Re: Alternate explanations

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

Don't know if I want to wade in here, but here goes....

LNT predicts a body count proportional to collective dose.

Dr. Cohen's data show the bodies are missing to a high degree of
precision.

Random confounding factors can only dilute the effect not invert it.

Therefore a confounding factor must be found that for whatever reason
is anticorrelated with radon averages.

A long time ago I took age adjusted cancer deaths from the 1985
American Cancer Society pamplet and plotted them against mean
state altitude.  To a very great degree the cancer death rates were anti-
correlated with mean altitude and therefore background exposure.

Possible confounding factor?  Industry tends to be at low altitude.
Maybe air polution.  BTW California was an outlier on the plot.
The mean altitude is fairly high but the population lives at low
altitudes, and have a lot of air pollution.

Dale