[aposiopetic]

Science can handle a poor signal-to-noise ratio, but public policy cannot.

May one safely assume that, during the run-up to the recent arrival of the Physicist progeny (and, for that matter, thereafter), both Physicist and the Physicist spousal unit steadfastly refused the aid of medical devices and pharmaceuticals the safety and efficacy of which had not been *established* according to the stricter standards of the physicist's metier rather than the more lax rules-of-thumb typically applied by the benighted bureaucrats of the Food and Drug Administration?

[Physicist]

May one safely assume that, during the run-up to the recent arrival of the Physicist progeny

GAACK! Don't start that again. There was no recent progeny. Somebody just bumped a 4-year-old thread.

[Physicist]

safety and efficacy of which had not been *established* according to the stricter standards of the physicist's metier rather than the more lax rules-of-thumb typically applied by the benighted bureaucrats of the Food and Drug Administration?

I don't believe there should be a Food and Drug Administration. They are as likely to reject a good practice or drug or device as to accept a bad one, thanks in part to weak scientific publication standards. But the greatest failures of public policy caused by weak research happen not in the administrative branch of government, but in the judicial: witness the recent Vioxx judgment.