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Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate



>Consider one other point: Power Outages. If, as noted below, the infant
>mortality rate drops the second the plant is closed, then such rates >also
>should drop the second the plant goes down for a refueling or scheduled
>maintenance.  Why hasn't that been shown to occur?

One may suspect that the research technique is:
First get all the data, and choose the time periods, age groups and 
geography that matches your worst health problems.
Second, use an appropriate medium to sell the story.

Example for educational purpose: Brooding stork observations correlating 
with newborn infants in Germany 1965-1980. Almost perfect correlating 
downtrend (published in Nature 1988, Vol. 332, p. 495) - but not outside 
this time interval...

Public massmedial exposure example: Swedish environmentalists reporting 
large dandelions after the Chernobyl accidents... (anyone familiar with 
botany on a species level knows that there is plenty of normal natural 
variation - it is just to go out there and get what you need for your 
argumentation). The dandelion approach worked in a fine tuned concert with 
the media...

My own reflections,

Bjorn Cedervall        bcradsafers@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/

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