To: Richnorth who wrote (88732 ) 8/12/2002 5:30:06 PM From: E. Charters Respond to Doctors are amongst the worst scientists when it comes to extrapolating conclusions from studies. They rarely are educated in logic, statistics or the scientific method, so would not know how to design a study to prove or disprove their hypothesis. It is obvious that This doctor, Valtin, no matter how experienced, is not drawing his conclusions from a specific and targeted study so his facts remain in the realm of opinion, no matter how learned he may seem on the topic. I went over the journals of the American Psychological Association when studying psychology in university and one of the projects we had was to find the the logical, design errors and the erroneous conclusions of reports therein. There are seven major statistical error made by researchers, and one of the most common made by Freud himself was the absence of a control group. Other errors were experimenter bias, too small a sample population and irrelevant or not related conclusions to the intent of the study. The most egregious of the errant group were MD's but general scientists followed close behind with scads of completely erroneous studies. It is important to note that the errors could be seen from the study design itself and the topic so reported on or the science did not have to be known in detail. Valtin here has not used a control group, and is operating completely from prejudice, no matter how well informed he is on the topic. A real blind study where he did not know the consumption of the control or actual group might leave him very surprised. We don't know, of course, but we do know that a proper study has not been done from his comments.
