Posted by Squiggles on May 15, 2006, at 11:58:43
In reply to Re: Statistical question on SSRIs - ADDENDUM » linkadge, posted by Larry Hoover on May 15, 2006, at 9:54:44
Try again:
My message disappeared just after writing it
and posting. It was lengthy and took me some
time to compose. A registration request came
right after and it disappeared.OK - let me just say this briefly; perhaps there
is a limit to how much babbling is permitted here;Statistical significance is an advantageous and
unbeatable weapon for the pharmaceutical companies. You cannot argue with statistical significance regarding the efficacy of drugs, or for that matter any other consumer product. Causality seems obsolete, but I am not going to question which scientific method is better or worse.What I would like to suggest, is that statistics give corporations an unfair legal power, which individual citizens and small groups of citizens may not have. Corporations have obligations and are considered as bodies just like people, but they do not have rights. They are infact immune to statistically non-significant harm caused by their product because statistical evidence is on their side. If they hire a lawyer or an army of lawyers to defend the corporation, it will not be against harm done to their sales on account of criticism of a product but only to protect themselves from a statistically significant proof that their product has caused harm.
So, an anecdotal case or group of cases which does not meet this scientific criterion of a large class being harmed, has little recourse but to go to hire a lawyer, no matter how great and undeniable the evidence of the harm done is. Even if the evidence they have as a small group, is statistically significant. They have to pass the test.
If I am right in this, the government has actually fallen in its obligation to protect the rights of the minority against the majority. And it has done so in a manner which it is very difficult to extricate itself from, because proof in our legal system requires evidence and what is evidence according to science today? In these matters,
it is statistical significance.Squiggles
poster:Squiggles
thread:640557
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060515/msgs/644253.html