Re: Reward

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 Radiationhealth@aol.com wrote:

> Dr. Cohen, I reread the articles again this morning. I see you tried to 
> respond to Dr. Lubin.

	--When you say that I "tried", you ignore the fact that Lubin has
never claimed that my analysis was not convincing. If that is your
opinion, please explain why.

>   I did not see that you provided any analyses for the 
> paper for Smith and the rejoinder by Fields.

	--See Table 1 and the accompanying discussion in my paper in
HEALTH PHYSICS 75:23-28;1998
	
>  It looks like you ignored the 
> criticism that your smoking data does a poor job of explaining the lung 
> cancer rates.

	--I don't know what you mean by saying that my smoking data does a
poor job of explaining lung cancer rates. If you mean that my data should
show a strong positive correlation with lung cancer rates, this was shown
in my paper in HEALTH PHYSICS 65:529-531;1993. But I don't recall Smith et
al raising that issue. The similar issue they raised was discussed at the
top of page 26 of m y paper in HEALTH PHYSICS 75:23-28;1998. That paper has
two pages of reply, on pages 25-26, to the very garbled criticisms of my
handling of smoking by Fields, Smith, et al. What, specifically, do you
think I ignored?

>  I also did not see where you provided references to justify 
> that you were actually testing the BEIR LNT formula as they suggested you 
> should do, and so on.     
	
	--The mathematical derivation in my original paper was very
lengthy and elaborate, but it did include some minor simplifications. To
avoid these simplifications would have required a very much more lengthy
derivation, involving pages of mathematics. I can't imagine how anyone
with any experience in mathematical derivations would not be satisfied
with what I did -- very rarely are derivations given with no
simplifications or approximations. If you believe that these
simplifications can explain our discrepancy, please submit a paper to the
journal and if it is accepted, you get the reward.
	
	


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