Re: Re: Re: Radon - recent articles supporting risk atresidentialexposures

[BERNARD L COHEN <blc+@PITT.EDU>]

	That is not for me to say. Correlations of various kinds appear in

all data. I have considered over 500 potential confounding factors and

essentially all of them have some correlation with radon. The important

question is how strong these correlations are. Studying them serves as the

basis for my method of using "plausibility of correlation" to evaluate

confounding effects. For example, if all 500 have correlations less than

0.5, it is highly implausible for other untested factors to have

correlations as high as 0.9. You can read about this in my paper on

"Treatment of confounding factors in an Ecological Study" which is posted

on my web site. The correlation between smoking and radon is not outside

of the distribution I find for other potential confounding factors, and is

thus not implausible.



Bernard L. Cohen

Physics Dept.

University of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Tel: (412)624-9245

Fax: (412)624-9163

e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu





On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, John Williams wrote:



> Dr. Cohen,

>

> Why does this "strong" inverse association between county radon

> concentrations and estimated county smoking rates exist in your data?

>

> Sent by Law  Mail

>



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/