RE: Risks of low level radiation - New Scientist Article

["Jim Nelson" <nelsonjima@HOTMAIL.COM>]

Mr. Dukelow,



Are you a statistician?  Larger populations are good if you have good 

underlying data to describe the population.  Unfortuantely, it is very hard 

to derive good data from surrogate ecologic measurmements such as sales tax 

on cigarettes (used to infer smoking).



The other study I provided a link to did use data from individuals as Dr. 

King suggested.



As I told Dr. Cohen a few weeks ago, I agree with the papers by Smith et al. 

that describe the limitations of Dr. Cohen's work.  The smoking data he uses 

is so bad, it can only predict a little over 30% of the the lung cancers in 

the counties. If there was no confounding, it should be able to predict 85% 

or so.  I do not call that good control of confounding.



Jim



>

>"... if you can use data from discrete individuals that is preferable to

>ecologic data." is the magic phrase.  In the case Dr. Cohen was looking at,

>satisfactory data from discrete individuals was not and is not available.

>Cohen's data set has a lot to recommend it -- larger populations with 

>better

>statistics and much better control for confounding factors.

>

>Best regards.

>

>Jim Dukelow

>Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

>Richland, WA

>jim.dukelow@pnl.gov

>

>These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my

>management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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