Re: Cohen's Fallacy and Doll

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

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Rad health wrote:



> Dr. Cohen,

>

> I did not post your response, because it was not responsive to the letter of

> Darby of Doll.



	--My response was peer reviewed, so the reviewers thought it was

responsive. Of course letters to the Editor have tight constraints on

length, which can be somewhat limiting.



  Please do me the favor of responding to this quote from Doll

> and Darby.  "Professor Cohen states in his letter that his analysis

> encompasses all of the Doll suggestions'. It is, however, logically

> impossible for it to have done so using data at the level of counties. This

> is because the effect of cigarette smoking on the relationship between

> residential radon and individual lung cancer risk will be determined by the

> relationship between smoking status and lung cancer among the individuals

> within each county."

>

> Cohen does not have information on the relationship between smoking and lung

> cancer within counties.  Drs. Field and Smith have been making this same

> point as Doll and Darby in their Forum paper and subsequent letters, yet

> Cohen has not responded specifically to this charge.  Dr. Field gave you a

> way to possibly correct for this problem a few days ago on this list, but

> you said you preferred to do it your own way, which you haven't.

>

	--If you will read my paper on "Treatment of confounding factors

in an epidemiological study", especially my methods of 'plausibility of

correlation' and 'stratification', you will understand the answer to your

question.





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