Tuesday, July 23, 2019
I gave my tooth to ???
From the 1962 'Strange as it Seems' book....
This struck me as locally and personally strange. Manhattan watched KC television, so we heard a lot about St Louis events. I was 8 in 1958, so I was switching out my deciduous teeth at the time. If this project had been widespread, I would have known and participated. I do remember reading a lot about Strontium 90. It was a big deal.
Some 'citizen participation' projects in the '50s turned out to be Deepstate fakes. The Ground Observer Corps, which I idiotically admired during my idiotic neocon phase, was supposed to detect invading Russki planes. In fact GOC was a survey to check the stealthiness of our own experimental planes to invade Russia. The UFO craze was exactly the same. Project Blue Book was a survey to see how people reacted to our experiments.
Was this a similar fake? Apparently not. This Wikipedia article gives a complete account. It was clearly intended to frighten the public, and it was scientifically meaningless. The project faded out in 1970 without publishing any results.
Much later in 2001, a separate team did a 'longitudinal' recheck:
By tracking 3,000 individuals who had participated in the tooth-collection project, the RPHP published results that showed that the 12 children who later died of cancer before the age of 50 had levels of strontium 90 in their stored baby teeth that were twice the levels of those who were still alive at 50.
TERRIBLE use of stats.
First, in a population of 3000, 12 early deaths by cancer is on the low side. A current set of stats shows a cancer death rate of about 900 per 100k for all under 50. That rate would yield 27 deaths in a group of 3000, so the test group would appear to be HEALTHIER than current averages.
Second, it's the wrong direction. The 12 who died had high levels of strontium compared to the MEAN of all others. We don't know how many kids with high strontium DIDN'T die early. You should have sorted the kids by strontium level first, and then looked at cancer among the highest exposures. If most of the high-strontium kids died early, and none of the low-exposures died early, you'd have a point.
Well then, did the study have any consequences? Supposedly it contributed to JFK's efforts to negotiate a test-ban treaty in 1963. The ban on atmospheric testing really made it easier to do more testing overall, which is why both US and Russia agreed to it.
While futilely trying to look up earlier cancer stats, from the era before nukes and cigarettes were major factors, I bumped into this MOTHER OF ALL GRAPHS.
You don't need to read the years or the titles on the curves. If you know anything about history, you know what this is. This is the definition of EPIDEMIC.
This struck me as locally and personally strange. Manhattan watched KC television, so we heard a lot about St Louis events. I was 8 in 1958, so I was switching out my deciduous teeth at the time. If this project had been widespread, I would have known and participated. I do remember reading a lot about Strontium 90. It was a big deal.
Some 'citizen participation' projects in the '50s turned out to be Deepstate fakes. The Ground Observer Corps, which I idiotically admired during my idiotic neocon phase, was supposed to detect invading Russki planes. In fact GOC was a survey to check the stealthiness of our own experimental planes to invade Russia. The UFO craze was exactly the same. Project Blue Book was a survey to see how people reacted to our experiments.
Was this a similar fake? Apparently not. This Wikipedia article gives a complete account. It was clearly intended to frighten the public, and it was scientifically meaningless. The project faded out in 1970 without publishing any results.
Much later in 2001, a separate team did a 'longitudinal' recheck:
By tracking 3,000 individuals who had participated in the tooth-collection project, the RPHP published results that showed that the 12 children who later died of cancer before the age of 50 had levels of strontium 90 in their stored baby teeth that were twice the levels of those who were still alive at 50.
TERRIBLE use of stats.
First, in a population of 3000, 12 early deaths by cancer is on the low side. A current set of stats shows a cancer death rate of about 900 per 100k for all under 50. That rate would yield 27 deaths in a group of 3000, so the test group would appear to be HEALTHIER than current averages.
Second, it's the wrong direction. The 12 who died had high levels of strontium compared to the MEAN of all others. We don't know how many kids with high strontium DIDN'T die early. You should have sorted the kids by strontium level first, and then looked at cancer among the highest exposures. If most of the high-strontium kids died early, and none of the low-exposures died early, you'd have a point.
Well then, did the study have any consequences? Supposedly it contributed to JFK's efforts to negotiate a test-ban treaty in 1963. The ban on atmospheric testing really made it easier to do more testing overall, which is why both US and Russia agreed to it.
While futilely trying to look up earlier cancer stats, from the era before nukes and cigarettes were major factors, I bumped into this MOTHER OF ALL GRAPHS.
You don't need to read the years or the titles on the curves. If you know anything about history, you know what this is. This is the definition of EPIDEMIC.Labels: Asked and badly answered, Blinded by Stats, SES
¶ 8:37 AM
