einstein

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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