Radon and lung cancer

[Holloway3 <Holloway3@aol.com>]

I have been following the debate on radon and lung cancer for several years
and I have pondered Cohen's papers on the subject.  It seems to me that the
burden of proof shifts to his critics to experimentally show how his
conclusions are flawed, rather than just assert that confounding factors may
be involved or to assert that somehow radon concentrations by county are not a
good proxy for  average actual dose.  All measurements, even case controlled
studies, have uncertainty,  so I don't accept the view that average
concentrations of radon by county are inadequate to use in looking for a
correlation with lung cancer rates.  

Absent any other information, it would seem reasonable to assume that there is
a strong connection between radon concentrations by county and dose to people
in the county.  The fact that the negative correlation (between radon and lung
cancer)  persists, even when the data are divided into numerous subsets,
suggests that there is some important information there and that it is not
tainted by significant errors or confounding factors.   If these results are
not accepted temporarily, it won't be the first time in the history of science
in which an obvious result was not initially believed.  


                                                      R. Holloway
                                                      email: nta@ntanet.net