Re: Radon and Smoking (individual vs aggregate)

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

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, William Prestwich wrote:



> 	What I don't understand about all this is that if the problem

> arises as Dr.Field suggests, why is it not possible to postulate a

> specific joint distribution which can reproduce Dr.Cohen's reults?.



	--That is exactly what I have been pleading for all these years.

There is no need to justify the postulate; once it is offered, the rest is

up to me, to find whether it can explain my results, or to show that the

postulate is very highly implausible.

	--I would think a person could formulate such a postulate in a few

minutes. Is that asking too much? I only ask that it be specific enough

for me to do calculations. It can have variable parameters, whose

variations are up to me to explore.



 For

> example let us say a bivariate lognormal distribution could be used with

> adjustable parameters varied to fit the data.

> 	Perhaps I am just too simple minded. I have always felt as an

> experimentalist that data is sacrosanct and cannot be ignored. So I

> believe it is incumbent upon the supporters of the LNT to devise a

> quantitative model which reproduces that data, within statistics. Again as

> an experimentalist I do not feel that it is a prerequisite that I be able

> to explain my data, but that everyone with a theory must take it into

> account.



	--Amen, a thousand times



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