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Quote by: Matt W  You're in denial about an awful lot of things, aren't you?
To put it bluntly, they did. Ask yourself where the childrens' rhyme 'ring-a-ring of roses' came from. Ask yourself why the population of Europe halved in the Middle Ages. Ask yourself why we can see villages on maps produced during earlier cencuses that simply disappeared during the plague, and are now gone apart from the odd inscribed stone or two as they were burnt down once all the occupants were dead.
To put it simply, Techno, your arguments are built on shifting sands. Cold hard facts are proving you wrong. |
I admit that I do not know a lot about the Middle Ages or about any proof that the Bible was right concerning those curses that Moses (or whoever) put on Eqypt. Shifiting the debate to that topic puts this duck of it's water. so to speak.
The actural topic I was debating is why people smoke in spite of the fact that the so-called science of epidemiology claimed that smoking is unhealthy. I do not see how events happening in the Middle Ages can prove that epidemiology studies are correct about their claims, when they will not even show us the cold hard facts that they say they base their claim on.
How can I be in denial of a study if I cannot even review how it was done?
Why do other souces say that epidemilogy is not sound science because it can be corupted with bias, or by systematic and random errors, why is everyone in denial of those hard cold facts?
They estimate that the risk of disease is 2.2 greater among persons exposed then persons unexposed (with a 95% confidence interval 1.3 to 3.7, ) or for each unit change in exposure, meaning the risk of disease rises by 5 cases per 1000 people per year (with 95% confidence interval of 1.2 to 8.8). Quanitative terms that are not qualitative. Simplification into a dichotomous result.
A study based on ether statistical tests or some arbitrary subjective judgment about the magnitude of association ( real or important ) hinders the goal of quanitative, objective evaluation. A standard for sound science.
What is the null hypothesis being used as a benchmark (in each study)? Did the study focus on acutually proving the disproving the null hypothesis?