Re: Health Metaphysics

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

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Jerry Cohen wrote:

> I believe questions regarding the LNT/Radon issue may be answered by
> exploring Metaphysics.
> Apparently, there are strange unknown forces at work that cause smokers to
> migrate to low radon areas.
> This phenomenon, of course, accounts for the negative correlation between
> radon levels and lung cancer.
>     Bernie-- you can send my $1000 reward to the charity of your choice.

	--To get the reward, your suggestion must be accepted for
publication in Health Physics. But seriously, investigations of the
problems you cite are reported in my papers. Of course, I do correct for
differences in smoking prevalence in different areas at the outset. I do
this with seven different methodologies. I also consider the possibility
that my smoking data are very faulty, and that smoking prevalence has all 
sorts of negative correlations with radon exposures. I also
study effects of smokers having lower radon exposures than non-smokers
within counties. None of these things can help explain the large
discrepancy between our data and the predictions of LNT.

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