You Can't Argue with SCIENCE
This is SCIENCE, Man!
From CBS: Swine Flu Cases Overestimated?
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml
With most cases diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors, the H1N1 flu epidemic may seem worse than it is. For example, on Sept. 22, this alarming headline came from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.: "H1N1 Flu Infects Over 250 Georgetown Students."
H1N1 flu can be deadly and an outbreak of 250 students would be an especially troubling cluster. However, the number of sick students came not from lab-confirmed tests but from "estimates" made by counting "students who went to the Student Health Center with flu symptoms, students who called the H1N1 hotline or the Health Center's doctor-on-call, and students who went to the hospital's emergency room."
There is something about not actually measuring the thing that should be measured that doesn't sound like that Old Time Science. Nope, let's measure "risk factors" and from that we can "estimate" the number of cases that we think we might get if we actually tested people for swine flu. Excuse me... H1N1 flu. The only virus with a politically correct name. I just hope that the idea is not to scare everyone with the Comet_Kohoutek of world-destroying plagues.
For a scientist, a new result is suspect. Why is this result different what has been commonly accepted in the literature? For a journalist, a new result is just that: news.
-- Rebecca Goldin, STATS.org
From CBS: Swine Flu Cases Overestimated?
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml
With most cases diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors, the H1N1 flu epidemic may seem worse than it is. For example, on Sept. 22, this alarming headline came from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.: "H1N1 Flu Infects Over 250 Georgetown Students."
H1N1 flu can be deadly and an outbreak of 250 students would be an especially troubling cluster. However, the number of sick students came not from lab-confirmed tests but from "estimates" made by counting "students who went to the Student Health Center with flu symptoms, students who called the H1N1 hotline or the Health Center's doctor-on-call, and students who went to the hospital's emergency room."
There is something about not actually measuring the thing that should be measured that doesn't sound like that Old Time Science. Nope, let's measure "risk factors" and from that we can "estimate" the number of cases that we think we might get if we actually tested people for swine flu. Excuse me... H1N1 flu. The only virus with a politically correct name. I just hope that the idea is not to scare everyone with the Comet_Kohoutek of world-destroying plagues.
For a scientist, a new result is suspect. Why is this result different what has been commonly accepted in the literature? For a journalist, a new result is just that: news.
-- Rebecca Goldin, STATS.org