RE: Bernie's original post raising the "reward" to $2500

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

Dr. Cohen,

I am glad to hear that your work will get the

attention that it deserves.



Because I have no training in epidemiology, I get

frustrated with reading about these studies, because I

do not feel I adequately grasp the fine points that is

embedded in the data.  Every time I think I have grasp

a correlation, I talk myself out of it.



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

> 

> On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, John Jacobus wrote:

> 

> > Do other epidemiologist disagree with your

> > conclusions?  What have been the results of your

> other

> > award offers?

> 

> 	--My conclusions are being evaluated by an NCRP

> committee with an

> Epidemiologist as chairman.

> 	No one has ever applied for any of my reward

> offers. I hope people

> understand the reason for my reward offers, as taken

> from the following

> message posted in 1997:

> 

> What I need very badly is suggestions for not

> implausible specific

> potential explanations for our discrepancy, in at

> least semi-quantitative

> numerical terms, on which I can carry out

> calculations to determine if

> they can resolve it, or can be modified to resolve

> it. As a possible

> example, one might suggest that urban people smoke

> more frequently and for

> unrelated reasons have lower radon exposures than

> rural people, both of

> which are true. What I need is data for each of our

> 1601 counties on which

> to do calculations to see if they resolve our

> discrepancy. You can make-up

> the data, as long as you consider them to be not

> implausible. Since I need

> these made-up data for each of the 1601 counties, it

> might be most

> practical to give me a prescription for deriving

> these data. For example

> you might say that the radon exposure for a rural

> person is x% higher than

> for an urban person and an urban person is y% more

> likely to smoke than a

> rural person. Since I know the average radon level

> in each county, the

> fraction of people in each county who are urban and

> rural and the fraction

> that smoke, I can then determine the predicted lung

> cancer rate in each

> county from BEIR-IV for various values of x and y,

> and make comparisons

> with the data.

>  The only problem with this example is that I

> reported calculations

> based on it in Section L of my paper and it did very

> little to reduce our

> discrepancy. But you might not agree on how I did

> the calculation and

> suggest an alternative method, or you can suggest

> some alternative

> prescription for making up the data, perhaps

> utilizing random numbers or

> anything else you can think of that will allow me to

> do calculations. Or

> you can just present me with tables of numbers that

> you consider to be not

> implausible.





=====

-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com



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