Comments on: An Indiana cancer cluster in the NYT

By: cecil

cecil — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 15:25:59 +0000

That’s why sample size is important in determining the likelihood that you can actually draw conclusions from a set of statistics. The larger the samples, the more likely your statistics can “mean” something. Although what they “mean” may not be what you think they mean.
For example, establishing substance x and effect y and attempting to show a relationship, how many other substances did you not test? For example, i’m sure all those children were exposed to oxygen, nitrogen, co2, etc, etc, etc… So you can never isolate x as the cause since what if it is just a risk factor, not a definitive causal relationship? After all, apparently 200 times the normal consumption of root beer is carcinogenic…

By: No Name Guy

No Name Guy — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 23:37:57 +0000

A fun little experiment one can run in Excel in regards to cancer clusters.

Set up a macro to randomly generate two numbers between 1 and 10. These are X and Y coordinates.

Run this 100 times and plot the frequency of the results in a 10 x 10 grid, where the X coordinate is left / right and the Y coordinate is up / down. So, if the random numbers are 3,9, go over to 3rd column and up to the 9th row and add a tally mark.

I can guarantee you that it will NEVER (ok, perhaps not literally never, but never in the number of times you care to run the experiment) ever turn out as 1 instance in each square. What I can guarantee is that nearly every time, there will be one cell with several hits – well above average.

Do it again with a 21×21 grid and random number generators for 1 to 21. That results in 441 combinations (435 house seats, approximately equally apportioned by population). Run it about 2205 times, or 5 per square. There will be multiple squares with 0 hits…and others with 8, 10, 12 hits…..your so called cancer clusters. Even running it only 882 times, or two per square, you’re likely to have a cell or two with significantly more hits than 2.

These are easy experiments for an individual with a bit of spread sheet skill to run to see what “clusters” are in fact “normal” artifacts of random distribution. Just because there are only 882 cases per year nationally, 2 cases of a particular cancer per year for each 748,000 people (the average congressional district), doesn’t mean that one of those districts may have many times that simply as a result of “normal” random distribution.

By: Bob Lipton

Bob Lipton — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 19:23:42 +0000

In reply to jimc5499. That’s not irony, Jim. Bob

By: jimc5499

jimc5499 — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 15:34:25 +0000

There’s another type of greed, Sherry. Lawyers looking for somebody to sue. I find it ironic that researchers don’t know what causes cancer, but lawyers and politicians do.

By: Sherry Roe

Sherry Roe — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 02:33:35 +0000

There are always skeptics that want to say these rare cancers are caused by something else. I hope these women continue to push forward in their fight. My father died of AML cause by benzene exposure in a GM plant. His death certificate was signed, cause of death, AML caused by benzene exposure. See if one has all the facts, a lot of these rare leukemia’s and cancers are only caused from exposure to the chemical or prior treatment from chemotherapy.
Corporate Greed

By: Bob Lipton

Bob Lipton — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 13:19:43 +0000

I have not examined the data for Franklin, Indiana in detail, but having studied statistical analysis, I can attest to the fact that. as Mark Twain said quoting Disraeli, there are liars, damned liars and statistics. Without denying the conclusion implied in your assertion, there are other reasons that might contribute to such a cluster, such as genotype propensity, family habits and presence of other carcinogenic factors. In addition, when

When confronted in court with the death of children, the habit of people to assert a single cause to any sad event becomes overwhelming. OVERLAWYERED being the sort of site it is, regular readers tend to be skeptical of such claims. I find it troubling that one of the sections of the TIMES stories is headed “One House, Two Families”. I would be interested in a close examination of the house and the habits of its occupants before attributing Trichloroethane as the cause of those particular cancers.

That’s the trouble with statistics: moving statistical conclusions to individual cases and vice versa is a process fraught with leaps of logic.

Bob

By: Janice England

Janice England — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 10:36:43 +0000

The childhood cancer cluster was reported by residents in the city of Franklin, Indiana and NOT throughout Johnson County. By using the population of Franklin, and not the whole county, you’ll see there is a high rate of cluster.