Dr. Lubin's response to Drs. Cohen and Isenhower

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

	Dr. Lubin states:
>	If it is true, as Dr. Cohen states, that his "study was not
>claimed to give the risk to individuals" 

	--This was very clearly stated in my nearly every one of my papers

>then by definition no valid inference about individuals can be drawn from
>his results. I agree with this entirely. However the logicall consequence
>of this admission by Dr. Cohen must be that the form of the
>regression relationship of county lung cancer rates on county
>characteristics carries no implication for disease patterns for
>individuals.

	--Dr. Lubin misses the basic point of my paper completely. I
started with the risk to individuals, and by use of linear-no threshold
theory (LNT) for individuals, derived mathematically a relationship
between county lung cancer rates and average radon exposures in those
counties. That is a relationship that I was testing with experimental
data. According the the principles of The Scientific Method, if this
relationship fails that test, the theory (LNT for individuals) must be
abandoned unless a not implausible explanation for that failure can be
found. This explanation need not be provably correct, but it must not be
provably implausible. That is why I have been searching for a not
implausible potential explanation for our discrepancy.
	In the absence of such an explanation, LNT for individuals should
be abandoned. My data does not give a dose - response relationship for
individuals as Lubin implies -- interpreting it that way falls into the
trap of "the ecological fallacy" -- but it shows that LNT for individuals
fails in the low dose region, grossly over-estimating the cancer risk of
low dose radiation. That is the limit of its interpretation.



 Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


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