Subject:  Re Ottawa EMF Conference Report (fwd)
Date:     Tue, 8 Sep 1998 031614 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@mail.llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 02:13:55 +0200
From: Christoph Reuss 
To: "Richard W. Woodley" 
Cc: "Roy L. Beavers" 
Subject: Re: Ottawa EMF Conference Report (fwd)

Richard W. Woodley wrote:
> One example of the discussion on that was when one Judy Larkin said there
> needed to be a partnership between industry, scientists and government to
> communicate accurate information (the underlying assumption being to
> convince people there is no problem. I asked her if she deliberately left
> the public out f that list and if so why. After avoiding the question the
> next questioner commented that she had not answered it and she again gave
> an unsatisfactory answer. A few questions later the Consumers Association
> delegate again asked for an answer which was still nt satiisfactorily
> answered.

That's easy to explain:  For the industry, the public is a mass of dumb
_objects_ (not subjects), and to "communicate accurate information" (aka PR)
is a one-way communication (because the public is dumb anyway, it has
nothing to communicate, but has to listen):  The sender is "industry,
scientists and government", and the receiver is the public.  That's why
Ms. Larkin left the public out of the list.


> Dr. repacholi commented that it was a "priority" of the WHO project to do lab
> studies that used real life fields, including these factors (how you design
> a controlled study to duplicate random factors will be an interesting
> challenge).

There's a science that can (could) cope with this challenge: Statistics.
The design of the controlled study will include the statistical properties
of the random factors, not the random factors itself.  (The signals as
stochastic processes.)  The law of the great numbers will "do the rest".
HOWEVER, it is very questionable (improbable) whether the industry spin-
doctors will even *attempt* to model the stochastic processes *correctly*
(and include all real-world components).  Always reminds me of that great
book "How To Lie With Statistics"... ;-)

Cheerio,
Chris



> Dr. Daniel Wartenberg presented a paper looking at why scientists come to
> different conclusions from the same data depending on what type of analysis
> model they use.





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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html