Re: Journals use of Wing et al "study"

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

And if you picked 20 people off the street, you'd be lucky 
if one of them noticed this subtlety, while the others would
interpret this as saying TMI resulted in leukemia rates 
increasing.  This is precisely the reason why the reporter 
should include the statement you mentioned or have discussed
other sources.

Mike Baker ... mcbaker@lanl.gov

At 04:25 PM 6/15/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> But Mr. Ith made an unqualified statement
>> that TMI resulted in a rise of leukemia.
>
>No, he didn't.  He wrote:  "In the U.S., leukemia rates climbed among people
>exposed to the
>  1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania."
>
>Although he implied causation, he did not say that it _resulted_ in a
rise.  The
>statement might be perfectly true!  It would be most accurate if followed
by "but
>no statistically significant causation was determined."  It could be due to
>statistical clustering or any other number of things not stated.  Look at it
>again.
>
>--
>
>Scott O. Schwahn, CHP
>Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
>schwahn@jlab.org
>
>
>
	
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Michael C. Baker, Ph.D.            Safeguards Science and Technology
                                   Nonproliferation and International 
                                           Security Division
email:  mcbaker@lanl.gov             Los Alamos National Laboratory
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