Free Republic

There are two separate issues that need to be distinguished from each other. One issue is whether it is ok to get an exception made to a good rule, and the other is whether it is ok to challenge a bad rule. You can’t judge the situation and distinguish between the two cases, unless you are willing to actually evaluate the specific rule.

There used to be rules saying there had to be separate blood banks for black people and white people. It was eventually decided by the courts, after expert testimony, that this rule was not actually necessary and it was causing harm due to the lost opportunities for matching donors to recipients, and discriminating illegally.

Now there is a rule saying there have to be separate organ banks for adults and children, and it is claimed that this rule is also not actually necessary and causes harm due to the lost opportunities for matching donors to recipients, and discriminating illegally.

These situations are exactly parallel structurally. That doesn’t mean they must reach the same result, because the medical facts may be different enough to change the result, but there is just as much moral right to challenge the rule in court as there was to challenge the old rule about separate blood banks.

There are two separate issues you are not distinguishing from each other. One issue is whether it is ok to get an exception made to a good rule, and the other is whether it is ok to challenge a bad rule. You can’t judge the situation and distinguish between the two cases, unless you are willing to actually evaluate the specific rule.

There used to be rules saying there had to be separate blood banks for black people and white people. It was eventually decided by the courts, after expert testimony, that this rule was not actually necessary and it was causing harm due to the lost opportunities for matching donors to recipients, and discriminating illegally.

Now there is a rule saying there have to be separate organ banks for adults and children, and it is claimed that this rule is also not actually necessary and causes harm due to the lost opportunities for matching donors to recipients, and discriminating illegally.

These situations are exactly parallel structurally. That doesn’t mean they must reach the same result, because the medical facts may be different enough to change the result, but there is just as much moral right to challenge the rule in court as there was to challenge the old rule about separate blood banks. Therefore it is unfair to criticize this lawsuit, unless you think it ought to be obvious that the current rule is best.

That depends on how large your sample is.

A 200% factor (twice as many incidences) will already show significance when there are less than 10 expected occurences. For example, if the incidence increases from 7% to 14%, a sample of 100 will show statistical significance (you get 14, you expect 7, probability of getting 14 by chance alone is under 1% so it’s a significant effect).

If you want to detect a relative risk factor of 150% (half again as many incidences) you need a larger sample size. For example, if the incidence increases from 7% to 10.5%, and you have a sample size of 400, you get 42 when you expect 28 and that also has a less than 1% probability of occurring by chance alone so you call it statistically significant.

There is a formula giving the relationship betweem the following variables

expected frequency
observed frequency
sample size
significance level.

The percentage you are working with is the ratio of expected frequency to observed frequency. In my examples, I used a 1% significance level (meaning the result is declared significant if it has less than a 1% probability of occurring by chance alone if there were really no systematic difference).

That depends on how large your sample is.

A 200% factor (twice as many incidences) will already show significance when there are less than 10 expected occurences. For example, if the incidence increases from 7% to 14%, a sample of 100 will show statistical significance (you get 14, you expect 7, probability of getting 14 by chance alone is under 1% so it’s a significant effect).

If you want to detect a relative risk factor of 150% (half again as many incidences) you need a larger sample size. For example, if the incidence increases from 7% to 10.5%, and you have a sample size of 400, you get 42 when you expect 28 and that also has a less than 1% probability of occurring by chance alone so you call it statistically significant.

There is a formula giving the relationship betweem the following variables

expected frequency
observed frequency
sample size
significance level.

The percentage you are working with is the ratio of expected frequency to observed frequency. In my examples, I used a 1% significance level (meaning the result is declared significant if it has less than a 1% probability of occurring by chance alone if there were really no systematic difference).

I'm sorry, but I was making a technical criticism because you misused a technical term. You said

For statistical significance an increased increased risk (a/k/a relative risk) needs to be over 200% and preferably over 300%.

There is no relationship between your numbers of 200% and 300% and the concept of "statistical significance" which has a specific technical meaning.

As a professional statistician, I know your comment is nonsense. Statistical significance has to do with how sure you are that an effect exists, not how large the effect is. With a large sample, small effects can be identified and found significant.

The sample sizes in the studies described in the article are easily large enough for effects of the size described to be statistically significant; therefore there is high confidence the effect is real, assuming the researchers did their jobs competently and honestly.

This guy was a specialist. His job was exorcisms, and people were brought from all over to him in Rome. Given that it was his full-time job, allowing an hour for a typical one, 4 a day is about what you’d expect.

Plenty of 85-year old doctors have seen way more than 70,000 patients.

It doesn’t matter where they’re from, they’re not only wrong but notoriously wrong. They have been debunked many times.

I saw that link you posted from but it has a misspelled word, possibly on purpose to catch copiers. In this particular case the poem is in the public domain but frequently online sourcebooks will introduce tiny errors so that if someone steals their material wholesale they can sue.

If you read the last two words of each line you’ll notice the non-rhyme.

An amazing poem, written over a century ago but perfectly relevant today.

Chill, dude, they’re making 2 movies out of the book, same as they’re doing with Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter Book 7). Not only will everything good from the book be in there, there’ll be backstory like the White Council etc.

When I was 13 I found 13-year-old girls beautiful and desirable.

That was normal, and it is also normal for an adult man not to lose the capacity to appreciate and desire such beauty.

There are two monstrous things about Polanski. The first is that his desires are disordered because he cannot see the object of his desire as a subject, as a human being; he is completely indifferent to her as a person, otherwise he could not have treated his victim so cruelly. The second is that he apparently cannot perceive himself as a moral agent embedded in a society to which he has responsibilities or obligations: he recognizes no distinction between what he wants to do and what he ought to do. (The second does not imply the first; even utterly selfish people don’t necessarily want to drug and sodomize 13-year-olds.)

There are some kids for whom meds would be unwise, and some for whom they are necessary (and some, such as my oldest, who fall in both categories at different times in their development).

However, it is just about never better for a child to have divorced and separated parents than an intact family. (I don’t deny that divorce might be the best option when the parents can’t or won’t live together peacefully, but I don’t count that situation as “intact”, regardless of which of them are to blame).

Thanks for the reference.

Can’t cut and paste, but anyone under ten is low value like people over 60, because they haven’t complete personalities, haven’t got future plans, and don’t represent as big a parental and societal investment as adolescents and young adults.

Evil. Arrogant remaking of morality, the new little gods.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-14/124973131371910.xml&coll=1

A student at Clemson just died of meningitis. Her parents had driven her to college; she got sick; they took her to the ER, she was told to go home and rest and she was dead by morning.

Happens here too.

Er, post 20 by Mrs VS.

And the hospital thought it appropriate to transfer kid by ambulance, so dispatcher should have also.

Probably not airway issues with a scald with one cup of tea. Probably not full thickness burns either, or circumferential. Probably not abuse. But the dispatcher couldn’t tell over the phone. You also can’t depend on parents to treat burns and pain correctly en route and facial scarring is not what you want to mess with. Not to mention the difficulty driving when your own child is shrieking with pain. Maybe the family had no car.

Now me, I would I would have run water over the burns for ten minutes, packed up the kid with cool wet dressings, and driven him myself, but we’ve also done family transport for all broken bones, chest pain and head trauma (which is maybe not so smart.)

As an EMT I would have no problem transporting child and family - highly appropriate 911 call.

When I took the Regents exams (1975-78) they were still very good, well-designed tests. You could not pass them without knowing the subject “passably”, and, just as important, if you DID know the subject you would do well on the tests even if your teacher made no attempt at all to “teach to the test”. This was true for every subject, and had been since the 1800’s. This proved that good standardized subject tests were achievable, even though many people from both left and right deny that.

Here is a new way to spread official national propaganda – selling it online in the form of t-shirts, tote bags, and trucker hats. North Korea has created its own shopkeeper’s account on an American website that sells custom made printed t-shirts and other products. The country’s official website, http://www.korea-dpr.com/ (which is currently down) links to this online shop directly in its souvenirs menu. Of course the public of North Korea has virtually no internet access. The shop offers a variety of products in 15 designs: two emblems, the rest are pictures labeled “propaganda 1-13”. All this from a site that also proudly carries merchandise showing support for the US Army. First, doesn’t this violate any trade sanctions? Surely the revenue must go to supporting the cruel regime. On that note, we urge you not to purchase any propaganda 7 coffee mugs, as tempting as that may be. And second, how pathetic is it that a country with the third largest standing army in the world, one that has an obsessive national hatred for America, has to outsource its souvenir production and selling to a privately owned American site?

If they really had the wrong guys, then these guys would have an explanation for how their DNA got in her car. But they deny ever being near her, rather than say that she gave them a ride once....