RE: Risks of low level radiation - New Scientist Article

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

I diasagree totally with what you wrote below. What you are saying below is 

that smoking is not an important factor for lung cancer.  You really think 

"ethnic variations, medical services, reporting variations, chemicals in the 

environment and in the food,respiratory illness, etc, and just plain 

statistical variations" cause prclude a good correlation between smoking and 

lung cancer for the counties?  The number of standard deviations are not 

important.  What is important is that the smoking rates for counties are 

actually predictive of the lung cancer rates for those counties.  The 

smoking rates you use really show an inability to predict the lung cancer in 

those counties.  If you can not predict the lung cancer in the counties 

using your smoking rates, how can you even attempt to examine the validity 

of the LNT?  If there is such huge variation between the smoking rates and 

the correlated lung cancer rates for those counties, you are not able to 

control for smoking.  I also note there is a huge unexplained inverse 

relationship between your radon measurments and the smoking rates for the 

counties.  While I would like to know the reason for this inverse relation, 

it is obvious that by not using good smoking exposure data, you are left 

wwith residual condfounding from smoking to explain your finding.



Jim Nelson





>From: BERNARD L COHEN <blc+@PITT.EDU>

>Reply-To: BERNARD L COHEN <blc+@PITT.EDU>

>To: Jim Nelson <nelsonjima@HOTMAIL.COM>

>CC: jim.dukelow@PNL.GOV, hflong@pacbell.net, radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

>Subject: RE: Risks of low level radiation - New Scientist Article

>Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 11:21:57 -0500 (EST)

>

>

>On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Jim Nelson wrote:

>

> > Dr. Cohen,

> >

> > I understand the meaning of r-sqaured very well.  I do not see in the

> > reference provided that you addresses this issue at all?  Jim

>

>	--I will give you an extreme example: Suppose there is very little

>spread in smoking rates in various counties, so this would cause very

>little difference in lung cancer rates. But there are always

>fluctuations up and down due to ethnic variations, medical services,

>reporting variations, chemicals in the environment and in the food,

>  respiratory illness, etc, etc, and just plain statistical variations;

>these would cause more differences in the lung cancer rates than the very

>small differences caused by the very small differences in smoking. Then

>R-squared would be close to zero. The true test would be the number of

>standard deviations by which the regression of lung cancer on smoking

>differs from zero. On that basis, my smoking data test out very well.

>

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