Re: NCRP bias?

[hflong@postoffice.pacbell.net]

Carl's argument seems to me like, "If you can't see the trees, you can't

see the forest."

Not so.



Howard Long



BERNARD L COHEN wrote:

> 

> On Mon, 5 May 2003, Carl Miller wrote:

> 

> >

> > Also, I think it has been pointed out on this list, before that Dr. Cohen

>  fails to consider the interaction between all the colinear factors that can

>  work together such as smoking, education, and socioeconomic status at one time.

>   These factors are very inter related and Dr. Cohen looks at his potentially

>  confounding factors in a univariate manner rather than a multivariable manner

>  which would be required to capture the effect.

> 

>         --This specific problem is addressed in Section 3.3 of Item #7 on

> my web site. In fact your questions are more broadly answered in all of

> Section 3 of that paper

> > Dr. Cohen may not think it is plausible to explain his findings just by his use of guestimated county smoking rates(which are inversely related to the radon), but what about the co-linearity between smoking, education and socioeconomic factors? Dr. Field has pointed this out before.

> >

> > In addition, I think it was Drs. Lubin and Field that showed when better data

>  was for lung cancer incidence the inverse assocaition was not found in Iowa

>  (a s tate with high radon).  Dr. Cohen has never explained this finding in a

>  satisfactory manner.

> 

>         --Statistics for the entire U.S. are far more robust than

> statistics for a single state. There are a few states where the slope of

> the regression of lung cancer on radon levels is not negative, but for the

> great majority of states it is negative, and the average of slopes for all

> states is negative and close to that obtained for the entire U.S. This

> difference among different states is easily understood as due to

> statistics. See Table 4 of Item #2 on my web site.

> 

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