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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (154746)	1/13/2006 4:56:42 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

The comments weren't just something like "this study stinks". They pointed out specific flaws. Some of the problems are obvious enough that you don't have to be a statistician or an epidemiologist to see them, and important enough to put the study in serious doubt.. You haven't mentioned, let alone quoted any statisticians or epidemiologists or other person with a reputation in a related discipline that has addressed a number of these flaws. For example you provide no support for the accuracy of the estimates of the pre-war death rate, and no counter to the arguments against the study's claimed rate. If the initial assumptions are flawed it wouldn't matter if the sample was enormous and methodology was perfect. Instead you say that epidemiologists seem to support the study. That amounts to little more then the converse of "this study sucks". It isn't a solid argument for anything. Epidemiologists should understand statistics and so they are a reasonable source of information and argument about such a study but they have to actually make the argument. Saying "this study is good", or "this study is bad" without any reasoning behind the statement and without any response to counter-arguments get us nowhere. Tim