A useful reminder of how activists lie with statistics
The local anti-fluoride people have not stopped rabbiting away with their “science” – searching for anything bad they can argue is caused by community water fluoridation. The latest claim they make – fluoridation is responsible for infant deaths!
OK – these statistics might fool some people – especially if you have a bias to confirm. But the more critical person might pick up that these figures are most likely cherry-picked and want to see the full data set or some analysis of the data.
It’s not hard to find this data as there are tables of all sorts of things for US people organised by state. So, is there a relationship between infant deaths in each state and the extent of fluoridation in each state?
There actually does appears to be one at first sight – here is the graph of the data for infant deaths in 213 plotted against the extent of fluoridation in 2012.
But, just a minute – it is not actually statistically significant (p=0.106) and would account for only about 5% of the variance in infant deaths. Fluoridation is certainly not the main factor – and probably involved at all if other factors are considered.
Here I will just take into account the influence of state elevation – because I know from previous work that fluoridation extent is related to mean state elevation (see ADHD linked to elevation, not fluoridation).
Here is that relationship for the extent of fluoridation in 2012:
So, the extent of fluoridation in each state is related to mean state elevation and this relationship is statistically significant (p=0.005). Actually not surprising as the larger and older cities where fluoridation might be expected are generally situated at lower elevations for a number of reasons.
But what is the relationship between infant death and mean state elevation? Well, it is stronger than for the extent of fluoridation (p=0.002). Elevation accounts for about 18% of the variance in infant deaths in 2013.
Finally, let’s combine both elevation and extent of fluoridation into a multiple regression and see what the relationship when both factors are combined.
This multiple regression shows a statistically significant association (p=0.007) of the extent of infant deaths in each state in 2013 with the mean state elevation. However, there is no statistically significant association (p=0.592) with the extent of state fluoridation.
So while infant deaths could be explained by mean state elevation and most probably one or more other factors, they certainly are not explained by the extent of fluoridation. Not at all!
Preterm birth and conspiracy theory
In her article, Karen Favazza Spencer makes the bald claim “Fluoridation is positively correlated with preterm birth and increased death rates by state “ – again citing from the conspiracy style web page mentioned above.
Sure, that page makes that claim – “Domestic water fluoridation was independently associated with an increased risk of PTB [preterm birth].” But that is hardly credible evidence because that page goes on the say:
“This study was never published nor was any follow-up research done, despite the fact that 2 years earlier, the US Institute of Medicine reported: ‘Those born preterm have an appreciable risk of long-term neurological impairment and developmental delay.'”
Strange! It is not hard to find data for preterm birth. In fact, here it is for 2014 compared with the extent of state fluoridated in 2012:
Clearly, there is no association between preterm births and extent of fluoridation. Yet that web page claimed there was and that the information had been suppressed!
I guess that is another way ideologically motivated activists “prove” these sort of things – invoke a conspiracy theory to claim a relationship exists but the data is suppressed.
So, once again the lesson is – never take at face value the claims made by anti-fluoridation activists – no matter how “sciency” their information looks or what data they invoke to “prove” them.
Nothing new there. Ms Spencer is a master at quoting Papers that have nothing to do with the argument she is trying to defend.
So the point, cited to check all anti fluoride links is so relevent
More water can be consumed in pregnancy but less probably at higher altitudes which are cooler.
Rather than extent of fluoridation need to work with extent of fluoridated water consumed as that increases fluoride intake.
Elevated towns may be smaller and use sodium fluoride for fluoridation. Do they add lime in similar quantities or maybe alkalinise with sodium carbonate or hydroxide?
And we already came across a sodium fluoride fluoridation health problem didn’t we?
Writers should be encouraged to take many possible variables into account.
Altitude affects air pressure which is not good for pre-term births. It also affects UVB which may be good for pregnancy via vitamin D.
If some individuals be more susceptible to fluoride via COMT variant I assert it be not fair to write them off using the excuse altitude shows a greater affect over the whole population.
The Dunedin Study which TV series Ken asked us to watch related of the COMT variant and how it did not have to be followed by antisocial characteristics but might even be banked on for special ability. It would be interesting to look at advanced rugby players and their COMT variants. They may be more affected by fluoride.
I assert it be not the simple affect on all the sports people that Stuartg is suggesting.
Ken I think your chart of infant deaths vs average state elevation should be segmented with an increase in the rate to about 7,000 feet as air pressure decreases followed by a decrease as the increased UVB effect shows.
There are a few high outliers possibly.
Need also to investigate residence in high rise buildings and note the Trumps live on the 66th floor where the air pressure must be a percent lower than ground level.
(I can find my thinking to be not so clear even on a plane ascending to 18,000 feet where pressurisation keeps it like 900 – about 3,000 feet.)
“the simple affect on all the sports people that Stuartg is suggesting”
If you read back, you will see that I’ve made no mention at all about the mental health of sports people. Oh, wait, it’s yet another spelling mistake that wasn’t picked up by proof reading.
I suggest that you read back over the last few years and see exactly who has suggested that CWF has an effect, either simple or complex, on sports people.
All I’ve ever done is ask that person to provide evidence why they believed the coincidences they’d found weren’t. They haven’t provided any.
14th June last year TV1 played a Dunedin Study episode which dealt the forms of the MAOA gene. 30% of people have the weak form and it is claimed they can become antisocial if maltreated up to age 11. Professor James Fallon who found 7 convicted murderers in his father’s family tree got his own brain scanned and it showed the problem pattern. But his mother had treated him well and his energy chanelled him to be a professor if you call that mental health.
Stuartg: “If you read back, you will see that I’ve made no mention at all about the mental health of sports people.”
I imagine top rugby players need controlled aggression if you call that mental health.
I have been talking about top players but Stuartg wants me to extend the study to all players, suggesting that any problem of fluoridation on top players should affect all players.
Let us know who extended their fantasy to lower grade players by first mentioning lower grade rugby teams, such as Timaru and Petone.
Let us know who first mentioned football teams in the lower UK leagues such as Birmingham City.
In fact, you could let us know who first raised the fantasy that CWF could reduce sports players performance by “more than 10%”.
Then let us know who hasn’t been able to demonstrate significance in the tiny number of coincidences he’s been able to cherry pick among the thousands (millions?) of results available for him to peruse.
“Stuartg wants me to extend the study to all players, suggesting that any problem of fluoridation on top players should affect all players.”
Read back.
I’ve asked you to follow the scientific method:
1. Spot an oddity – done
2. Get an idea – done
3. Formulate a hypothesis – not yet achieved
4. Test the hypothesis for non-coincidence – not yet achieved
5. Present your research findings to the rest of the world – not yet achieved
6. Defend your research findings by answering the questions expected from the rest of the world – not yet achieved
You’ve gone from stage 1, where you’ve spotted an odd result, to stage 2, getting an idea. You then appear to fantasise that means you’ve achieved all the rest of the stages. Or maybe you imagine that you’ve achieved ultimate proof, definitively established cause and effect, and that you are now merely awaiting the Nobel?
In reality, you’ve managed to get stuck at the stage many non-scientist or anti-science people end up at. And you’ve even started calling your idea a “study”.
You haven’t been able to recognise logical extensions to your idea. (eg more than 10% impairment in sports performance would be immediately obvious over all sports, over all grades)
You haven’t been able to recognise when your ideas are self-contradictory. (eg you tell us that more than 10% impairment in sports performance would only be evident in the very peak grades whilst telling us you’ve observed it in lower grades)
You haven’t been able to answer valid questioning of your ideas.
You have perceived valid questions of your ideas as a personal attack.
It would appear that you are unaware that all scientists have to defend their findings and reasoning. I suggest that you look up what earning a PhD entails.
All in all, soudhill, you’re not managing the scientific method very well.
Perhaps you should follow my suggestion and attend high school classes in the subject?
Stuartg: “Let us know who extended their fantasy to lower grade players by first mentioning lower grade rugby teams, such as Timaru and Petone.
Let us know who first mentioned football teams in the lower UK leagues such as Birmingham City.”
Timaru (Sounth Canterbury) was in Division 1 until fluoridation and producing lots of All Blacks.
Petone was in the top Wellington competition (Jubilee Cup) until the Petone Tech closed and boys had to go to school in fluoridated Hutt.
Birmingham CIty was winning against Manchester United and playing in the top competition (becoming Premier League). 8 years after fluoridation it was still playing in the top competition but not winning against Manchester United. So it was relegated.
And Stuartg claims I am comparing top teams against lower ones. Only because they become lower some time after fluoridation.
Stuartg wrote: “You haven’t been able to recognise logical extensions to your idea. (eg more than 10% impairment in sports performance would be immediately obvious over all sports, over all grades)”
Unless the genetics and environment are different for the top players.
Stuartg: “Then let us know who hasn’t been able to demonstrate significance in the tiny number of coincidences he’s been able to cherry pick among the thousands (millions?) of results available for him to peruse.”
Going through your list to check here’s one I have come across that does not give a correlation: Aston Villa vs Blackburn Rovers. But the p value is so high using my system that the result cannot be trusted.
While 47 clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, only six have won the title: Manchester United (13), Chelsea (4), Arsenal (3), Manchester City (2), Blackburn Rovers (1) and Leicester City (1). The current champions are Leicester City, who won the title in 2015–16. A small part of Leicester is fluoridated but I can’t find when it started.
With 10% of England fluoridated shouldn’t 10% of the winning years tend to be from fluoridated areas?
Good spotting of unusual results. You’ve obviously had an idea. 💡
Now it’s up to you to do something with that idea. Don’t just remain stuck there and complain no-one pays attention to your idea. Do something with the idea that’s worth someone paying attention to. Be scientific about it.
First you’ve got to formulate a hypothesis.
Then you need to test your hypothesis for non-coincidence by using fresh data. (Re-using data that was used to generate a hypothesis isn’t testing it). I’ve already pointed out how you can get such data from the ‘net.
Then publish your observations, your data and your results.
Then defend your data, thinking and results against scientists’ questioning.
At that stage you may, or may not, have demonstrated a correlation between CWF and sports performance. You want it investigated further? Then you have to demonstrate non-coincidental correlation.
Until you’ve done all of that, your appearance to the world remains that of an anti-fluoridationist living in a conspiracist fantasy world of your own imagination, one who is denying the many decades of epidemiological research that confirm the benefits and safety of optimally fluoridated water supplies.
I make no claim other than that you appear to have spotted coincidence.
You, however, claim to have observed detrimental effects (more than 10%) from CWF over multiple sports, multiple teams, multiple grades of sport, and multiple countries.
But if you’ve changed your mind and are now no longer claiming there’s an effect on all teams, all sports, all grades, all countries, then you’ll have to allow for that when you produce your hypothesis before testing it. Your idea now begins to sound very close to the default of you having spotted coincidence.
Personally, I think that you’ll be unnecessarily complicating your hypothesis if you start claiming the effect only occurs sometimes, some places, some sports, some grades: it would be like you, as an electrical technician, trying to find an rare intermittent fault on a circuit board – most of the time your testing would show nothing wrong with the board.
Now, how about you providing some evidence of this effect (more than 10%) you claim to have observed?
Bear in mind that repeating the coincidences that you’ve cherry picked to highlight your idea does not constitute providing evidence.
Form your hypothesis from your cherry picked data, then use fresh data to test that hypothesis for non-coincidence. You could even pretend to be a scientist when you use the scientific method.
Stuartg as with the “testing” of earthquake hypotheses which you related of, new types of foundations, it may take some time for new test circumstances to occur.
Stuartg: “Bear in mind that repeating the coincidences that you’ve cherry picked to highlight your idea does not constitute providing evidence.”
I relate them as a reminder then in discussion with you new ideas emerge that I have not seen before such as early this morning: “With 10% of England fluoridated shouldn’t 10% of the winning years tend to be from fluoridated areas?”
I find it hard to do a correlation test over all the sorts of things I noticed, but maybe someone else can become interested.
As I said I noticed unfluoridated Canterbury to be doing well. That formed my hypothesis then I started looking more widely. I don’t think myself to be seriously cherry picking.
“I find it hard to do a correlation test over all the sorts of things I noticed”
Why can’t you do it? Your comments about other people’s statistical analyses imply that you are conversant with doing them yourself. Go ahead, no-one is stopping you. No data? Well, I’ve pointed out how to find sources for the new data that you need to do the testing. Why don’t you use them? Not doing the correlation testing suggests that you already know there is no correlation between sports performance and CWF.
“But maybe someone else can become interested”
Highly unlikely. After the multiple decades of epidemiological research into populations with optimally fluoridated water supplies that completely contradict your beliefs, scientists are aware that the prior probability that your observations are non-coincidental is close to zero. So why should they waste the time and energy?
But maybe you could interest some of your anti-fluoride cronies in doing the correlation studies that are evidently beyond your abilities? Or maybe they also think you’ve noticed coincidence and so can’t be bothered?
“That formed my hypothesis”
No. Hypotheses are for testing. That you haven’t tested one in – how many years now? – shows that you don’t have a hypothesis. Just fantasies.
**********
You claim to have observed detrimental effects (more than 10%) from sports people drinking optimally fluoridated water, occurring over multiple sports, over multiple teams, over multiple grades of sport, and over multiple countries. You now say you are unable to provide evidence to back that claim.
I think an applicable phrase is: put up, or shut up.
Stuartg: “Highly unlikely. After the multiple decades of epidemiological research into populations with optimally fluoridated water supplies that completely contradict your beliefs,”
I have asked for how many studies. Let’s make it easier, which of these ranges?:
1-10
11-100
101-1,000
1,001- 10,000
Stuartg I wonder if you have ever seen cases of pellagra.
Is ir showing again with poverty or idiosyncratic diets reappearing which were extremely uncommon when you went to medical school?
Imagine yourself back in history you are seeing patients with varying degrees of dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia, death.
What sort of proof would you have wanted of a cause before treatment? Could you have encompassed the three or four symptoms into one disease or would you have had to separate them?
How is correlation done when one cause can have a number of outcomes, as you note for my fluoridation/sport picture?
And my fluoridation picture is further complicated by temperature/water consumption, modification of calcium/magnesium level and balance in water and the possibility for effects pre-conception to current with possibility for apparently delayed action.
Stuartg you must have come across pellagra, possibly without knowing it and prescribing antidepressants, in patients on certain medications or even alcoholics.
“The classical triad of pellagra is dermatitis, diarrhea and
dementia. The symptoms do not have to appear in this order.
Early symptoms of pellagra include lassitude, weakness,
loss of appetite, mild digestive disturbances and psychiatric or emotional distress (anxiety, irritability and depression).”
Brian – thanks for pointing out my mistake with the figure where I use maximum rather than mean state elevations. I have checked it out and fortunately, the mistake is only with that graph (I pulled out some information at the last minute for the graph and must have been confused). Fortunately, I have used the correct elevation figures in all the statistical analysis, etc.
I have also corrected the figures where I wrongly cited infant death rates as percent.
I guess that comes from missing my daily power nap. 🙂
How about you stop shutting up and answer my questions which help elucidate about getting an agreed framework.
Some of the time pellagra shows up as black tongue in creatures. But you can’t demand black tongue as a symptom before your treat with vitamin B3 rather than antidepressants like Prozac.
Fluoridation could have one or more of several possible synptoms in sports teams from an area. The effects could be caused by
1. quantity of water consumed by players
2. change in the balance and concentration of calcium/magnesium when the water is treated.
3. interaction with other issues such as low iodine and or COMT and MAOA gene variants which may affect drives.
4. epigenetic effects – that gene switching on or off adaptation is inherited by offspring.
5. effect of results of 1-4 above on secondary school players with a follow on result on the adult teams they may be at the top of in 8 years.
6. possible other interactions or direct effects.
So the sampling and correlation testing be not simple,
Ken possibly to improve your analysis please note that the average dweller in a state may be in cities which are on average below or above the average elevation of the state.
That if your elevation – preterm/morbidity/morality figures be correct they impact on the assumption in the Han/Tibetan blood oxygen saturation I cited, don’t they?
Ken though when research papers are claiming that altitude reduces oxygen saturation and causes trouble and your result claims altitude reduces trouble doesn’t that clash need to be sorted?
Correlation is not causation. But the issue is that your p value of 0.002 means that there are 2 chances in a 100 that the correlation is only by chance before even thinking about causation.
has a better p value than yours but Stuartg pointed out it could be coincidence.
You must be careful not to be tending to get people to think into circular thinking when you say, “But we do know that the association with fluoridation is bogus, don’t we?” since you are basing the bogusity claim on the correlation aren’t you?
I am basing the bogus charge on the fact that there is no statistically significant correlation with percentage of fluoridation in a state. And when covariates are included the level of significance drops even further – through the floor.
I am not the one saying anything – it is your mates in FFNZ claiming that fluoridation is associated with increased infant deaths.
The extremely high p value shows they are wrong when elevation is included as a covariate. Even without including any covariates their association is still not statistically significant.
There is absolutely no association between fluoridation and infant death – why try to claim there is?
Ken you might try this, entering in say your r values you have for any relationships between say pre-term and fluoridation, pre-term and altitude, and altitude and fluoridation. I presume N will be 51 if you have data for every state. Vassarstats will do its sort of calculation and give t and two-tailed p values., holding each of the three variables controlled in turn. http://vassarstats.net/par.html
By putting in larger values of N it is possible to see how many states would be necessary to give significant partial correlations when the non-partial correlations are low.
Please do not confuse “significant” with notable – the magnitude of the correlation. “Significance” (the p value) only indicates whether the correlation which has been calculated can be trusted.
“Fluoridation could have one or more of several possible synptoms (sic) in sports teams from an area. The effects could be caused by”
“could”? You’re not sure?
The first thing you need to do then is to actually show if an effect actually exists. If the effect is “more than 10%”, as you say, then there should be plenty of evidence for you to cite.
Why are you not able to cite evidence that the effect actually exists? Why are you unable to “put up”?
The logical answer is that you can’t provide evidence for the simple reason that CWF has no effect on sports performance.
Brian, you are welcome to try whatever you want in your efforts to retrieve a nasty role of fluoride. The data is freely available. But I am not going to waste my time.
But there is clearly no association of preterm births with fluoridation extent – you can tell that just be eyeballing the data in the figure. Why bother attempting to revive the claim. It is clearly another lie from the FFNZ people. You are just attempting to cover that lie up with yet another diversion.
Stuartg I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion. They are of differing scenarios. I am not all the way there yet as you aren’t when you prescribe mental health treatment without checking vitamin B3 status.
“I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion”
But you still haven’t produced any evidence that your observations are not coincidence. Until you do so the suspicion remains entirely your own fantasy.
Ken perhaps you should also take into account induced abortion rate. On your preterm births chart the high points would be Mississippi, Louisianna, Alabama and West Virginnia. They are in the lower half of abortion rates. So might it be expected that less viable babies are being kept as long as possible?
Those states are about half way long your altitude chart, making the line more horizontal than it would be if they were not at that point.
Induced abortion rates are negatively correlated with altitude
r -0.3638
t -2.62
N 45
P two-tailed
0.011946
so presumably positively correlated with fluoridation extent, so going by averages these four states could be further along the chart increasing the slope.
My article pointed out how FFNZ was using cherry picked data to lie about the relationship of infant deaths to fluoridation. I showed there is no statistically significant association – particularly when one possible covariate (which is related to fluoridation extent) is included. The weak and statistically non-significant relations they claimed is not due to fluoridation.
As for preterm births – they advanced a conspiracy theory to imply measurements have found a statistically significant relationship but this information had been suppressed. I simply showed there is no statistically significant relationship, the data is readily available and they are lying about suppression.
I have shown that yet again, FFNZ is lying and they a fiddling statistics. Yet again!
My task is complete – I have absolutely no interest in doing any of the things you suggest. You are simply trying to divert attention away from the purpose of my article and what I have shown.
One way of lying with statistics – in epidemiology – is to leave out categories who don’t support your case, as the CDC did with MMR, Black boys and ADHD. Or to include non-equivalent group members when it suits.
Making a start to get equivalent groups I have left off Hawaii and the 10 states with about 20% or more African American population. (Actually 19.91% or above).
Then correlating preterm births against fluoridation extent I calculate from Vassarstats
number of states 40
correlation 0.3628 or fluoridation “explaining” 13% of preterm births.
Stuartg so you make a big thing about where Thompson saved the computer files at the time of the document destruction: “All the associated MMR-Autism Study computer files have been retained on the Immunization Safety Office computer servers since the inception of the study and they continue to reside there today.”
I’d refer to a statistician, someone who knew more than me about the subject.
I’m aware I don’t have the knowledge to comment.
I only have two years of statistics at university so am much less qualified to talk on the subject than an electrical technician who hasn’t managed high school science.
“Thompson saved the computer files at the time of the document destruction”
Haven’t you heard? Hooker’s incompetent “re-analysis” (subsequently retracted) was of Destefano et al’s already published data. He had no need to save data files already in the public arena.
You continue to demonstrate that you are unable to question anti-fluoride doctrine.
Do you have an anti-fluoride catechism? One that you use for cut and paste? One that you’re not allowed to deviate from? Even when it’s been repeatedly proven wrong?
Stuartg: “He had no need to save data files already in the public arena.”
The files only remained on the computer because Thompson saved them. They are not exactly in the public arena now it is very hard to get permission to review them.
“At 27/4/09 3:47 pm, Blogger soundhill said…
Ian Wishart wrote:
“And memo to Bomber, the planet is currently cooling overall, not warming. Latest data, FWIW, shows Antarctica in particular has cooled by up to 0.21C since 1980.”
I would expect Antarctica to cool with global warming. Deep ocean currents bring heat to calve icebergs which then travel to latitudes where they reflect away heat which was formerly being absorbed by seawater. ”
I also sent emails to some scientists and the subject is turning up in Scientific American years later.
“I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion”
But you still haven’t produced any evidence that your observations are not coincidence. Until you do so the suspicion remains entirely your own fantasy.
As I said: put up, or…
I notice that you still haven’t shown correlation, that you still haven’t shown that your observations are not coinidental.
The obvious conclusion is that any relationship between CWF and sports performance that you noticed is pure coincidence.
Stuartg my cite was a complete paper not just an abstract. If you think there to be something more “original” dividing Blacks by sex, then please cite.
You have not shown any correlations. What you have done is to mention some interesting coincidences.
Nothing you have written or cited has demonstrated non-coincidence of those observations.
I’ve pointed several ways that you can demonstrate non-coincidence of your observations, any of which could be easily used by an expert statistician.
Once you demonstrate non-coincidence, then you have correlation.
Unless you demonstrate correlation, all you have is coincidence.
But then, expert statistician that you claim to be, you already know all of that.
Failing to attempt demonstration of non-coincidence suggests that you already know there is no correlation and that your entire purpose is spreading FUD about CWF.
Stuartg, from that how is anyone supposed to know what data sets are available?
And Dr Hooker says Destefano was the one who had ordered the destruction of the data and took over from Thompson and presented fraudulent data in a talk to the Institute of Medicine which Thompson had been supposed to give.
Stuartg a correlation can be by coincidence – chance. The associated p value tells of the chance the correlation is only the result of chance.
At p=0.05 there is one chance in 20 that that correlation only happened by chance – coincidence. My p values were usually better. So my correlations are regarded as statistically significant.
You may only claim I have not demonstrated a causal connection – the same with any set of correlations.
The figures I gave for South Canterbury’s contribution to the All Blacks appears that I would get a significant negative correlation with fluoridation. That does not mean that I would get the same for other places say like Tauranga, Then I would look for other factors such as low South Canterbury iodine compared to Tauranga.
Small numbers mean unreliable statistics. Even a high school student of statistics could tell you that. But then, as an electrical technician who has never done science, your skills with statistics are obviously so much greater than someone who’s actually been taught statistics.
“That does not mean that I would get the same for other places say like Tauranga” – and I’m encouraging you to do the same for places like Tauranga. Or New Plymouth. Or Southland. Or Marlborough. Or Northland… In fact, why don’t you include everywhere in the country so that you have significant numbers and can allow for confounding variables?
I’ve pointed out how you can do the same for UK football teams. I’ve pointed out how you can check secondary level NZ teams. I’ve pointed out how you can check with different sports, using different grades, both sexes, all ages.
…But you don’t do so.
I suspect that you already know that you would demonstrate coincidence and non-correlation by checking other, larger, numbers.
So, instead, you ignore the science and continue to use cherry-picked coincidences to spread FUD about CWF.
Here’s a simple challenge for you, directly related to your “observations’ and “studies”:
After over 70 years and many hundreds of millions of people enjoying the benefits of optimally fluoridated water, please cite one documented example of any physical harm to any person, or to any population, because they drank optimally fluoridated water, even for as much as a lifetime.
Stuartg, if I do the same for Tauranga, then if the correlation for Tauranga be statistically significant, then it be worth comparing it to Timaru, if Timaru also be statistically significant.
If I am on holiday Is it safer to drive a car on the right or left side of the road? Say I holiday in Australia of Japan and do OK on the left in a statistically significant fashion, then you are like someone who holidayed in the USA or China who claims driving on the left be not safe for them in a statistically significant fashion. You are like saying I ought take a larger sample over more countries.
In that case there is the obvious difference where we know that the rules are different. Some countries drive on the left and some on the right. Taking the wider average does not help. If I holiday in several countries I should soon find out the two statistically significant patterns. Unless I am slow at learning and think there should be one way overall to be testing.
If my thinking ability develops I may see there may be something to do with which side of the car the steering wheel is on. Or there may be arrows on the road.
All that is so easy to see so why not for possible interactions of fluoridation with temperature, activity, amount of water drunk, in combination with other inputs, balances of minerals and sunlight/ vitamin D at various latitudes/altitudes/skin colours, other genetic types of person?
Do you see that to leave out more principles and just ask for one overall tally for fluoridation be wrong, just as it be wrong to leave out knowledge of different driving rules in various countries?
It is like you keep asking me for one example where driving on the left side of the road isn’t safe because it has been proven it works in the whole “British Commonwealth.” There may be better analogies.
Everyone is noting how you are unable to provide any evidence that people or individuals have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in more than seventy years.
You can use today’s definition, or that of 70 years ago, or any intervening, as long as you justify your choice.
Everyone is still noting how you are unable to provide any evidence that populations or individuals have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years, even over entire lifetimes.
If you have difficulty in deciding what an optimal level of CWF is, you could always use the level from somewhere that democratically chose to continue CWF.
Stuartg how large does a patient’s thyroid have to be before you are prepared to send them for a thyroid test? Don’t you think it be more fair to be awake to earlier signs?
Stuartg: “I suspect that you already know that you would demonstrate coincidence and non-correlation by checking other, larger, numbers.”
I have shown correlation figures and their associated p values which demonstrate statistical significance at much better than what may be accepted in many studies.
Stuartg: “If you have difficulty in deciding what an optimal level of CWF is, you could always use the level from somewhere that democratically chose to continue CWF.
Perhaps the level in Ken’s home, Hamilton?”
In other words, not answering my question but proclaiming: “Obey me! Abracadabra you shall forget history.”
It should be obvious that my references to overt symptoms, bandy legs and enlarged thyroid are follow-ons to earlier indications that could have been dealt with to prevent the eventual aggravated conditions. And that I maintain such matters as correlations between fluoridation and poorer community sports performance ought to be noted and acted upon before overt symptoms in individuals appear.
We can still see that you are unable to cite any evidence that individuals or populations have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years since CWF was started.
Even when you are allowed to define “optimally” and “harm” yourself, provided you also justify your definition, you are still unable to cite evidence.
What next? Do you need someone else to define the terms “water”, “drinking”, “fluoridated”, “seventy”, or “years” for you?
You may have shown “correlation figures”, but you have not yet shown correlation or non-coincidence.
But then, could we expect an electrical technician with no secondary education in science to understand that? Maybe not, especially when the Dunning-Kruger effect is so strong.
Stuartg: “You may have shown “correlation figures”, but you have not yet shown correlation or non-coincidence.”
The likelihood of “coincidence,” or the calculated correlation value happening by chance is given by the p value. At p=0.05 it is a 1 in 20 chance, which is accepted in many studies as a statistically significant correlation.
Stuartg: “What next? Do you need someone else to define the terms “water”, “drinking”, “fluoridated”, “seventy”, or “years” for you?”
The point is that “optimally fluoridated,” has changed from meaning a range: 0.7 – 1.2 mg/l to meaning only 0.7 mg/l in USA and NZ may be catching up.
The story goes mild dental fluorosis is not an illness in fact it be good for you. But because it is increasing a little with better tooth brushing with fluoridated toothpaste the level put into water is going to be decreased. You weren’t being harmed it has been good for you but we’re going to decrease fluoridation level because of that increase in that good effect.
…And the point is that even though you are able to specify your own level for optimal fluoridation, provided you justify that level, you still have been unable to cite an individual or a population that has been harmed by drinking such optimally fluoridated water, even for over seventy years consumption.
And though fluoridation plus toothpaste was damaging the cells which form your tooth enamel especially in some people, and so causing the white opacities on the teeth, we don’t know if it be genetic and we don’t think it to be damaging anything else.
Stuartg: “you still have been unable to cite an individual or a population that has been harmed by drinking such optimally fluoridated water”
I have cited populations it is just that you have a mind set that illness has to be really bad before you accept it. Bad like too late to do anything much except arrange extra carers.
You have the option to define “harm”, as long as you are able to justify your definition.
You have the option to define the level of fluoride at which “optimal fluoridation” occurs. Again, you have to be able to justify your definition.
Now, given your ability to set those definitions, could you please explain to us why you are unable to cite any documentation of harm that has occurred to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water over at least the past seventy years?
Of course, the default answer, the obvious answer, is that in more than seventy years of study epidemiologists have never found any harm to individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Your inability to cite evidence to the contrary is merely supporting the epidemiologist finding of no harm.
Stuartg: “You have the option to define the level of fluoride at which “optimal fluoridation” occurs. Again, you have to be able to justify your definition.”
The accepted level for that community at that time.
Stuartg: “could you please explain to us why you are unable to cite any documentation of harm”
The discussion on this group could lead to eventual publication by me or others. Until then no citation of published work can be produced.
You appear to try to be convincing readers that since nothing has been peer reviewed yet that it never can be. Funny, by your logic we would never see any new discoveries.
You believe that harm is/has been produced by CWF. At least, that’s what you tell us.
So why is it that you cannot cite any documents that support your beliefs? Unless there is no evidence out there?
After all, CWF has been used by millions of people for more than seven decades now. Hundreds, if not thousands, of epidemiologist have been studying those communities, searching for harm. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental departments have been monitoring those communities – and most, if not all, of their monitoring data has been published online.
And yet you are still unable to cite any published documents that support your beliefs.
Maybe those unsubstantiated beliefs are better called fantasies?
Stuartg: “You believe that harm is/has been produced by CWF. At least, that’s what you tell us.”
Reduced community football performance for one thing
“So why is it that you cannot cite any documents that support your beliefs? Unless there is no evidence out there?”
Documents have to be written before they can be cited.
“After all, CWF has been used by millions of people for more than seven decades now. Hundreds, if not thousands, of epidemiologist have been studying those communities, searching for harm. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental departments have been monitoring those communities – and most, if not all, of their monitoring data has been published online.”
How about 100 cites then? I doubrt they be what you imply.
“And yet you are still unable to cite any published documents that support your beliefs.”
It always has to start somewhere.
“Maybe those unsubstantiated beliefs are better called fantasies?”
Everything starts as a fantasy.
You brought up the factor of trading of players between teams. I think it would work against my observations as players move from fluoridated to non-fluoridated areas or vice versa, not reinforce them. That will be something to eventually publish then people will be able to cite it.
Stuartg cited: “Now, at this point, inevitably lots of people are going to get offended and respond with something to the effect of, “I’m not anti-science, but…I disagree with the way that science is being done, I think that massive corporations are buying off scientists, I have anecdotes that don’t match the science, scientists have been wrong in the past, scientists are close-minded, etc.,” but those aren’t valid responses and by using them you are standing in opposition to science, which makes you, by definition, anti-science.”
Give a verification for that, please.
You are not standing in opposition to science you are doing what science demands – challenge.
Continuing, one thing we are led to believe is science, that is vaccines, is actually just a business venture.
The vaccine manufacturers don’t even have need to work for safety since unlike most health areas they are absolved from any liability.
Dr Hooker: “There is no inertia and there is no impetus for the CDC or the vaccine manufacturers to
make safe vaccines. They know that vaccines are block-buster business. Many employees
at the CDC end up in industry. Case in point Dr. Julie Gerberding, who was the director of
the CDC from 2001 until 2008, took a very lucrative position as the head of the vaccine
division in Merck in 2009. She was given stock options in the millions for that particular
position so she overnight became a millionaire. There have been other employees that
have gone on to lucrative positions. There’s actually a revolving door between the CDC
and the vaccine industry.
Dr. Thompson himself came from Merck. He worked at Merck before he worked at the
CDC. Dr. Frank DiStefano who is the current head of the immunization safety office at
the CDC actually left the CDC, went into industry and then came back to the CDC.”
OK, I understand what you’re saying. I suspect that so does everyone else.
You fantasise that drinking optimally fluoridated water impairs sports performance. By about 10%, you said, which would reduce professional or Olympic grade athletes to about high school level.
Absolutely no epidemiologists have ever noted that drop in performance, even though they’ve been actively searching for something like this for over seventy years. Neither have sports scientists – and they look for fractions of a percentage improvement or impairment.
The truth is that you’ve observed some minor sporting coincidences, none of which have been duplicated elsewhere, and you now believe that with those coincidences you have proved harm occurs from CWF.
Go ahead, write it up. Don’t forget to mention that you have no references to cite and that the entire thing depends on those coincidences you’ve observed.
Even your anti-fluoride cronies will recognise it as fantasy.
All your comments up to date show you agree with the scientific maxim that the dose makes the poison; the higher the amount of fluoride ingested, the greater the degree of fluorosis on teeth and the greater degree of other effects.
That maxim means that any effect of fluoride on sports performance is not going to be an on/off effect. It would be expected to be greater with increased fluoride intake, just as happens with other effects.
The effect would be most evident in areas with high levels of fluoride in the water, exactly like the increased level of fluorosis in those areas.
We can find such areas around the world: China, India, parts of the USA, many areas in Africa, areas in South America, areas of the Middle East, several of the ‘Stans, parts of Australia.
How come no epidemiologists in those areas have noted a massive (“greater than 10%”, remember?) impairment of sporting performance from fluoride? Not even Chinese researchers, those that you have so frequently cited in the past for their dubious recognition of effects of high water fluoride, managed to observe the massive changes in sporting performance that you claim occur.
Thousands of scientists, working worldwide, haven’t been able to detect an effect of CWF on sporting performance, in over seventy years of searching, even though they were actively searching for such things.
Or what if the effect was not dose dependent, but instead it actually was an on/off effect, with optimally fluoridated water capable of triggering your claimed 10% impairment of sporting performance? 10% impairment would mean that NZ would not have any international level athletes from Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Dunedin… Indeed, there would not be any international level athletes from any areas of the world with CWF or higher water fluoride.
We can readily see that’s not the case by looking at the sporting pages of most newspapers. Why look at p values when even The Press contradicts the idea of an on/off effect?
p values (sigh!) You claim Birmingham City results to be statistically significant, p=0.05 for significance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_England.
Birmingham City is just one club in the top 27 leagues in England. Each league has about 20 clubs, some more. Each club has several teams. And you’ve noticed an effect on just one team from a list of well over 500 clubs? There should be many more teams with similar records, purely by coincidence. (Back of the envelope calculation: over 2,500 teams, so we should be able to identify similar records in over 120 teams)
You have failed to identify a simple coincidence; instead you used that coincidence to reinforce your own beliefs, fantasising that you had identified cause and effect.
Your logical reasoning is highly flawed, soundhill. Maybe if you had taken secondary school classes in science it would be better? Maybe you would understand statistics enough to recognise your lack of knowledge in the area? Maybe you would be able to identify coincidence?
Stuartg: “Not even Chinese researchers, those that you have so frequently cited in the past for their dubious recognition of effects of high water fluoride, managed to observe the massive changes in sporting performance that you claim occur.”
Tibet has to compete under the Chinese flag in the Olympics. Out of its over 3 million people it has only ever achieved one medal: a bronze in a women’s walk in 2012. Compare to New Zealand which achieved 18 for 4.5 million people last year. Tibetans drink a lot of brick tea which is high in fluoride.
China with 1.7B people came 76th in the number of population per medal (70 total medals.)
Yet again you cherry pick. Didn’t you notice that China has multiple high fluoride areas, not just Tibet, yet continues to gain multiple gold medals? So does the USA. And Australia. And African countries. And even NZ, with its areas of CWF, still manages to gain gold medals at the Olympics.
And, hadn’t you noticed, your idea of “more than 10%” impairment in sports performance from CWF (or even high fluoride area) implies that no-one from Tibet would even qualify for the Olympics? Someone from Tibet winning a gold medal at the Olympics implicitly suggests that your idea is wrong.
And, yet again, I will point out that you are still unable to cite any published evidence that any individual or population has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years during which such harm has been sought.
Stuartg: “And, hadn’t you noticed, your idea of “more than 10%” impairment in sports performance from CWF (or even high fluoride area) implies that no-one from Tibet would even qualify for the Olympics?”
It is that the correlation offers 10% and in the case of Aston Villa 5%, if I remember, explanation for the order of wins related to fluoridation plus 8 years. It does not mean take the percent off the score. Sorry I let you say it a few times before commenting.
So to comment on your other Olympic comments take a look overall at the Olympics.
http://www.medalspercapita.com gives the number of Olympic medals per capita.
86 countries are shown. For ones on the fluoridation list but not on the medals list such as SIngapore (100% fluoridation) I have assigned rank 87.
Using Vassarstats rank correlation I get those further down the rank are correlated to greater percent fluoridation of the countries.
95 values entered.
rank correlation 0.2382 and squaring that gives 5.7% explanation.
And please note if I were working with fluoride in the water the correlation may be greater. That be because countries like China with 0 fluoridation actually have quite a lot of natural fluoride. Its low medal ranking would then be associated with more fluoride not zero as for its fluoridation.
Please note I work with rank correlations, that is comparing the 1st 2nd 3rd …&c. largest variables in each set. So my correlations relate to position on the list, not the scores.
You still have not cited any published evidence to demonstrate that drinking optimally fluoridated water has caused harm to individuals or populations for more than seventy years, in spite of millions of people benefiting from CWF.
Some actual evidence from you may benefit your claim.
Stuartg just because evidence is published does not mean it to be infallible. See Retraction Watch.
And the lack of publication is not infallible either. Have you heard of publication bias?
I never interpreted your claim of “more than 10%” sports impairment by CWF as “take the percent off the score.” (Except maybe in your imagination?)
I interpreted it to mean what you typed, that CWF impairs sports performance by “more than 10%”. After all, if that’s not what you meant, then why did you bother to type it?
You have previously claimed that what you typed is not what you meant, and so I then advised that you should review your typing before hitting “Post.” Obviously you didn’t bother to take that advice, either.
Stuartg: “I note that at least one paper you cite (on a topic other than CWF) has had the distinction of appearing on Retraction Watch.”
The paper by Seralini et al was retracted by Food and Chemical Toxicology after a Monsanto employee came on to the board of the journal and a story was made up that Seralini had not used enough rats for a cancer study but it was not a cancer study. It was a toxicology study and used same number and type of rats as Monsanto. Unlike the Monsanto study it did not stop at 3 months. Since then several authorities are classifying glyphoste as a cancer promoting possibility. Seralini was only reporting tumours as is proper protocol if they occur.
Stuartg: “So what made you decide that, among all the people in the world, you are the only one whose claims do not require any evidential support?”
I am not making claims I am pointing out possible connections. I am working with published sports data.
If everyone has to work with cited research data then new discoveries could not show up.
Stuartg:”I interpreted it to mean what you typed, that CWF impairs sports performance by “more than 10%”. After all, if that’s not what you meant, then why did you bother to type it?”
I can’t find the original statement but here’s what I said to David Gierstien:
“Using the Manchester United vs Birmingham City football results – 106 games starting 19th century I have given Manchester United 1 for a win 0 for a draw and -1 for a loss.
Starting from 1979, 8 years after fluoridation stated in Birmingham City, Manchester United had no more losses against them. I assert that Birmingham City players were harmed by fluoridation.
Using 0 for the years up to 1978 and 1 for the years from then on I have used Vassarstats to do a rank correlation.
Results n=106, Rs=0.3041, t=3.26,
p (two tailed) = 0.001506.
Correlation is not causation, however in this case the chance is 15 parts per 10,000 that it is only chance that fluoridation after a short delay “explains” over 9% of the results.”
Have you converted 9 to 10 Stuartg? Not that that amount is important just that you seem to be bending things then being so sure about your bent results. Sorry I let you go on so long with the “10%.” If I did say it I apologize and how about you refer me to the place.
There is no claim there that fluoridation has affected the results. It is stating results and a calculation to think about. Note “explains” I put in in inverted commas. It is a common use of the word, isn’t it, for statistical connection and does not mean actual causation?
You’ve observed some interesting results in multiple sports in multiple countries.
You haven’t investigated them further, for instance by looking to see if the results extend to other, similar teams.
That’s commonly known as cherry picking.
You have then directly related those interesting observations to the presence or absence of CWF at various stages in the life of the players.
You have not considered other causes, including coincidence.
You have attempted some statistics without actually identifying the complete population you need to work with, making your results irrelevant.
Based on your cherry picking and inappropriate statistics, you then claim that CWF causes harm to populations: “Reduced community football performance for one thing” – yes, that’s a claim made by “I am not making claims” soundhill.
Another claim you make is “more than 10%” impairment of sporting performance.
And all of this without being able to cite a single shred of evidence.
CWF has been in use for over seventy years. Millions of people drinking CWF have been extensively studied by epidemiologists and both local and national governmental organisations for those seventy plus years. Many of their results and studies are freely available.
And, amongst all that evidence, you have been unable to find anything to support your claims.
That alone is a pretty good refutation of your claims.
Stuartg: “WOW! More than 10% impairment in sports performance is attributable to CWF! That amount of impairment is really noticeable:
About 1 second in the 100 metres
About 23 seconds in the 1500 metres
…”
Then please explain what you said:
“I never interpreted your claim of “more than 10%” sports impairment by CWF as “take the percent off the score.””
I have been talking about ranks.
I see you quoted me about the 10% before:
““(The reference) says 10% which does not explain the differences I believe may be related to fluoridation.””
[I am not sure if you or I wrote “(the reference)” which is by the way]
but it is not what you say: ““More than 10%” – note the quotation marks I use when quoting you directly.”
What I was saying was that you had said it had been said the colour of the gear could produce a 10% improvement. I thought you were serious, and I said I thought (believed) fluoridation to have more effect than that, yes. But when I calculated the correlation from the Birminghan Manchester United results it only came out to just over 9% – obtained by squaring the correlation I obtained.
Stuartg: ““I am not making claims” – in that case, why are you attempting to use statistics to back up your non-claims?”
You are the one making a claim – fluoridation to be safe. I have not made a claim that it isn’t – I have only presented statistically significant correlations which caste doubt and which need to be investigated carefully, not just write them off as many coincidences.
Ken investigates – he introduces new possible “causes” (statistically thinking.) then does multiple regressions and finds no statistically signficant result in the controlled situation. That does not prove no connection. A statistically significant near-zero correlation be required for that. Also Ken ought to try to compare similar populations across USA. Some of the states have very different African American population proportions, and we know from Thompson of the CDC that their young males can relate differently in some matters, for example MMR- autism.
It be no use the way you did, Stuartg, giving the anecdotes about a few fluoridated countries and their Olympic successes. Well it would be if it led to better correlating.
I’ve told you this before, several times, but it bears repeating.
One of the first rules of statistics is that you do not use the data used to generate an idea or hypothesis to then test the hypothesis. After all, you already know the outcome and are just duplicating your own work.
To test an idea or hypothesis you need to generate a completely new set of data and do the statistical analysis on the new data.
I’ve pointed out several ways to get new data to test your ideas but you have completely ignored my suggestions.
Because you’ve never sought out new data (possibly because it disproves your ideas?), we can completely ignore any statistical work you have done on the original, idea generating, observations.
But then you would already know that if you had bothered to learn science at secondary school level.
You give a brilliant example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action, believing you have an advanced knowledge in a subject because you don’t actually understand the basics.
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is.”
No Stuartg, I always express a level of uncertainty, sometimes quantified as a p value in a particular set of circumstances.
I am working with new ideas, which have to enter into science somehow. I seems to be rather your high-handed “we can only take proven publications into account,” to be Dunning Kruger.
No. Just another idea created by an entirely unrelated set of data.
To test an idea, the new set of data actually has to be related to the original idea:
To test an idea about team captains, you need data about the captains of other teams.
To test an idea about UK football team results, you need data from the results of other UK football teams.
To test an idea about second grade rugby teams, you need data from other second grade rugby teams.
Yet you appear to be trying to test an idea about rugby team captains by using data from the Olympic games. And it’s not even data from Olympic rugby games!
And yet you can’t understand what’s wrong with your “study”.
So why is it that you think you’re an expert at statistics?
As I said previously, you provide a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Stuartg has been saying put up published evidence or shut up. What is that if not intended to discourage the new as yet unpublished material from being discussed?
“What is that if not intended to discourage the new as yet unpublished material from being discussed?”(sic)
Soundhill, explain exactly how you expect unpublished material to be discussed.
Or maybe I could “suppress” you further by encouraging you to publish your observations and subsequent “studies”, along with the claims you’re not making, so that we can see the data, the data analysis, the results of the analysis and your interpretation of them, any claims that you’re not making, and open all of that for discussion.
After all, if there is any evidence to support the claims you aren’t making then shouldn’t it be released to the world rather than remaining hidden inside a single persons’ brain?
I see that you are still unable to cite evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water has resulted in harm to any individual or population in the more than seventy years that CWF has been around.
After all, there’s been more than seventy years of epidemiologists actively searching for any harm. More than seventy years of local and national governmental agencies publishing data about those populations.
But up to now, your silence makes it appear that you haven’t found even one citation to support your “I am not making claims” claim.
Stuartg: “But up to now, your silence makes it appear that you haven’t found even one citation to support your “I am not making claims” claim.”
I am dealing with as yet unpublished, maybe never to published, things I have observed, and stating appropriate caution and p values where i have done correlations. They are things for discussion, not claims.
Stuartg: “Soundhill, explain exactly how you expect unpublished material to be discussed.”
On groups like this.
Such as I cited from Tumeke and perhaps also sci.geo.oceanography I think about mechanisms of polar ice and temperature, some of which has now appeared in Nature to some extent.
And so are your “I am not making claims” claims. The more so because you are unable to cite any evidence supporting them, even with more than seventy years of published research into the topic.
Since you seem to be keen on discussing things that have never been published, please discuss why seventy years of epidemiological research have been unable to demonstrate any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, resulting in no publications being able to support your “I am not making claims” claim of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water?
Bear in mind that, since you ask others to cite evidence supporting their viewpoint, the same is expected of you.
Stuartg: “Bear in mind that, since you ask others to cite evidence supporting their viewpoint, the same is expected of you.”
I have presented figures which indicate not enough research has been done. Let’s see yours to criticise it, especially for lack of looking at genetic types and other factors such as iodine intake.
Do you have an opinion on whether quality of sleep ,may affect athletic performance?
The pineal gland is close to the blood stream and so able to uptake fluoride. Where is your research which says all genetics types are safe and none will suffer early menarche and or poorer sleep from impaired pineal melatonin or other hormone production?
I note that, in spite of your claim of wanting to discuss unpublished data, you are not willing to discuss the dearth of data showing harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even though there’s more than seventy years of research data that has been unable to show harm.
You also seem to be going on to a Gish Gallop in an attempt to divert from your inability to demonstrate harm from CWF. That’s being kind: sleep, menarche, pineal gland, blood supply, iodine and genetics in one comment are probably better described as flight of ideas.
You appear to be more concerned about imaginary unpublished “studies” (for want of a better word) than about what science actually shows us about the real world.
If you are complaining that no-one has done the studies, then nothing prevents you from doing them yourself. (Apart from maybe the lack of knowledge about high school science and statistics, lack of grounding in research methods from university bachelors, masters and doctorates, lack of decades of research work and experience in the field…)
“I have presented figures which indicate not enough research has been done” Have you? Please cite your publication.
CWF has been place for more than seventy years. Epidemiological research into CWF has been continuing and being published for all that time. Local and governmental organisations have been monitoring and publishing about those populations for all that time. Millions of people have been documented as benefiting from CWF over that time.
Yet from amongst that flood of research and evidence you are unable to cite anything that documents harm in an individual or population from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even for entire lifetimes.
You make “I am not making claims” claims that CWF effects IQ, thyroid function, sports performance, (and now menarche, pineal function, sleep and genetics?).
Well, if any of those things happen in the real world, you have more than seventy years of research and data, involving populations of millions of people, that will be capable of demonstrating just those effects.
That’s why it is so telling that you are unable to cite anything that documents harm in an individual or population that has resulted from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Seventy years of research. No harm shown. It’s highly improbable that any harm results from CWF.
Stuartg: “CWF has been place for more than seventy years. Epidemiological research into CWF has been continuing and being published for all that time. ”
Show me one that has followed up on Lin FF et al low iodine interaction. Or else there must be publication bias or bias on what research is approved for funding.
Show me the followups on COMT variants.
Show me the followup division of early menarche related to fluoridation studies divided by genetic types.
If I ask for funding for a study and Stuartg is on the approvals panel it is likely I would be told, there is no evidence of that therefore we will not fund it. So new evidence is being suppressed. Same for other people, possibly.
Drug companies do not publish so many negative studies. And governments want to fund things to prove their policy.
I believe that I asked you to cite evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that harm has been caused to either individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water in the millions of people who have had documented benefits.
For instance: show that there has been an effect on menarche from CWF that actually requires further research. Why do the research if there’s no effect to study?
For instance: Lin et al studied high fluoride areas. Show that the same effect (which can also be termed “harm”) is present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies. If the effect is not present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies, then why does Lin et al have to be followed up? The most generous interpretation of their paper is that fluoride levels in those areas need to be reduced to the optimum level.
So, where is your cited evidence that anyone has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years it has been supplied to the millions of people who have documented benefits?
But if I were, anyone who could cite evidence of harm to individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water would get my support.
There’s more than seventy years of data out there, not all of which has been included in the published research. If there is any documentation of harm in that data, I would want to know a lot more and would support more research – after all, that’s how science works (or weren’t you aware?)
Or you could bear in mind that large amounts of research are published for which the author(s) did not request or require funding. I would suspect that online data mining of public databases from local and national governmental agencies and comparing whether CWF was present or not, such as I’ve previously suggested that you do, does not require much, if any, funding to support. A few hours on the ‘net and you’d have your data ready for statistical analysis. How much funding support does that require?
Many years ago there was a comedy song “My boomerang won’t come back”, about a little aboriginal boy full of misery. The culminating line of the song was “first, you’ve got to throw it!”
You’re like that miserable little boy in that you’re complaining that no-one is discussing or paying attention to your data. In your case the culminating line is “first, you’ve got to show us!”
Humans have not evolved the ability to directly extract data by mind reading. That’s why we use the medium of written language to convey ideas and data between each other. You seem to have missed out on learning that point, instead expecting others to be able to discuss ideas and data that exist only in your head.
I encourage you to publish your ideas, data, analyses and references so that people other than just yourself are able to discuss them.
Stuartg: “In your case the culminating line is “first, you’ve got to show us!”
“I would suspect that online data mining of public databases from local and national governmental agencies and comparing whether CWF was present or not,”
but not from sports bodies? For that’s really what I have been doing.
Anyway you now seem to be being less demanding about it being already published research.
“You now seem to be being less demanding about it being already published research”
You want to discuss data, ideas and hypotheses that have not yet been published?
Fine. Tell us exactly how you fantasise that anyone can partake in a discussion without the subject of the discussion having been published.
Then you can cite the evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused harm to individuals or populations in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
Stuartg: “Fine. Tell us exactly how you fantasise that anyone can partake in a discussion without the subject of the discussion having been published.”
When they are interested in helping to check out or formulate new ideas with a view to building towards an excellent publication.
Sruartg: “Then you can cite the evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused harm to individuals or populations in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.”
My claim is that my annoying statistically significant localised correlations be noted.
“For instance: Lin et al studied high fluoride areas. Show that the same effect (which can also be termed “harm”) is present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies.”
Their words “high fluoride” and “low fluoride” were just distinguishing their two groupings. Their “high” was like optimally fluoridated water.
“When they are interested in helping to check out or formulate new ideas with a view to building towards an excellent publication”
That sounds like authors writing an article for publication.
How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?
CWF has been used for more than seventy years.
Millions of people have received the documented benefits of CWF.
Investigation of fluoride in water began prior to introduction of CWF.
Epidemiologist have monitored the populations and individuals with CWF for more than seventy years so far.
Epidemiologists continue to monitor those populations.
National governments release population data for those areas with/without CWF.
Local governments release population data from those areas with/without CWF.
Many other agencies release data about populations with/without CWF.
In more than seventy years of research and data analysis, no-one has been able to demonstrate any harm, to individuals or to populations, from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
What do you think is the most likely reason that drinking optimally fluoridated water has never been shown to cause harm? People with an understanding of science or logic would consider it’s because optimally fluoridated water does not cause harm.
But not you?
You argue that CWF causes reduction in IQ because of some poor quality studies from high fluoride areas. Well, you’ve got more than seventy years of data from both fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, data from tens of millions of people, and more than seventy years of examination results from those same areas as a marker for IQ. Show us that there’s an effect of CWF on IQ in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue (I think – do you intentionally stay vague?) that CWF prevents people from captaining international sports teams by cherry picking a coincidence from the All Blacks. Well, it should be easy enough to demonstrate that’s not a cherry picked coincidental result. Look at the captains of other international sports teams – All Whites, Tall Blacks, Silver Ferns, Wallabies, FIFA teams, etc, etc. Show us that there’s an effect from CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue that there’s an impairment in sporting ability caused by CWF by cherry picking some coincidental results from an individual rugby team in the Wellington area. Well, it should be easy enough to demonstrate whether this is coincidental or not. There are many other rugby teams from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. Their results are freely available on the ‘net. How do their results compare? Show us that there’s an effect from CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue that there’s an impairment in sporting ability caused by CWF in the UK football leagues. You’ve again cherry picked a set of coincidental results, this time from two teams that play in different leagues because they have different skill levels. You claim that the, not unsurprising, result of the team in the higher league winning more games is because the lower league team drinks CWF. Well, there are many other pairs of fluoridated and non-fluoridated clubs out there, in many countries, some of them even playing in the same league. Their results are all on the ‘net. Use those other results to show us you haven’t just cherry picked a coincidental set of results. Show us that there’s a harmful effect of CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue something about thyroid function and CWF. Again on the basis of very poor quality studies (has there ever been a negative study out of China?) Well, population health and diagnoses are available for both CWF and non-CWF areas on the ‘net. Even from outside of china. Why not look up incidences of thyroid disease in those areas and compare? Or you could compare use of thyroid medication between CWF and non-CWF areas. Show us that there’s an effect of CWF on thyroid metabolism in the real world, not just in your imagination.
I could go on, but you, and others, should get the picture.
Imagination is a great thing, but when it comes to discussions about the real world, evidence is of huge benefit.
You imagine great harm from CWF. You even manage to cherry pick a few coincidences. But you have not managed to produce or cite any evidence to support your imagination.
In the real world there has been more than seventy years of ongoing epidemiological and other research into populations drinking optimally fluoridated water. None of that research has found any harm.
Against that there’s a single person with a scattering of cherry picked results who cannot demonstrate that those results are not coincidental.
Stuartg: “You argue that CWF causes reduction in IQ because of some poor quality studies from high fluoride areas.”
In true political fashion Stuartg repeats assertions over and over in the hope it will be believed which they often are.
People who have taken the time to read the Lin Fa Fu study note their “high fluoride” level was 0.88 mg/L, which is like NZ’s optimally fluoridated water.:
“Area with high fluoride and low iodine levels (Area A) – ln
the township Xinyuan in the lower reaches of Kliya river in the county of Yutian, north of the highway, we examined 250 schoolchildren, aged 7-14 years. The goiter prevalence was 91 % and dental fluorosis 20.80%. The average level of iodine in drinking water was 5.21 micrograms per litre, and that of fluoride 0.88 milligrams per litre.”
The “low fluoride” level was 0.34 milligrams per litre, some 50% more than the Waikato River before fluoridation for Hamilton:
“Area with low iodine level (area B) – ln the townships of
Langan and Jiayi in the alluvial plain before the mountains and to the south of the highway, we examined 256 schoolchildren, aged 7-14 years. The goiter prevalence was 82% and dental fluorosis of 16.00%. The average water iodine level was 0.96 mcg/L and that of fluoride 0.34 mg/L.
Ken has maintained the Lin FF article to be in a ‘news’ publication. A translation of it was in “Iodine Deficiency Disease News.” But as I have said before the original was in the “Endemic Disease Bulletin.”
Stuartg: “How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?”
Stuartg: “You argue (I think – do you intentionally stay vague?) that CWF prevents people from captaining international sports teams by cherry picking a coincidence from the All Blacks.”
I point out that Auckland being NZ’s largest city and mainly fluoridated with some 30% of our inhabitants it should be statistically likely for a good proportion of our All Black captains to be born there. Indeed that was the case until 1966 and fluoridation. Since then not one has been born there, which is statistically unlikely out of the 12 born in NZ since then.
30% population gives a probability of 0.3. There are 12 choices since then (I’ll neglect Samoa). The number of “successes” for Auckland is 0.
Stuartg: “But you have not managed to produce or cite any evidence to support your imagination.”
This is the blog discussion time searching for associates to work with me and demonstrate evidence by publishing which you demand has to be in respected journal.
âStuartg: “How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?”
On blogs.â
The why do you not set up your own blog to facilitate this?
Our experience of your comments is that they are rambling nonsense. Completely undisciplined and unorganised.
If you had your own blog you could set forth your ideas as organised articles â rather than obscure comments.
Brian â doesnât this show a degree of opportunism or dishonesty: â”Why” because yours has somewhat academic fluoridation readership already.â
The fact is you have not been able to win a single example of approval from this readership.
If you honestly think there is any substance to your ideas then it would be normal to present them consistently and in an organised fashion. Impossible to do in a brief comment â but a blog article would be ideal.
Personally, I would offer you space for an article here if I thought there was anything in your claims â but I cannot see anything at all. I donât think anyone else can either -although you might find some sort of acceptance at FFNZ.
So, I repeat â why not produce your own blog. It is not difficult. If your articles prove useful it will win a readership.
You are not winning either acceptance or readership with these weird comments here.
Over seventy years of CWF worldwide.
Millions of people worldwide experiencing documented benefits from CWF.
More than seventy years of research and publications into the effects of humans drinking optimally fluoridated water worldwide.
That’s more than seventy years of testing for harm from CWF! And you are unable to cite any harm to individuals, or to populations, from drinking optimally fluoridated water. Well, welcome to the rest of the world!
Instead you try to provoke FUD about CWF by repeating your cherry-picked coincidences or repeatedly mentioning poor quality newsletter articles with faulty mathematics and uncertainties of translation.
You steadfastly refuse to test your cherry-pickings for non-coincidence even though simple methods of doing so have been repeatedly pointed out to you.
When you “discuss” your ideas, you ignore comments of others. If they contradict your ideas they are immediately discarded. Advice is disregarded with disdain. Anyone using established data to reason contrary to you is instantly wrong. Your ideas have to be correct, because they are yours, and anyone questioning them has to be wrong (I suggest that you look up the “Galileo gambit.”)
Your unwillingness to test your ideas, your refusal to use the scientific method on them, your hesitance in discussion of them – all give the impression that you have a total lack of confidence in the veracity of your “I am not making claims” claims.
Have you ever considered that you convey the impression of someone living in a blinkered fantasy world? Someone who is completely unable to accept reality?
Stuartg: “You steadfastly refuse to test your cherry-pickings for non-coincidence even though simple methods of doing so have been repeatedly pointed out to you.”
I just use available data. Got any other places to look for lists of representative NZ captains? Not easy to find.
You have told us that you can see the effects of CWF in multiple sports.
“Got any other places to look for lists of representative NZ captains?”
As I’ve suggested before: captains of the All Whites, the Silver Ferns, the Black Sticks, the Black Ferns, the Tall Blacks, the Black Caps… All are available on the ‘net.
Or are you now denying that you see an effect of CWF in Association Football and all the sports of the Olympics as you previously suggested?
Stuartg, I can’t see a list of captains for the Black Sticks. Hockey is an interesting game because it does not perhaps have so much head injury as rugby or soccer. My impression is that team photos of hockey teams show more smiley faces than rugby or soccer. So maybe they have more brain space left to cope with other impacts if fluoridation may be called one.
It is fairly time consuming looking for sports results. I have tried NZ cricket captains since around the time of fluoridation. Since about half the people of NZ live in fluoridated water areas I would wonder if half the NZ representative cricket matches should be captained by men from fluoridated areas.
Sorry this is hard to read:
Captain grew up fluoridated matches captained total
Lee Germon 1968 Christchurch 0 12
Stephen Fleming 1973 Christchurch 0 80
Dion Nash 1971 Dargaville 0 3
Kane Williamson 1990 Tauranga 0 9 104
Daniel Vettori 1979 Auckland/Hamilton 1 32
Ross Taylor 1984 Masterton 1 14
Brendan McCullum 1981 Dunedin 1 31 77
So 104 matches captained by men who grew up in non-fluoridated areas and 77 from fluoridated areas.
which tells me that the probability that the fluoridated areas could get 77 or less captained matches is about 0.027 with a p value of just over 0.05 if you are thinking of this as a two-tailed situation which is still confusing me.
I am not sure how the calculation is affected by the way captains hold on to the top job for a long time.
Now Stuartg will say this data is part of what I use to form my hypothesis so I can not used it in testing?
If data is used to generate a hypothesis, it cannot be used to test the hypothesis. Since the data has already been used, how can it test itself? Fresh data is needed to test a hypothesis.
That’s basic science. Stuff you’d already know if you’d attended high school classes in science or statistics.
“I can’t see a list of captains for the Black Sticks”
Well, I can’t see one for All Black captains. It just takes a bit of searching.
“It is fairly time consuming looking for sports results.”
But you are willing to do so if it supports your fantasies? Like All Black captains? Like MUFC vs BCFC? But not Black Sticks captains? Not MCFC vs BCFC?
And we’re still waiting for any citations from you that demonstrate that anyone has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water during the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
Why no citations?
1. No-one has been harmed by CWF in over seventy years?
2. Is there any other reasonable answer?
Count your hypotheses (allowing for your vagueness):
1. Something to do with All Black captains and whether the place they were born has CWF.
2. Something about second rate rugby teams and players currently drinking CWF.
3. Something about three rugby teams in NZ and their relative altitude. (There’s something about CWF there, too, but it’s not clear.)
4. Something about an English lower league football team losing games to a top league team about a decade after they started drinking CWF.
5. Something about people from areas with CWF not being able to win Olympic medals. Apart from the exceptions.
6. I can’t be bothered with others, these will suffice…
Basic science tells us these are separate hypotheses and require separate sets of data. But you’d know that if you had lessons in high school science.
Since you didn’t have those lessons in high school science, you think that English football results can be used as data to test All Black birthplaces. Or Tibetan athletes can test lower division NZ rugby team results. Or…
I’m beginning to wonder if you are intentionally attempting to parody the scientific method. …but to be successful with parody, first you would have learn about what you’re parodying.
I really do suggest that you take high school classes in science.
You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?
Your blinkered view of CWF has completely blinded you to the lack of evidence supporting your fantasies. It’s also blinded you to what evidence actually is.
Stuartg, if an adult patient presents to you with some of these symptoms you know to suspect lead poisoning as a possibility:
High blood pressure
Joint and muscle pain
Difficulties with memory or concentration
Headache
Abdominal pain
Mood disorders
Reduced sperm count and abnormal sperm
Miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth in pregnant women.
If the patient has only reported the mood disorders I suspect you will tend to think of prescribing an antidepressant. I am asking you to check for bigger patterns.
With CWF I am asking for acknowledgment not just of patterns in individuals but in communities. If you have all members of a family in your practice you might diagnose an environmental toxin by the various members of the family showing various aspects of the poisoning in varying degrees. Or of a deficiency.
One person with a headache might not suggest to you to send them for a blood test for lead. And even if another is becoming forgetful. What when a third is suffering stomach pain and a fourth has stillbirth? None of those symptoms by themselves might suggest to you to send the patient for a lead test but seeing the range in a family you might. Each by itself could be weak evidence of lead poisoning.
Could there be a pattern like that with CWF where it may be useful to be awake to several possible symptoms when together correlated by some mathematical means, I am not sure what?
Still there would be room for mistake.
I see I have made a mistake about the date of fluoridation in Birmingham which is 6 years earlier than I thought. So a longer delay may be involved for soccer symptoms to appear.
The correlation is smaller though still statistically significant at the accepted level if we think of this as one-tailed, which still confuses me for this sort of example.
n= 146 games,
correlation r=0.156
one-tailed p= 0.03
I have put the changeover when ability is tending to drop at 1980, that being about 16 years after fluoridation in Birmingham.
Teams can change in what division they play. Birmingham has not always been in a lower division than Manchester.
And contrary to what you are suggesting teams mainly do not play one another if they are not in the same division. In NZ a team in any division can challenge for the Ranfurly shield. In the case of Birmingham vs Manchester the results stop at 2011 and so Birmingham must have been relegated then. The drop in division could be pointing to CWF or other factors.
I understand computer diagnosis of medical conditions is available. How does it deal with family patterns when different members show different symptoms of a conditions such as scurvy? What is the correlation algorithm?
Ken: “You are not winning either acceptance or readership with these weird comments here.”
I think that because my points are a bit challenging Stuartg tries to take a laugh which is not amenable to readership. Readers want some serious discussion.
Stuartg: “You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?”
I’ll reiterate:
The scientific method is a process.
Data generates an idea – “That’s odd”
Further thinking about the idea generates a hypothesis.
To test the hypothesis, the original data is discarded and new data is sought – fresh data, appropriate data, larger amounts of data.
Then a statistician works on the new data.
The statistician can determine whether a correlation is present or not by using that completely new data.
…and after all that there’s still no proof, just an indication of where further research may point to proof.
Your method:
An idea: “CWF causes harm”
How can I prove it?
Here’s some coincidences from the world of sport.
Data? Why do I need more data? Aren’t these coincidences enough?
Look, I’ve found some more coincidences.
“The coincidences are mounting”.
Hey, I’ve managed to use a computer program to produce some numbers.
These numbers prove CWF causes harm.
No, I can’t cite any actual evidence that CWF causes harm, even though scientists have been searching for harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years. (Actually, I won’t admit that because my ideas can never be wrong)
My coincidences and numbers prove CWF causes harm.
Why does nobody think CWF causes harm? I’ve proved it.
You proudly proclaim that you are self taught in science. It’s obvious that you had a terrible teacher. Maybe those high school classes in science that I suggested you undertake wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.
“With CWF I am asking for acknowledgment not just of patterns in individuals but in communities.”
Then it’s simple. All you have to do is to demonstrate non-coincidental patterns, in either individuals or in communities, that can actually be acknowledged by scientists. That’s what you’ve repeatedly been told but don’t seem to understand.
Your most appropriate comment so far has been: “The coincidences are mounting.” And that comment tells us that you are certainly aware that the examples you uses are coincidence.
I asked: You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?
Why do you think I’m trying to inject humour?
Look back. You brought up English football results to support your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces. You brought up results of lower grade rugby teams to support the same idea. You even asked me whether I thought your Olympic data was new enough to support your idea: “Stuartg don’t you think the Olympics data to be new?”
OK, some humour was there. But it truly appears that you don’t understand why data from English football teams is irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You don’t understand why rugby team results are irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You certainly didn’t understand why I rejected your “new” Olympic data as irrelevant to your “studies” about All Black birthplaces.
In your fantasy world any coincidences that you see have to be due to CWF in some way or another. All it takes is sufficient mangling of coincidences to allow you to reject reality.
Stuartg you are like: A med student is interested in public health. They want to confirm or not their hypothesis that lead poisoning may be a cause of stomach pain. In the initial observations they notice still-births. You tell them that has nothing to do with their study. Rather you should allow two studies.
You’re continuing to ignore the science.
You’re continuing to ignore your errors.
You’re continuing to ignore when others point out your errors (exactly the opposite of what a scientist does).
You’re continuing to attempt diversion away from your errors, “if I ignore people pointing out my errors then they’ll never have happened, because I can never be wrong.”
Your obvious opinions on fluoride: “I am correct. I cannot be wrong. More than seventy years of research is wrong. Science is wrong. The rest of the world is wrong, because my fantasies have to be correct.”
And you still don’t understand why lower rugby team results, English football results, and Olympic medal totals are completely irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You brought them all up, saying they were a test of your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces, yet not even your cronies at FFNZ can understand how you reached that conclusion.
You really do need to be taught the basics of science and logic.
Stuartg: “And you still don’t understand why lower rugby team results, English football results, and Olympic medal totals are completely irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You brought them all up, saying they were a test of your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces,”
The non-fluoridation status of All Black birthplaces, or rather where the parents and infants were living around the time of birth appears to be correlated to appointment as captains. It is not vague.
Olympic medal status of a country per population appears to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.
English football successes appear to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.
In Wellington the team from Petone which remained non-fluoridated did much better after fluoridation of the other teams’ areas. It was a top team until Petone Tech closed and the boys went across the Hutt River to school in a fluoridated area. Then it was no longer a top team. You are trying to apply that label as if it remains constant same as you are doing about Birmingham soccer teams. What part of your medical training is that? Do they teach you to try to confuse patients in drug company seminars? Or do you just learn it yourself in order to get the target prescription levels?
I did not bring up those points saying they were a test of All Black birthplaces!! (Are you trying to suggest I have been talking astrology?!!) I brought them up as part of a picture in which fluoride is present as a variable and because of the correlations it has to be considered as to whether it may be a cause in them. And please note with your sales talk that is not a claim of fluoridation’s harm. It is a list of correlations. It is not even a claim that the fluoride has to be a problem. It could be that a change in the calcium and magnesium levels in the water or their balance owing to the treatment process may be implicated.
I simply ask you to demonstrate that your “studies”, relating to multiple ideas, are not coincidental.
You don’t, won’t, or can’t demonstrate that your “studies” are not coincidences.
Why not?
If you can’t, or won’t, answer that question, then you could answer a simpler one: given that thousands of epidemiologists have been searching for harm caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water for more than seventy years, and neither they nor yourself are able to cite such harm, why do you think that no harm has ever been documented from drinking optimally fluoridated water in millions of people in the real world?
Stuartg: “You don’t, won’t, or can’t demonstrate that your “studies” are not coincidences.
Why not?”
I am gradually working through the Birmingham Manchester water related teams if you hadn’t noticed.
Even a small correlation has not turned to negative. Would expect half to be negative if it were only random.
All Black captains were easy to find. Not so easy for other teams. They list current players and a few eminent ones. Searching “black sticks” “grew up” seems to show more ones from non-fluoridated areas. That is not just captains.
Do you know the history of the knowledge about scurvy? I suppose for a while it colud have been treated as a number of unrelated diseases by some physicians.
Were there experiments done to prove each symptom is caused by a lack of vitamin C totally in isolation from developing a whole picture? Or was it easy to realise all the various symptoms were part of the same disease?
Like the sports facets I relate of considering any fluoridation connection.
You’ve completed a circular argument, from All Black captains to All Black captains. What you haven’t done is produce any evidence.
Why does no-one pay attention to your ideas? Because you haven’t provided any evidence.
You have not, will not, or can not show that your “studies” are not coincidence. For that to happen you need to produce evidence, and you don’t realise that observations used to develop an idea, or even a hypothesis, are not evidence.
It appears that you are unable to understand even the basics of science and statistics, that you have to test a hypothesis and show non-coincidence before anyone will pay attention to your ideas.
You don’t even understand that you have to formulate a hypothesis before you gather data to test it.
So, soundhill, can you tell us what your hypothesis about English football results actually is? If you can’t produce the hypothesis, why then are you “gradually working through the Birmingham Manchester water related teams”?
Leave out All Black captains if you so judge as part of a case for checking on whether fluoridation impairs sporting performance by impinging at any stage of of a player’s or future player’s development. Though I maintain my hypothesis was generated before checking up on them.
Are you going to be like: “This patient’s teeth are falling out. It could be scurvy. My hypothesis will be that the patient has scurvy and I shall not take the falling teeth into account as part of my diagnosis since it generated my hypothesis.
By circular argument I think you mean I am suggesting that because All Black captains were not born in Auckland after fluoridation started that they were not born in Auckland after fluoridation started. They are just one point on the chart of fluoridation’s correlation to sport impairment.
I had thought Birmingham to be fluoridated in 1970, I am not sure why. I saw Birmingham teams impaired 8 years after that. Though some of the correlations are low none are negative which would be expected if the effect were random coincidence. Now I see it was fluoridated in 1964 so the time of impact could go back to infancy. So that adolescence effect hypothesis (if you want me to generate separate hypotheses) disappears to some extent though I need to think more about Petone boys starting to go to Hutt Valley High School. There may be another impact on the Petone team there, that the boys started playing for Hutt Valley and went on to the Old Boys there. However that would not affect the earlier rise of Petone after fluoridation of the other areas of Wellington playing in the top competition the Jubilee Cup.
How about a comment on the Black Caps calculation?
“What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan.
Where is your evidence, soundhill, so that it can be examined?
Well, since CWF has been used for more than seventy years, with millions of people, you could start by citing evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. You haven’t managed to find any evidence so far – care to tell us why not?
There’s hundreds of international sports teams – rugby, football, netball, hockey, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, American football, Australian rules, etc, etc. Both male and female. Tens of countries – NZ, Australia, England, Scotland, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, etc, etc. You only use the All Blacks – why don’t you use any other teams? There’s thousands of captains of international sports teams to get data from, but you cherry-pick a couple of dozen All Blacks and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, if not thousands, of English football clubs, but you cherry-pick the results of only two teams and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of lower grade rugby teams around the world, but you ignore most of them and cherry-pick only Timaru and Petone. Care to explain why you don’t use results from anywhere else?
You’ve had some ideas. Great.
You haven’t yet produced hypotheses from those ideas. Not good.
And that’s it. Nothing further.
You still haven’t provided any evidence.
What’s worse, you don’t even seem to understand that you haven’t provided any evidence.
Stuartg: “Actually, reviewing of papers by other scientists can’t actually happen until after publication.”
Very few papers are published without peer review happening before publishing. Often the peer reviewers make suggestions which the authors must attend to before the journal will accept the paper for publication.
A study covering the whole world is often preceded by a limited pilot study. The peer reviewers will not turn it down stating the reason it does not cover the whole world yet.
“CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels” is not yet a testable hypothesis. As you would know if you had attended high school classes in science. But a least you have acknowledged what everyone else has identified – that you have not demonstrated any correlation between CWF and sports performance.
“You don’t seem to wish to comment about my statistical approach with regards to Black Caps captains” – statistics relating to less than a couple of dozen people’s birthplaces? It’s just as useless as your “statistical analysis” of All Black birthplaces. Is that a good enough comment for you?
If you knew the basics of statistics you would know not to bother with such small numbers; they won’t tell you anything. Why else would I be encouraging you to test your idea using hundreds, if not thousands, of international sporting team captains?
And you still don’t seem to wish to comment about your inability to cite any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even though scientists have been looking for such harm in millions of people for more than seventy years worldwide. Even though you make “I am not making claims” claims alleging such harm.
Look in all that data, soundhill. Millions of people. Decades of CWF. Hundreds, if not thousands, of research papers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental agencies looking at and providing data. Hundreds, if not thousands, of NGOs looking at and providing data. And amongst all of that data, you are still unable to cite any harm from CWF.
So, since you can’t find any harm from CWF in those millions of people in that huge mass of data, you try to perform a completely useless “statistical analysis” on a couple of dozen people with birthdates scattered over a century or so?
Stuartg they do not teach me about you, Stuartg, in a school class. I want you to say what you think because it seems different from what others think.
How much frost, snow, wind, hail, rain. cloud, fog, sunshine, blue sky weather in how many cities for how many years at how many latitudes is it necessary to check up before a summer – winter pattern starts to appear and Stuartg no longer calls it coincidence?
“Fluoridation is correlated with poorer sport performance”
Feel free to cite some evidence in support of your belief. You haven’t done so yet.
Maybe you weren’t taught what evidence actually is because you haven’t taken lessons in high school science?
But, then again, maybe you could find some evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water among the millions of people drinking fluoridated water supplies worldwide? There’s been more than seven decades of data and research into the subject.
It’s been more than a month since you were asked to cite evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Not only have you been unable to cite evidence of harm, you’ve undertaken the Gish Gallop several times, squirming and wriggling in your attempts to divert attention away from your inability to cite evidence.
Well, it hasn’t worked.
We can still see that you are unable to cite evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
To those watching, it is obvious that you have no evidence to cite.
Have you considered that maybe the reason you can’t cite any harm from CWF is because drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has not actually caused harm to anybody?
The way I think is known as “scientific” to all but the self-taught in science.
If someone claims “my car can do 400 km/hr”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims “I’ve built a man-powered helicopter”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims “Fluoridation is correlated with poorer sport performance”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims CWF causes reduction in IQ, the scientist says “prove it”.
When soundhill makes an “l am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused any harm at all in the millions of people drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years it has been available, I ask soundhill to cite evidence to back up that claim – in other words “prove it”.
soundhill obviously is unaware of how a scientist thinks and is also unaware that proof is required when someone makes a claim.
You say it is coincidence and it could be at the 1 in 20 to 1 in 1000 or something level. For the indivual results.
But when several effects like captains, losses, relegations are taken together, like cold temperatures, rain, cloud in summer/winter then the 1 in 20 and better coincidence possibility of each of the scenarios reduces considerably.
I said a long time ago I am not quite sure about how much adding of the various scenarios reduces the coincidence probability that fluoridation is doing something.
Enough of your 400km per hour talk! We know fluoridation at optimal levels damages the cells of infants which are supposed to be producing tooth enamel in many more of the population than are likely to have a 400 km/hr car.
As I has said before it does not have to be fluoride causing trouble. Does anyone know if lime started to be added to Auckland water at a similar time to when fluoridation was begun?
There once was a boy named StuG
Who came to New Zealand from England.
So puzzled was he
When he did see
The very good weather at Christmas.
So he got to thinking in whispers
I’ll wait for June to see what is brought
Cause that ought
To be warm holiday weather
But oh my I never,
Snow
Was putting on a show.
It’s a small sample
Only one example
So probably coincidence
But in great diligence
He wrote home
To find if snow on its own
As a sign of winter
Could begin to
With help of other sign
Like more days fine
Sort the Christmas matter
But came back the old patter
What’s that got to do
With the snow?
“We know fluoridation at optimal levels damages the cells of infants which are supposed to be producing tooth enamel”
Prove it. Cite any harm done in the real world to people drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years since they were introduced.
Since 1991 the Premier League has been the top of the table. So Div 1 was no longer as high after then.
Wiki: “The Football League Championship, which was introduced for the 2004–05 season, was previously known as the Football League First Division (1992–2004), and before that was known as Division Two (1892–1992).”
Stuartg it is a misconception to think that the white markings on teeth are something extra added by fluoride. They are where the enamel is not properly mineralised because the cells which are supposed to do it are no longer working as a result of fluoride or other trauma.
So, you’re saying that we can ignore your claims about Birmingham City because they’re not in the Premier League.
I recall saying something similar early on when you first started comparing football teams in different leagues.
You still haven’t cited any evidence that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies can cause harm, even though the research and data collection has been happening for more than seventy years and involves millions of people.
Stuartg: “I recall saying something similar early on when you first started comparing football teams in different leagues.”
I was comparing competing teams. Usually they have to be in the same league to compete.
Birmingham were in LEVEL ONE about 65% of the years before fluoridation (leaving out 12 for the wars) and 37% of the of the years since fluoridation.
They were in LEVEL THREE for 4 years starting 15 years after fluoridation, but not at all before fluoridation.
Because the names of the levels have changed I have given the names “LEVEL ONE” to the new Premier League and to the old division one which it was. LEVEL TWO to the Championship, which was introduced for the 2004–05 season, was previously known as the Football League First Division (1992–2004), and before that was known as Division Two (1892–1992). LEVEL THREE to the old Division Three equivalent to the new Division Two.
There’s no need for you to rename the football leagues – they have perfectly good and understandable names already.
I undersrtand that you are saying that the purported effect of CWF on sporting performance only occurs at the very highest levels of a sport. You imply that we can ignore promotion and relegation in the Championship League because it is not the highest level of the sport.
In that case, we can ignore your observations about Petone since they play in local Wellington leagues – hardly the very highest level of the sport. Certainly nowhere near as high in the sport as Birmingham City is in theirs.
And do we ignore your observations about Timaru as well? Every one of Birmingham City’s players is a full time professional, but the same can’t be said of Timaru.
It appears that your observations are now limited to just two “coincidences” – your term – that you have noted:
Some of the All Black captains are from non-fluoridated areas.
Manchester United started paying more for better players several years after CWF was introduced to Birmingham.
Conversely, if you still wish to include lower level NZ rugby teams in your list of “coincidences”, then you must also include lower league teams in the England. In that case, your ideas have to account for why non-fluoridated teams are relegated this year and fluoridated teams are not.
I’m going to repeat something I said earlier, something that you have previously completely ignored, in the (I suspect vain) hope that you will not ignore it this time:
“Evidence?
Well, since CWF has been used for more than seventy years, with millions of people, you could start by citing evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. You haven’t managed to find any evidence so far – care to tell us why not?
There’s hundreds of international sports teams – rugby, football, netball, hockey, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, American football, Australian rules, etc, etc. Both male and female. Tens of countries – NZ, Australia, England, Scotland, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, etc, etc. You only use the All Blacks – why don’t you use any other teams? There’s thousands of captains of international sports teams to get data from, but you cherry-pick a couple of dozen All Blacks and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, if not thousands, of English football clubs, but you cherry-pick the results of only two teams and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of lower grade rugby teams around the world, but you ignore most of them and cherry-pick only Timaru and Petone. Care to explain why you don’t use results from anywhere else?
You’ve had some ideas. Great.
You haven’t yet produced hypotheses from those ideas. Not good.
And that’s it. Nothing further.
You still haven’t provided any evidence.
What’s worse, you don’t even seem to understand that you haven’t provided any evidence.”
Stuartg the thing about the highest level **in an area** is that it tends to eliminate teams just having social fun.
They will be players working to their max the whole week/season and putting stresses on their metabolism so showing up any weak link in the chain.
Petone indeed did not compete nationally. But it was frequently at the top of Greater Wellington, some half million people. And it was much more at the top after most of the rest of Greater Wellington became fluoridated but not Petone.
“They will be players working to their max the whole week/season”
You mean just like the full time professionals that play in the Championship League? Those with CWF Birmingham City remaining in the League and other full time professional non-fluoridated teams being relegated?
Or do you mean “teams and players that are only able to be found by soundhill and by no-one else”?
It seems like you mean the latter, doesn’t it? And if you are the only person able to find affected teams or players, then that suggests it’s purely your imagination doing the finding.
You may have made some hypothesis-generating observations, but you haven’t done anything with them other than spread FUD about CWF. You haven’t even managed to generate a testable hypothesis!
Idea: “That CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels.”
What type of correlation?
What facets?
“community” – so not necessarily international, professional, levels? What sort of “community” levels? High school, primary school, semi-professional, keen amateur, local pub teams?
“sports” – what sports? We’ve got rugby, football, Olympic sports from you so far. Any others? Are any sports not included? If not, why not?
“competitive” – what level of competition is required for it to be evident? Why is it not evident below that level?
Your idea needs to be turned into a testable hypothesis. Or do you just want to leave it untestable, demonstrating how little you know about the scientific method?
Publish/provide your hypothesis.
Publish/provide your additional research data, the data needed to test your hypothesis.
You could provide it to a peer reviewed journal and let them “publish”. You could provide it to a non-peer reviewed journal. You could provide it to Fluoride. You could set up a blog of your own to publish/provide the data and hypotheses. Maybe Ken would let you provide it here?
What you have not done so far is go to beyond observing a few “coincidences”, telling people that “the coincidences are multiplying”, and having an idea.
If you really want to discuss your ideas, your hypotheses, your data, – don’t you think it would be a good idea to let others actually know what they are?
“English football successes appear to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.”
Erm… not quite. Maybe you’ve got it the wrong way around?
Non-fluoridated Hull City, Middlesbrough and Sunderland have been relegated from the Premier League.
Fluoridated Newcastle is being promoted, and non-fluoridated Blackburn, Wigan and Rotherham are being relegated from the Championship League.
Remember, soundhill, all of these clubs are composed of full time professional players. These clubs aren’t playing in local amateur leagues like Petone is.
Are you going to ignore those results because they don’t fit in with your fantasy world?
Remember: fluoride in water has been studied for well over seventy years. Community water fluoridation has been used worldwide for over seventy years. Millions of people have been drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years. Those populations have been extensively studied by epidemiologists, by local government agencies, by national government agencies, by non-governmental agencies. Many of those studies and much of the data is freely available on the ‘net.
And amongst all those studies and data, you are unable to cite anything that shows harm, even to a single individual, that has been caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Stuartg: “And amongst all those studies and data, you are unable to cite anything that shows harm, even to a single individual”
I talked of lead poisoning but take noise deafness.
Workers go deaf when exposed to noise over a certain level. That level having been found then if a worker goes deaf it will be accepted it is noise damage and they will get compensation if they have been exposed to over that level.
If a person has bigger outer ears collecting more I maintain or for some other genetic reason they may be more susceptible to noise deafness from a certain level of sound.
If the levels had not been determined by the plight of unfortunate individiduals as in the early days of industrial noise there would be no compensation – no proof of noise deafness in an individual.
I maintain that as with my idea of the size of the outer ear in hearing loss (not proven either) or other genetic difference or perhaps environmental difference, that sports players working extremely hard will be more at risk from fluoride toxicity or from something else done to the water at the time of water treatment associated with fluoride like changing the balance/levels of calcium and magnesium.
I suspect I shall eventually be able to prove damage to a single individual form fluoride but not until after I have proved a connection in a group.
“I talked of lead poisoning” That’s right, among many other things. You talked of anything but water fluoridation in a discussion that was about water fluoridation. It was as though you had no evidence and were doing anything to avoid revealing your lack of evidence.
The one thing that you never did was to cite any harm caused to individuals, or to communities, caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water. Millions of people, more than seventy decades, and you are still unable to cite any harm done by CWF. Even after I’ve given you suggestions on how to go about searching for it.
You’ve been given the opportunity to provide your own definition of harm, or your own definition of optimal fluoridation level, provided that you could justify the definitions, but you have still been unable to cite any harm, to individuals or to populations, caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. It’s exactly as though optimally fluoridated water supplies do not cause harm, isn’t it?
“I shall eventually be able to prove damage to a single individual form (sic) fluoride but not until after I have proved a connection in a group.”
That’s nice. But will you?
You still haven’t provided anything other than an idea after observing “coincidences.” You haven’t even produced a hypothesis from that idea that can be tested for non-coincidence. Develop the hypothesis, then you will know in what population to look for data in order to test for non-coincidence.
I guess you believe you have had a vision of harm from CWF. You certainly haven’t seen any proof. I urge you to remember that most visions turn out to be hallucinations.
By the way, where are your comments about the apparent inverse correlation between English football success and non-fluoridation seen in the Leagues this year? You were so keen on that subject before…
Stuartg: “By the way, where are your comments about the apparent inverse correlation between English football success and non-fluoridation seen in the Leagues this year? You were so keen on that subject before…”
Need to average over a number of years. Probably also average out where players come from. As soccer has become big business the amount of player trading may have increased.
“Need to average over a number of years” – how many years? Does you now mean that if a change happens immediately CWF is introduced (Petone…) then we can ignore CWF as the cause?
“As soccer has become big business the amount of player trading may have increased.”
Football has been big business with player trading since before CWF was introduced. Previously you were saying it was all about whether there was fluoridation at the sportspersons’ birthplace. Is it? Or is it about CWF where a person works – as with football teams? What happens to rugby teams with player trading?
You really need to develop hypotheses that can be tested, not this wishy-washy changing your ideas every time someone points out where the real world disagrees with your ideas.
And I still note that you are unable to cite any harm documented by anybody drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, even though those supplies have been drunk by millions of people over multiple decades.
Stuartg: ““Need to average over a number of years” – how many years? Does you now mean that if a change happens immediately CWF is introduced (Petone…) then we can ignore CWF as the cause?”
Don’t draw a conclusion from one year.
“Football has been big business with player trading since before CWF was introduced.”
Proportion not changed of players traded?
“What happens to rugby teams with player trading?”
If teams get enough good players from non-fluoridated areas they may start to win and spoil my effect.
“And I still note that you are unable to cite any harm documented by anybody drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, even though those supplies have been drunk by millions of people over multiple decades.”
You also think vaccines have not caused serious harm whereas hundreds of millions of dollars per year are paid out in vaccine injury compensation in USA.
That comment is just yourself trying to divert from your inability to cite any evidence that anybody has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
Stuartg: “Suppose that CWF actually did impair sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF actually improves sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?”
You will try to tell me that nothing has anything to do with anything else but I suggest that there are certain principles underlying metabolic effects.
Varying effects depending on the intake if a proportional effect is to be expected.
On or off effects like light switching the body’s hormonal cycle from the night time relaxing cycle to the more constrictive daytime serotonin cycle.
Effects which vary depending on different types genetic or epigenetic.
Interactive effects depending on other environmental influences UVB from sunlight, iodine from food or water,
That studies would be produced averaging out effects so bringing the effect on some genetic types or activity types to be below statistical significance.
I would also consider the principle like a car without its petrol gauge working which works very well till the petrol runs out.
If you have had contact with heavy alcohol drinkers you may know of some saying they cannot drink spirits any more. I presume some of their liver, which detoxifies alcohol, has been converted to fatty – cirrhosis.
So if the fluoride metabolism has been overloaded in early life, when the body sends some half of intake to bones and teeth, then there may be less ability to deal with intake later on, under stress. Or perhaps other mechanisms which may have been damaged such as the pineal gland (melatonin serotonin) may be more noticeably impaired when the organism is placed under stress such as in demanding sport.
You can try to divert from the subject of CWF all you like.
All that it achieves is to show that you are unable to maintain the subject; that you prefer to divert away from your inability to provide evidence supporting your claims about CWF.
What would we expect to see if CWF provided an advantage in sporting performance? I’ll use your already used assumptions.
Rugby: captains of international teams would all come from areas with CWF. So would the locks. And the backs. In fact the entire of the team and squad would be expected to come from areas with CWF. Because they would outperform players from unfluoridated areas.
The same would apply to international netball teams. Cricket teams. Basketball teams. Football teams. Hockey teams. Even bowls teams.
The Premier and Championship Leagues would be absolutely full of clubs from CWF areas. Maybe one or two clubs from unfluoridated areas. After all, it takes years to get to the highest spots in the UK football leagues.
Unfluoridated Petone would be bottom of its Wellington league, beaten by the rest of CWF Wellington. So would Onehunga in Auckland. And Mosgiel in Dunedin. That would apply to rugby clubs. Or football clubs. Or netball clubs…
That’s just a brief summary of what we would expect to see if CWF provided an advantage in sporting performance. You can extend it if you wish.
What would we expect to see if non-fluoridation provided an advantage in sporting performance over CWF? Again, I’ll use your already used assumptions.
Rugby: captains of international teams would all come from non-fluoridated areas. So would the locks. And the backs. In fact the entire of the team and squad would be expected to come from non-fluoridated areas. Because they would outperform players from areas with CWF.
The same would apply to international netball teams. Cricket teams. Basketball teams. Football teams. Hockey teams. Even bowls teams.
The Premier and Championship Leagues would be absolutely full of clubs from non-fluoridated areas. Maybe one or two clubs from areas with CWF. After all, it takes years of consistent performance to get to the highest spots in the UK football leagues.
Unfluoridated Petone would be top of its Wellington league, beating the rest of fluoridated Wellington. So would Onehunga in Auckland. And Mosgiel in Dunedin. That would apply to rugby clubs. Or football clubs. Or netball clubs…
That’s just a brief summary of what we would expect to see if non-fluoridation provided an advantage in sporting performance over CWF. You can extend it if you wish
What would we expect to see if there were no adverse effects on sporting performance from CWF? That sporting performance from CWF and non-CWF areas were exactly the same?
Well, we’d expect that international rugby teams and squads would have a mix of players from CWF and non-CWF areas. That there may be some coincidental runs of locks or captains from CWF areas. Or non-CWF areas. That the same could be seen in international football teams. And netball teams. And hockey teams. And croquet teams.
We would see that the UK Premier and Championship Leagues were full of a mixture of teams from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. That promotion and relegation between the major (and minor) UK football leagues would be randomised between fluoridated and non-fluoridated clubs.
We would see random results in local leagues – Petone may rise or fall. Onehunga may rise or fall. Mosgiel may rise or fall. Whether the team be rugby, football, netball or bowls.
That’s a brief summary of what we would expect to see if community water fluoridation had absolutely no effect on sporting performance. Again, you can extend the thought experiment if you wish.
Now, soundhill, which of the three thought experiments give results closest to those seen in the real world?
Well, obviously, the All Blacks are composed of players from a mix of CWF and non-CWF areas. So are the All Whites. And the Silver Ferns. And the Black Caps. And the rugby teams from Australia, England, Argentina… And the FIFA football teams. Even Olympic bowling teams.
So there may be an occasional run of captains, or goalkeepers, or full backs, or goal defence, or goal keepers, from fluoridated or non-fluoridated areas. But we can be expect that merely from random chance.
The Premier and Championship Leagues have clubs from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas distributed at random. Promotion and relegation of clubs are unrelated to fluoridation status – as has already been pointed out.
Local clubs show results entirely unrelated to fluoridation status, with rugby, football, netball, hockey and other teams being randomly scattered through their leagues irrespective of fluoridation status. Check out Petone, Onehunga, and Mosgiel sporting teams in their relevant leagues for instance.
Overall, the results we see in sporting teams, irrespective of the level at which they play, are exactly what we would expect if there were no effect of CWF on sporting performance.
You therefore have to show that the observations in your “studies” are not the occasional coincidental results that we would expect if there is no effect on sporting performance from CWF.
It would greatly help your position if you were able to cite any evidence, from more than seventy years of available data and studies, that there has been harm sustained by even one individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Stuartg: “It would greatly help your position if you were able to cite any evidence, from more than seventy years of available data and studies, that there has been harm sustained by even one individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.”
As a doctor you ought to know that whereas some types of harm such as traffic accidents are obvious, there are other types that we accept because we know from effects to varying degrees on populations exposed.
People can be harmed without it being accepted as caused by a particular cause at the time but we know later.
Wiki: “Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at a sanatorium in Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, due to aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation while carrying test tubes of radium in her pockets during research, and in the course of her work at field hospitals during World War I.”
Surely if Marie Curie had known she were being harmed by the radium she carried in her pocket she would have stopped doing that.
“The acute effects of radiation exposure were first seen in 1896 when Nikola Tesla purposefully subjected his fingers to X-rays and reported that this caused burns to develop, although at the time he attributed the burns to ozone.”
The harm could not be attributed to radiation burn at that time. It had to wait for more researchers to notice damage associated with radiation. Then it would be proved in retrospect that Tesla was harmed by radiation.
So we must wait for population studies before we can say fluoridation be harmful to sports performance.
Wiki “Discovery of X-ray mutagenesis
1926 marked the beginning of a series of major breakthroughs. Beginning in November, Muller carried out two experiments with varied doses of X-rays, the second of which used the crossing over suppressor stock (“ClB”) he had found in 1919. A clear, quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations quickly emerged. Muller’s discovery created a media sensation after he delivered a paper entitled “The Problem of Genetic Modification” at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin;”
(Muller sometimes written Meller)
“By 1928, others had replicated his dramatic results, expanding them to other model organisms such as wasps and maize.”
Stuartg please note it did not require a wait for the problem to be seen in wasps and maize before being accepted. It took a much smaller sample and in a similar fashion fluoridation injury does not have to be proven in every sports person on earth to be accepted as injury. A small group and a p value is all that is required to have a “statistically significant” result for someone to follow up on and who knows whether someone may be interested enough to be following up on my results?
Furthermore even after injury from radiation to corn and wasps had been shown it still required a huge amount of work to have it accepted.
“An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in small crucibles, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The then-current rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (equivalent to $0.280 in 2016). The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the U.S. Radium supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips (“lip, dip, paint”), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.[6] Many of the workers became sick. It is unknown how many died from exposure to radiation.
Radiation sickness
Many of the women later began to suffer from anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers’ ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor.[4] U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the afflicted workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes; syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.[7]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
Again we see you trying to divert attention from your inability to provide evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claims about harm from CWF.
Vaccines, petrol gauges, now radiation – not one of them relevant to a discussion about purported harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water! Flailing around, trying to change the subject at random – all point towards your inability to support your claims.
In spite of more than seventy years of research and data, involving millions of people, you are unable to cite any evidence that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has ever caused harm, even to a single person.
Your own observations, or “studies”, show expected normal variations in sporting results, but you don’t recognise this and don’t bother actually testing your observations for non-coincidence.
You now tell us, in a poorly thought out sentence, that you expect any evidence not to reach statistical significance: “That studies would be produced averaging out effects so bringing the effect on some genetic types or activity types to be below statistical significance”. And then you ask others for p-values!
So, no evidence, failure to acknowledge coincidence, not expecting ever to see evidence, inability to understand how statistics works… What you have there is faith/belief/fantasy. It’s certainly not science.
But you don’t understand that. You provide a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
I really do think that you should attend some basic lessons in how science and statistics work, rather than relying on self-taught systematic errors. Maybe basic high school classes would be in order?
Stuartg: “Vaccines, […] now radiation – not one of them relevant to a discussion about purported harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water! ”
They have relevance as to whether doctors tell the truth. You have strongly supported the safety of fluoridation and vaccination. Note that in the USA the vaccine injury court pays out hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
“They have relevance as to whether doctors tell the truth” – which is yet again irrelevant to your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm.
All you are doing is attempting a diversion and hoping that people don’t remember what you have previously written.
You are unable to cite any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies from more than seventy years of research and data.
You don’t recognise that your own “studies” merely show expected coincidences.
You are unwilling or unable to test your observations for non-coincidence.
You don’t expect any research to into harm from CWF to reach statistical significance – implying that you understand that harm is not being caused.
You don’t understand why your own “statistical analyses” aren’t.
You don’t understand the scientific method.
I recommend that you turn off your imagination and use science to find out how the real world works. For starters, go and learn about science and statistics at your local high school.
Stuartg: “All you are doing is attempting a diversion”
No, you claim fluoridation has not been shown to hurt anyone but why should we trust your claim when you also claim vaccination is not harmful despite hundreds of millions of dollars in vaccine adverse event payouts?
I have given data which point to possible sport impairment by fluoridation.
Look back. Just scroll back and read. It’s easy to do. Confirm your (fallible, human) memory, or realise that your fallible, human memory is wrong.
I make no claims about lack of harm from vaccination. It’s only your imagination that tells you that.
I also make no claim that CWF has never caused harm. Again, it’s just your imagination that tells you that.
All I have done is to ask you to provide evidence to back your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has and does cause harm. But you have been and still are unable to back your claim. That’s in spite of you having more than seventy years of data and research available, involving millions of people, into the effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
You make the claim, so you have to provide the evidence. It’s one of the first things a high school student would learn in science classes. It’s a pity that you didn’t attend the lessons and admit only self teaching in science. You obviously had a poor teacher.
“I have given data which point to possible sport impairment by fluoridation”.
No. You have observed coincidences that are expected to be seen if CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. And you’ve probably observed them at a lower frequency than would be expected if no harm comes from CWF. You haven’t even bothered to test those observations for non-coincidence, even though you have had advice on how to go about that task.
And now you say you don’t expect to observe any evidence that reaches statistical significance.
Seriously, soundhill, all you are managing to do is to point out that your idea/fantasy/dream about optimally fluoridated water supplies affecting sporting performance is just that – a dream or fantasy.
Stuartg: “I make no claims about lack of harm from vaccination.”
You implied it when you wrote on last Aug 4: “Just for your information, I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career.
I didn’t report it because we realised the painful deltoid was the opposite one to that which had been injected.”
A report to the NZ Parliamentary Select Committee: “Between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2009, 4,757 reports of adverse events following
immunisation were submitted to the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring.”
Now say there are some 4,000 or 5,000 doctors working in general practice in NZ that would mean on average one report per GP every 5 years but you have reported none in probably 40 years.
From the same report: “The vast majority of reports describe known and expected reactions such as injection site pain, swelling, redness and itching or raised temperature, headache and general malaise. Expected
reactions such as these are estimated from clinical trial information to occur at a rate of between 2
to 10 percent of people immunised.”
So if a doctor happens to be reporting the adverse events at 1 every five years and those make up 3 percent of the vaccinations that would mean they are either severely under-reporting or else it means 1 vaccination is 3% of the vaccinations they perform in 5 years in other words they are doing in total some 6 vaccinations per year or one every two months.
“I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”.
According to your logic, since I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career, that means that I imply they don’t happen…
Your ability to think logically is demonstrably somewhat impaired.
I guess that’s why you still claim that CWF causes harm, even when you are unable to cite supporting evidence. You don’t bother, or are unable, to test your observations for non-coincidence. You are unable to recognise coincidence. You don’t understand how statistics works. You even tell us that you don’t expect an investigation to reach statistical significance.
…but you still believe/fantasise that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm. Definitely impaired logic.
Perhaps philosophy should be added to those lessons in science and statistics that you lack?
Stuartg I have not a cite until someone gets around to publishing, the way they have done with other matters… in gradual progression. A fairly recent example is the recognition of a toxicity in glypohsate-based herbicides, now taking into account the interaction with tallowate surfactant substances in them, when up until recent times the toxicity of a glyphosate-based herbicide only took into account the glyphosate working in isolation.
You Stuartg are similarly hanging on to old reports about fluoridation which do not take into account interactions.
If you are trained properly you know not to vaccinate people in poor health if avoidable – you acknowledge that, but you want to apply blanket safety categorization for fluoridation to everyone, regardless of their iodine status of their environment, or the greater demands which may be placed on the metabolism of sports people.
I suggest you are working by a general principle of trying to suppress annoying new public knowledge. It shows in that you are not notifying adverse vaccine associated events. You are supposed to be notifying, not because you have proof that a vaccine caused the event, but to offer the info to others to analyse, in case they can see some pattern when taking into account the stuff from several doctors.
Stuartg: ““I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”
According to your logic, since I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career, that means that I imply they don’t happen…”
You left off the bit where you say it was only caused by a squash ball implying that you have seen none in your career so implying to people who may not have read the data that they ought to believe there to be much less risk than there actually is, because you have reported none.
Stuartg your UCDavis ref is interesting, however it does not deal with “self plagiarism.”
Self plagiarism is when you are still analysing your own data from last study in your new study, if you forgot to cite it I think. Oponents of your work can have your study retracted for self plagiarism. Then if the journal had asked for the rights to your study I am not sure what happens to your further work.
“I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”.
“I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career”.
The logic is that if one statement implies I claim lack of harm from vaccination, as you say, then the second must also imply that I claim lack of harm from traumatic arm amputation. But then no-one ever accused you of clarity of logic, did they?
But again, you are merely trying to divert from your inability to cite any evidence, even though you have more than seventy years of data documenting its’ effects, that CWF has ever caused harm to any individual.
Can you explain to us why you are unable to cite any evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm? Evidence that the scientific method requires you to supply to endorse your claim?
You haven’t yet been able to show us that even one person, among the millions drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years, has had harm from CWF.
Maybe your belief that you have completed a semester long course from the University of California in less than a day is merely another example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action?
I note that there is no science that supports your fantasies. If there was, I assume that you would have produced it in the comments of this or other threads.
Since you have no evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claims, you attempt to divert to irrelevant topics (vaccines, lead, herbicides, VAERS, radiation, petrol gauges – in the last thirty or so comments in this thread alone) in your endeavours to hide your lack of evidence. It hasn’t worked. Then you start attacking persons who have asked you to cite your evidence, who have supplied advice on how to obtain evidence and test for non-coincidence…
It’s almost as though you know know that you are completely wrong with the science, yet still are trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about one of the most proven, effective, and cheap methods of improving the health of a community.
Are you a shill for “big dentistry”, trying to increase the incidence of dental caries by reducing the availability of optimally fluoridated water supplies and so assuring a greater number of teeth to repair? That seems to be the most likely reason for you comments.
Of course, lack of knowledge about science, statistics, logic and health care could be an alternative reason…
Stuartg there is a difference between a vaccine side effect and a vaccine adverse effect. The adverse effects are bad effects which happen after vaccination but are not necessarily side effects. Vaccinators report them in case there may be a new side effect not yet known about or maybe in relation to further improving knowledge, of incidence, severity &c., of known side effects.
If accidents, such as your squash ball incident, increase in frequency after vaccination that might point to a side effect of poorer physical co-ordination in addition to headache, nausea &c., known side effects of vaccination.
Stuartg: “You haven’t yet been able to show us that even one person, among the millions drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years, has had harm from CWF.
Please tell us why not.”
Because by “show” you mean cite a published paper.
A few years ago I could not cite a published paper that glyphosate-based herbicies cause harm. Now work has been published which does not only consider the effect of the glyphosate in isolation but in association with tallowate surfactants which increase its entry into cells. So now it is possible to show harm.
So far papers have been published showing increased harm from excess iodine in association with increased fluoride. Both excess and deficient iodine can cause thryoid trouble. I have discussed quite a bit the Lin Fa Fu paper which deals with iodine deficiency, fluoride at a level equivalent to that used in CWF, and increased IQ impairment. As with lead poisoning, knowing that populations are harmed by a certain lead level, individuals with that level are considered to be proven poisoned by lead if they have that level in association with accepted symptoms. With radium burns it took a while to associate them to radium’s ionisation radiation tissue damage. Dentists’ knowledge gradually increases and now it is known what was causing the burns on their finger when they held xray plates in many patients’ mouths with their finger. That was learned quite a while ago but about how glyphosate is much more toxic in association with surfactants is fairly recently proven as publicly released. So relying on studies before Lin FF to show CWF to be safe I maintain to be invalid. Maybe brick tea could have been involved with Lin FF but they did urinary fluoride tests.
Stuartg you are claiming CWF to be perfectly safe.
I am not claiming it to be harmful, only that data I have casts doubt on its safety when considering certain ages of exposure, interacting factors such as iodine deficiency, genetic types and people like dedicated energetic sports players who may be using their metabolism to the max so any small impairment becomes more punishing.
So we shall go on and on, with Stuartg saying there is no evidence of harm of CWF and I shall go on saying published evidence is further starting to develop. I shall go on giving examples from other areas of how that happens and Stuartg will go on pretending he can see no relevance.
You say “I am not making claims”, but go on to claim that CWF harms by reducing sporting performance. You do so even though the observations you have made, calling them your “studies” and “evidence”, show results less than would be expected by coincidence. You don’t bother testing for non-coincidence, even though how to develop the new data sets to test your observations for non-coincidence has been pointed out to you. You then tell us that you don’t expect any harm from CWF to reach statistical significance.
“I am not making claims.” Yeah, right.
You didn’t need to continue making this many comments if you hadn’t made the claims that you continue to attempt to justify.
“I shall go on saying published evidence is further starting to develop” …and I’ll keep asking you to cite that “published evidence” as long as you make evidence-free claims. So far your “published evidence” appears to exist only inside your imagination and you appear unwilling to actually share that evidence in any way whatsoever.
If you weren’t making claims, then just acknowledge you have absolutely no evidence supporting a claim of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. Don’t be ashamed of not having any evidence to support the claim; no-one else has any evidence either and that’s the simple reason why you are unable to cite anything.
Stop trying to divert away from your inability to provide any evidence that CWF causes harm. Just acknowledge that there is no evidence to cite, even though there’s more than seventy years of data and research available, and the harm caused by higher concentrations of fluoride in untreated drinking water supplies is well known.
Then you can keep your evidence-free fantasies to yourself and no-one will make any more comments about the evidence-free conspiracist world of fantasies that you appear to live in.
Stuartg you are not understanding the process by which new points arise to be tested. You have not understood the vaccine adverse event reporting system and when I point that out you say I am attacking you, I thinking it must be about that point. A vaccine adverse event does not have to be caused by the vaccine in order to be reported. It is anything a little out of the ordinary which happens after vaccination that when reports from many vaccinators are taken into account may suggest the need for further study.
You say I have not proved non-coincidence but you should know such a proof is not possible. It is only possible to give a level of probability.
Perhaps I’m just ignoring your comments about vaccines because you are merely using them to attempt diversion of discussion from your evidence-free “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm?
“You say I have not proved non-coincidence”
No. You haven’t even attempted to prove non-coincidence, either because you are unable to or you can’t be bothered.
At least seventy years of data and research into CWF for you to scrutinise. No citable evidence to show that CWF causes harm. A few coincidental observations (of your own?) No attempt to test those observations for non-coincidence. Inability to formulate a testable hypothesis. Expecting any future research (presumably by someone else) not to reach statistical significance.
It’s almost as though you believe that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies doesn’t cause harm to individuals or to populations.
Not even to the Health Services Select sub committee?
“Brian R SANDLE
Presentation to the Health Services Select sub committee on 23 March 2014 (corrected 2017) on the
Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill”
But you seemed so proud of those claims that you didn’t make!
Stuartg I presented some facts to the Select Committee. In my **opinion** they cast doubt on the safety of fluoridation if your are going to want your baby to excel as a rugby player, or if you are living in a low iodine environment, or of a certain genetic type (COMT variant maybe). Therefore I asked for the legislation to require district health boards to enquire into possible costs other than than the technology and materials to fluoridate water.
One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.
You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis. You are obviously unaware of both of those.
By the way, opinion without supporting data is commonly termed fantasy.
Your “facts” were evidence-free claims.
If you still have the belief that you have supporting data, after multiple comments advising you why you don’t actually have any data but rather have coincidental observations, then you really do need to enroll in science and statistics classes at your local high school to find out why.
“I am not making claims”
If they aren’t claims, they don’t require defending. So why write hundreds of comments on blogs attempting to defend them? The scientific method would suggest that you acknowledge your opinions are evidence-free and either test them for non-coincidence or just drop them.
Stuartg: “One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.”
Before you go to the bother of developing new data sets you need to know whether it is going to be worth it. Stupid taking a guess and being wrong 95% of the time.
Stuartg: “One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.”
It still isn’t proof. It just reduces the probability of coincidence as the p value decreases.
I was thinking about troubles of fluoridation. I noticed Canterbury (non-fluoridated) rugby to be excellent.
So I hypothesised that fluoridation impairs strongly competitive sport performance. One area I am still thinking about, about the only one I have found so far that the effect may not seem to happen is women’s rugby.
Women’s rugby didn’t get serious until about the 1990s. And it seems more to attract Maori or maybe Polynesian players so will rugby be stronger where their population density and total number to select from is greater.
Stuartg: “You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis.”
In other words when you form a hypothesis about a patient’s medical condition and do a diagnosis you do not include what formed your hypothesis in your diagnosis?
Stuartg: “You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis.”
That is supposed to offer protection, from cherry picking a result at p <0.05 and then saying it to be significant.
Even starting with new data sets does not verify anything better than the p value says. So I think this new data set idea is pumping up false confidence. Am I the only one to have had that idea or is it dismissed in the text books?
This seems to have a connection to what Ken does when he does multiple correlations which alternatively may be connected to things fluoridation is said to be connected and cherry picks one like altitude, and you don't complain, Stuartg.
And very obviously no understanding. An excellent example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in fact.
Rather than you using the comments section of a blog to ask for advice on statistical methods, I really suggest that you take lessons in statistics. Your local high school may be able to help you.
“when you form a … diagnosis you do not include what formed your hypothesis in your diagnosis”
You apparently have no idea of the process here, either. Dunning-Kruger again?
Any provisional diagnosis is tested by getting new data – labs, imaging, more history, repeat examinations, procedures… Just like a hypothesis in science is tested by getting new data.
theStoartg: “Any provisional diagnosis is tested by getting new data – labs, imaging, more history, repeat examinations, procedures… Just like a hypothesis in science is tested by getting new data.”
Yes bur the parallel is the original symptom you saw is then ignored, going by your requirement that only new data may be used.
But you have not denied that the original symptom in medical diagnosis, which instigated your hypothesis, still forms part of your diagnoisis, is actually part of your evidence for your diagnosis.
Stuarth, so my initial cursory diagnosis was that sport is stronger in non-fluoridated Canterbury than fluoridated areas of NZ. So I looked for new data. * No All Black Captains born in our most populous city since fluoridation started there.
* English soccer teams do better from non-fluoridated areas after the young children raised there have time to grow up.
* Rugby in Greater Wellington’s half million population was topped much more frequently by Petone after the rest of Wellington was fluoridated.
* More of the Hawke’s Bay representative rugby team come from the unfluoridated part.
* Many All Blacks came from the South Canterbury/Timaru rugby team until fluoridation of Timaru then no more did and its division was also relegated.
In the Super Rugby that non-fluoridated Canterbury/West Coast-based Crusaders have achieved much better than teams from two fluoridated regions.
* Eminent All Black Captain Richie McCaw did not even achieve a place in the NZ secondary schools rugby team while boarding at a school in fluoridated Dunedin. He only started to excel when he went to non-fluoridated Lincoln.
* Captains from non-fluoridated areas have captained the NZ cricket team team in many more matches since fluoridation started than captains from fluoridated areas. Though the sample is not very large,
*Contrarily the pattern may not show in women’s rugby however the interest comes very much from Maori players who do not have such a wide geographical distribution in great numbers for testing and serious interest only started in the 1990s a long time after most fluoridation started in the mid 1960s. Or there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys.
“Even starting with new data sets does not verify anything better than the p value says. So I think this new data set idea is pumping up false confidence. Am I the only one to have had that idea or is it dismissed in the text books?
This seems to have a connection to what Ken does when he does multiple correlations which alternatively may be connected to things fluoridation is said to be connected and cherry picks one like altitude,”
That misrepresents me. I have never “cherry-picked” altitude. Why should I? I am making absolutely no claims about altitude.
What I have done is included several likely covariates in a multiple regression of ADHD prevalence and fluoridation extent. This was to show how the Malin and Till paper was faulty7.
The lack of any significant relationship of ADHD prevalence with fluoridation is hardly surprising. Yet you avoid accepting that and look for any way to avoid facing up to the objective evidence.
As for altitude – it is Huber et al (2015) who made that investigation because of their existing model of possible causes of ADHD. I have no views on that model or their explanation of the significant correlation.
As I have often said parameters like altitude could really be acting as surrogates for other things connected to city living.
Similar parameters like fluoridation extent can also be acting proxies – as was certainly the case for Malin & Till’s faulty analysis.
Ken but you originally did a correlation table and picked elevation but no mention of Huber. https://openparachute.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/adhd-linked-to-elevation-not-fluoridation/
Your p value was 0.009 and I think your were justified in pointing it out. However technically I maintain you were cherry picking. My point is whether cherry picking should always be ruled out. I think not.
According to the protocol which Stuartg points out, Ken should have been only using his US ADHD – altitude correlation as forming a hypothesis, then discarding that data and testing the hypothesis in many other regions.
I identified a range of possible confounders which, because of the significance in a simple regression, should be considered as covariates.
I have not in any way promoted any significance for that except to point out that Malin and Tillâs conclusion was clearly wrong. Something you refuse to acknowledge because of your unfounded assumption that fluoride must be bad.
In this case Ken did not have to do the extra work since he later found it being done by Huber.
I do not say fluoridation to be bad for everyone, just there is the chance it impairs certain categories of people who are wiped out in the wider averaging. That always can be a problem in a democracy.
Stop your continuing dishonest silliness, Brtan. No extra work was required because I showed that when several covariates were included the association claimed by Malin and Till was completely unsupported. You are refusing to accept that.
As for Huber, they did not include fluoridation as a covariate so in fact their contribution was not directly related to my original article (except to confirm altitude had a significant relationship.
Ken fluoridation is the single “covariate” or variable, that I have considered and I have given substantial data for pilot purposes. Why do you think not?
Do you suspect fluoridation might be overshadowed in its effect by altitude? In NZ and England there is not a great variation of altitude in the populated areas.
I might include climate, and note higher temperatures mean more water consumption.
Take a look at success of 3 rugby teams from varying temperature areas in New Zealand the the Super Rugby competition
In the first column I have the tally of the points won by the Auckland, Canterbury and Otago-based Super 12 rugby teams, less the points again st them.
In the second column is the population of the province.
The third column gives won – lost points per 10,000 population.
Unfluoridated Canterbury is far ahead.
Fluoridated, but cool climate Otago in southerly NZ is in the middle and hot fluoridated Auckland in hotter northerly NZ is very behind.
Fluoridation of course includes possible changes to calcium and magnesium hardness of water, but they might be divided out. Including any interaction between them. I note you criticise studies of fluoride vs IQ when they fail to note low iodine. You seem to want the impairment to be thought of only as either/or fluoride/iodide (and indeed not fluoride), not having breadth for accounting for interaction between iodide and fluoride, meaning low iodide may not be so bad without fluoride’s increase.
Brian, I have not seen any data from you – let alone substantial data. That is why I keep suggesting that you set up your won blog or website where such data can be presented. it cannot be presented in comments here and I simply refuse to attempt to sort out the mess you continually post in comments. If you do not respect readers sufficiently to use a forum enabling proper presentation then don’t expect us to read such messes.
And, really, don’t expect me to look at a 3 sample dataset. Come off it.
“According to the protocol which Stuartg points out…”
That’s news to me. I can’t recall pointing out protocols, just the first things you need to do when you have a problem.
It’s like your own job. As an electronic technician, what is the first thing you do when given something that doesn’t work? It’s broken. How can you fix it?
Well, I would suggest that your first step is to seek new data. Look at the soldered joints, the wires, the individual components. Get out the multimeter and check for continuity, resistance, capacitance…
Without new data, how do you expect to fix that broken electronic device? Or is your method to just throw it out and tell the owner to get a new device?
Why is it that you believe that science, medicine, statistics, epidemiology, work any different to your own profession?
If you’ve got a problem, test it. Testing it means that you necessarily acquire new data.
Test whether the All Black captains being from non-fluoridated areas is coincidence? Get data about the captains from other national sports teams. You can use the captains from rugby teams around the world. You can use captains from the FIFA football teams. You can use captains from netball, hockey, ice hockey, cricket, bowls, baseball, basketball, Americas cup yachting… Thousands of team captains available for testing, but you restrict yourself to cherry-picking just a couple of dozen rugby players from NZ and don’t bother to test your idea.
If you did that as an electronic technician, you would rapidly lose your job.
The same can be said for your UK football league results. And I have done. But, again, you stick with your cherry-picked results and don’t bother to get new data in order to test your idea.
The same can be said for Petone. And I did. And, yet again, you stuck with your cherry-picked data and didn’t bother to get a new data set and test whether your idea had any validity.
I repeat, if you did that as an electronic technician, you would rapidly lose your job.
Your ideas are interesting, but the results you have observed are well within the normal range that would be expected if CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. They are well within the normal range that would be expected if drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies does not cause harm to individuals or to populations.
If you wish to pursue your ideas further, you need to follow the well established methods of science, statistics and epidemiology.
My suggestion is that you start by learning the basics – high school classes in science and statistics would be a good start.
“(I) note higher temperatures mean more water consumption.”
Citation required.
Especially when you are discussing peak sporting performance where the cooling requirements are related more to the maximum heat generation capacity of the human body than to environmental temperatures.
“Take a look at success of 3 rugby teams from varying temperature areas”
Citation required.
Especially about the temperature variations. Which province is hottest, coldest, has the highest temperature variations, rainfall, sunshine hours, etc.
Also about the transferring of players between those teams, overseas origins of those players, out of province origins, etc. And why you cherry-picked those teams and didn’t bother mentioning the many other provincial teams. And why you cherry-picked Super-12 rugby, but didn’t mention the performance of provincial teams in netball, football, hockey, cricket, other forms of rugby…
Or is the performance of other provincial teams and other sports in disagreement with your fantasies?
Stuartg: “Well, I would suggest that your first step is to seek new data. Look at the soldered joints, the wires, the individual components. Get out the multimeter and check for continuity, resistance, capacitance…”
Indeed and make sure the big capacitors are not put in by the assemblers in reverse polarity or else the whole factory gets a big surprise. There is a lot to check and often only a small sample of each fault. You have to take action much sooner than a statistical research protocol would allow. Get the circuit diagram and component specifications books and make sure the printed circuit board is designed properly. There is a lot more discarding these days with new products being cheaper than time spent on repair. My notion is that the same discarding is happening to humans.
Stuartg: “there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys”
Citation required.”
If you think the CDC were correct in eliminating children without easy access to birth certificate data which turned out to be the affected Back males then there is other stuff where sexes react differently a 2003 study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15562745
“Gender differences regarding reactogenicity were evident and should be considered when designing future studies.”
And it is not only about playing/training but amount drunk at other times including by the pregnant mum.
“For a given individual, water consumption increases with temperature,
humidity, exercise and state of health, and is modified by other factors including
diet. Roughly, the closer to the Equator, the higher the water consumption
(Murray, 1986).”
A proper scientific educator would have explained to the children the power of placebo/suggestion and that that is what they were investigating. That course is very lacking,
“Colour of medication: Patients’ compliance of medication and treatment is strongly influenced by the role (they think) medicine plays [22]. The size and colour of the tablets are significant factors. Blue is seen as depressant-sedative, and yellow as stimulant antidepressants [23]. Blue preparations are more soothing; and red, pink or yellow as more stimulating [24]. De Craen et al. [25] confirmed that stimulation was associated with medicine which was marketed in hot colours (red, orange, yellow), and antidepressants were marketed in cold colours (blue, green, purple). In a study with volunteer medical students, similar observations were made [26]. Expectations thus drive the placebo effect [27]. Where patients see their illness as hot or cold, they will only accept medication which deals with the heat or cold. Buckalew and Coffield [23] demonstrated that white capsules were seen as analgesics by Caucasians, but as stimulants by African Americans, whereas black capsules were seen as stimulants by Caucasians and as analgesics by African Americans. Interestingly, among passive individuals who were intellectually oriented, sedative agents produced higher (than expected) levels of sedation [2].
Regrettably, in drug trials, these factors are not taken into account.”
…but your comment is about provincial rugby, not cities. Dunedin temperatures are hardly representative of Otago – try looking at Alexandra temperatures, for instance.
And let’s not forget that, in spite of there being more than seventy years of data and research into the subject, you are completely incapable of citing any harm caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
So, as I said, interesting ideas, but no evidence available to support them.
Stuartg: ““According to the protocol which Stuartg points out…”
That’s news to me. I can’t recall pointing out protocols, just the first things you need to do when you have a problem.”
You suggested I should not do some correlations and select the ones with low p and ignore others and say I have proven significance, didn’t you? It is a wrong protocol. For if I do 20 correlations I should by probability get one “statistically significant” at p<0.05 purely by chance.
You didn't call it a protocol but what is supposed to be done is to get a notion using reason then test it for statistical significance, as I have begun to do with temperature and fluoridation. Even at p<0.01 one correlation per 100 meeting that p value happens purely by chance.
A notion I have to test: increase in violence and suicide against increase consumption of food with unfermented soy bean protein extender in it (soy being a problem for thyroid as a possibility), fluoridated toothpaste and water (fluoride also being a thyroid problem at low iodine which may add or interact.)
Fortunately NZ health ministry recommend not to feed infants on soy milk where avoidable. In rats soy has been shown to interfere with development of the endocrine system. It is strongly hormonal, more so if treated with glyphosate-based herbicide.
Traditional soy food in Asian countries is fermented which early peoples seem to have found improves it. The fermented products are called natto in Japan, fluffy tofu in China and Tempeh in Indonesia.
So I have set out that notion beforre doing a p value table and selecting.
Fluoridated toothpaste, water, soy consumption, violence and suicide have all increased. What else would you put in the list, giving a reason for the notion?
Stuartg as far as I can see no Highlanders players come from Central Otago.
Out of the 41 current squad at least 16 were born in non-fluoridated areas maybe more since i do not know about 4 from places in Samoa and Tonga and I am not sure when Garth Evans’ mother came from Zimbabwe.
Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin.
“Out of the 41 current squad at least 16 were born in non-fluoridated areas” “Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin”
Check your maths. 41 – 16 = 27, not 4.
“Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin”
If less than 10% of the squad was born in Dunedin, why do you use weather averages for Dunedin as representative of the >90% not born there? Are you doing the same for Canterbury? For Auckland? Why haven’t you included Taranaki? Southland? Lot’s of other provinces?
The obvious lack of thought you have put into your “I am not making claims” claims implies egregious cherry picking.
If you remember, I did suggest that you could cite any evidence you have to support your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, in the form of CWF, causes harm.
You still haven’t cited any evidence to support your claim.
Stuartg: “If less than 10% of the squad was born in Dunedin, why do you use weather averages for Dunedin as representative of the >90% not born there?”
Stuartg I think you still have that either-or thing going. You want me not to claim fluoride could affect initial human development as well as later functioning. You were very big on it before, “what has that got to do with that?” in a very obfuscating fashion, too. Or maybe I suppose you are trying to hope people will realise that you want it to be two separate investigations.
One perhaps being the early-life effect on pineal development with ongoing change to the melatonin/serotonin mechanism, the other being the effect on the thyroid noticeable in people working extremely at their limit. Dunedin being better for environmental iodine may avoid that somewhat. Yes over half of these players came from fluoridated birth regions, it looks. About 5 from Palmerston North I think, though sometimes the description “Manawatu” could mean elsewhere.
Sorry it’s a bit hard to trace the players’ origins.
Josh Dickson was born in fluoridated Perth but grew up, went to primary school, in non-fluoridated Wanaka which is almost Central Otago. I don’t know at what age he went there. That may increase the non-F births to 18.
The team (with reserves) which is playing internationally (Perth) has some other players not in the main list. (Including 7 reserves 9 from fluoridated birth places 10 from non-fluoridated and 3 not sure. So there is a small shift to increased non-F proportion for international match.
Sorry I have not done every team yet. It takes a bit of time.
Stuartg: “If you remember, I did suggest that you could cite any evidence you have to support your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, in the form of CWF, causes harm.
You still haven’t cited any evidence to support your claim.”
Whay don’t you consider Lin Fa Fu et al’s work to be evidence?
Point out to us all where Lin Fa Fu et al studied people who had been drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Then tell us why their basic maths contains errors.
Then perhaps you could find a certified translation.
After all, if the authors/editor/typesetter/translator demonstrably leave numerical errors in their tables, who knows what other errors are present in their text?
A problem of “science-based medicine” is that science finds it much easier to look at one illness one drug when the door may have more than one key to open it. Not just Ken’s confounding variables which may act independently but variables interacting – working together.
In the case of iodide Ken refers to its lack as a confounder but it’s lack in the presence of slightly elevated fluoride may make things worse.
Extremely rare? First time I have seen that abbreviation â after a long career in chemistry research.
I suggest one would only use it for pretentious reasons or out of ignorance. After all, the purpose of communication is to be understood â why resort to use of abbreviations not recognised by people in the appropriate community?
Incredibly rare – first time I’ve ever seen that use as well!
But it was actually the numerical errors I referred to, not nomenclature. I’ve pointed out the errors to you in the past, as have others, and they are still present in the translation. It’s remarkable that you have elected to ignore those errors in your quest to find small, low quality, cherry picked studies that you believe add to your fund of anecdotes. It’s interesting to note that you were ready to defend this incredibly rare and non-recommended SI usage, though; I hadn’t even registered it!
Microgram is usually abbreviated to µg, or ug if your keyboard can’t manage the mu. That’s the SI standard. Handwritten medical notes are recommended to use mcg to reduce risk of error (handwritten µg often misinterpreted as mg).
But those comments are just another example of your use of diversion.
You still are unable to provide any citations to support your evidence-free imaginative speculation that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to individuals or to populations. And that’s with more than seventy years of research and data available from the real world among which you would surely be able to find evidence to support your speculation.
If CWF doesn’t cause harm, then I would not expect you to be able to cite any evidence of harm.
Interestingly, your lack of citations thus tends to support the scientific consensus that CWF does not cause harm.
Stuartg: “Microgram is usually abbreviated to µg, or ug if your keyboard can’t manage the mu. That’s the SI standard. Handwritten medical notes are recommended to use mcg to reduce risk of error (handwritten µg often misinterpreted as mg).”
If ug, the u being the second letter of mu, the english for the Greek µ, why not go more English and use the second letter of micro? Both are using the second letter to avoid the common confusion between micro and milli. Though I suppose it is the second letter of milli also.
People familiar with nutrition should know by the figures.
“soundhill, I’m not going to do your library searches for you. I’m just not interested enough to follow it further. I’ll trust the scientific consensus rather than rely on the three papers you think contradict the scientific consensus.”
So I give 3 papers then you talk about a contrary consensus and tell me to look up the data for your consensus?
People won’t be trusting you to be other than trying to create a perception unless you give some studies to back up your claim for consensus of no effect involving people subjected to fluoride levels relevant to fluoridation when they are low or high on iodine intake.
“If ug, the u being the second letter of mu, the english for the Greek µ, why not go more English and use the second letter of micro?”
As you never learned science at school, you obviously never learned about how and why SI standards were developed and why they are standards.
Is your comment derived from the Dunning-Kruger effect, or is it just your automatic “my fantasies have to be right, so all those thousands of experts have to be wrong in spite of their evidence and many years of learning” approach?
You want me to give you evidence about the scientific consensus? Again? As though I hadn’t done it several times before?
Yawn.
Take a modern textbook on dentistry. It doesn’t matter which. Or perhaps a modern textbook on epidemiology. Or both. Or more than one of each. In any language. Or take all of them.
Turn to the chapters on community water fluoridation.
Read them.
Read the references.
Read their references.
That’s the scientific consensus on community water fluoridation.
Against that consensus you have a fantasy that CWF causes harm.
In your opposition to the scientific consensus, the sum total of your citable evidence is… nothing.
That’s in spite of more than seventy years of research and data into the millions of people who have benefited from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies over the decades.
Surely there’s something in all that evidence to support your fantasy? Well, since you haven’t found anything, maybe not.
You are denying the science and the scientific consensus because you have a fantasy.
Stuartg the SI system of units is not about the symbols used to represent those units.
It just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?
And now when I try to find the original occurrence of ig/L in Lin FF Google brings up the Greek mu but when I copy and paste it here the result is /ig/L.
And viewing the version of Lin FF that Ken linked uses the Greek.
So you are looking silly making so much out of it, And you are weakening your case as you try to create a perception that Lin FF carries no weight.
I may be a bit wrong about there. But “mcg” is not part of SI.
Wiki:
“When the Greek lowercase “μ” (Mu) in the symbol μg is typographically unavailable, it is logically replaced by the Latin lowercase “u”.
The United States-based Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend that the symbol μg should not be used when communicating medical information due to the risk that the prefix μ (micro-) might be misread as the prefix m (milli-), resulting in a thousandfold overdose. The non-SI symbol mcg is recommended instead.[1][2] However, the abbreviation mcg is also the symbol for an obsolete CGS unit of measure known as millicentigram, which is equal to 10 μg.”
Both Ken (“Extremely rare? First time I have seen that abbreviation â after a long career in chemistry research”) and myself (“Incredibly rare – first time I’ve ever seen that use as well!”) merely commented about your defence of Lin Fa Fu et al using the term “ig” – ” it is not a typesetting error. ig means micrograms”
If you read back you will see my comment that I hadn’t even noticed their use of “ig”,
So, by bringing it up, who is making “so much out of” the use of “ig”?
And how much do you think it diverts away from your inability to cite evidence to support your fantasy about CWF causing harm?
“It (the SI system) just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?”
No.
You really should take those high school science classes.
Stuartg which text book gives the consensus on any interaction between moderate fluoride and low or high iodine?
Unfortunately the way medical scientific research goes there are things like liability that doctors have to cope with. If they give two new drugs together and the patient suffers a reaction how do they know which one it was to apportion liability? Liability is a very heavy weight on doctors. So taking account of things working together is often off the radar. You may not find it in the text books as much as it should be for positive actions, but often it is cited for bad drug interactions that have been obvious. But who takes liability for nutrient deficiency? Then next who takes liability for interaction of deficiencies? Will I find that written in the ethics texts?
It makes it really obvious how much you are denying the science, denying the evidence of multiple decades of research and data into the lack of harmful effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the millions of people who have benefited from it.
“Here is another example” …of attempting diversion using irrelevancies unrelated to CWF.
(FYI, I first diagnosed SCD over thirty years ago – it’s not as uncommon as you appear to think, as most NZ third year medical students could tell you)
Stuartg: “If you read back you will see my comment that I hadn’t even noticed their use of “ig”
…because on checking it, my copy didn’t have that usage”
You talked about typographical errors and I suppose it will be your strategy to leave us guessing over and over and take a laugh each time we get it wrong. You are lacking.
Stuartg: “(FYI, I first diagnosed SCD over thirty years ago – it’s not as uncommon as you appear to think, as most NZ third year medical students could tell you)”
Sickle Cell Disease is a genetic affliction. Sufferers may actually have better survival than normal in malaria prone areas.
If you prescribed folic acid or folate did you also prescribe Vitamin B12 to try to avoid the nerve damage that folic acid may mask?
You do not have to have sickle cell disease to be short of vitamin B12 and be at risk of getting only folic acid supplementation as in our breads.
Sruartg: “It makes it really obvious how much you are denying the science, denying the evidence of multiple decades of research and data into the lack of harmful effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the millions of people who have benefited from it.”
Science does reviews. Ken brought up a review of Lin FF last November whcih I challenged parts of. But no review of Fugui Hong or Dali Ren et al..
Stuartg: ““It (the SI system) just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?”
No.
You really should take those high school science classes”.
To my knowledge the units kept the same names it was just decided to adopt different ones from amongst them.
In the MKS system one newton acceleartes a mass of 1 kg at 1 metre per second per second
In the FPS system one poundal accelerates a mass of one pound at a rate of one foot per second per second.
In the CGS system a force of one dyne accelerates a mass of one gram at a rate of one centimeter per second per second.
The MKS system was adopted and school children no longer had to work in poundals and dynes.
Feet as a measurement of length was replaced by metres. Pounds were replaced by kilograms. But I don’t think the decimal multipliers of metres and kilograms &c changed for SI.
You still keep attempting to divert from your inability to cite evidence that can support your assertions that CWF can cause harm to the people that drink it.
Would you explain to us why you are completely incapable of citing such evidence?
After all, you’ve got more than seventy years of research and data, involving millions of people, from which to provide such evidence.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before and can’t be bothered looking back on a Saturday night when I’m trying to recover from a series of night shifts.
“It’s obvious that your knowledge doesn’t include why the Système International was introduced, or why it is in use today.”
It avoids a lot of conversion to be required going from one system to another. The Anericans tend not to use it so much.
There is some standardisation of powers of 10. Like for Americans a billion is 1,000,000,000 but the English used to call 1,000,000,000,000 a billion and 1.000.000.000.000.000.000 a trillion. so giga, tera, exa and zeta have been substituted to reduce confusion.
Why is the doctor sticking to a failing protocol if I have terminal cancer?
Why is a clinical trial aimed at advancing science, not doing the best for an individual patient? Why is it aimed at one key when the door to cancer may have several requited?
Who are these monsters putting me down with names like Tuteur and Dunning Kruger when my life is ebbing?
It wasn’t at the LD50 level where half die. More like LD0.3.
The point is that responses to fluoride vary. At what level can no risk be associated? What do all the studies which Stuartg goes on about say about the tails of their distributions? Low or high iodine segment? COMT variant?
Where are the papers that look at EQ on top of IQ yet?
The paper you cite documents harm from water with a fluoride concentration of 150mg/L. That’s 150 parts per million when NZ has recommended the optimum fluoride concentration in water to be 0.7 to 1.0 ppm.
Could you please justify your selection of 150 ppm as the optimum fluoride concentration in drinking water supplies. After all, if you didn’t select that as optimum, the paper has zero relevance to your claims.
We’re still waiting for you to provide citable evidence demonstrating harm to even a single individual, let alone “some” people, from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
“The point is that responses to fluoride (at optimal water fluoridation concentrations) vary.”
You’re making an assumption there. You need to back that supposition with citations justifying your use of such speculation.
No problems if you are talking about fluoride concentrations well above those optimal for reticulated water supplies, but then your statement would be completely irrelevant to discussion of CWF.
Well, unless you can provide citations that harm has been caused to any individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, we can be pretty certain it includes the level recommended for reticulated water supplies.
Stusrtg: “Could you please justify your selection of 150 ppm as the optimum fluoride concentration in drinking water supplies. After all, if you didn’t select that as optimum, the paper has zero relevance to your claims.”
They were intending/attempting to do 1ppm or so as you say they should. NO escaping.
Stuartg: “The point is that responses to fluoride (at optimal water fluoridation concentrations) vary.”
You’re making an assumption there. You need to back that supposition with citations justifying your use of such speculation”
Of course they vary. Some get dental fluorosis more than others.
Even cats learn to avoid other cars when one hits them. Unless they are trained not to as you seem to try to be doing to people who see dental fluorosis and wonder what else may be happening.
So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?
Hardly surprising. Most things can cause harm when one hundred and fifty times the recommended amount is ingested – try eating one hundred and fifty scones for morning tea.
In NZ optimal fluoridation is currently set at 0.7 to 1.0 ppm. The recommendations will never include the 150 ppm that caused the only harm you have been able to cite.
Where are your citations showing harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies? More than seven decades of CWF. Millions of people benefiting. Yet you can’t show harm in even one person from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
If you had bothered to acquaint yourself with the scientific consensus on CWF you would know why you can’t cite evidence of harm from CWF. It’s all there in the textbooks and their references.
Threshold concentrations for harm from fluoridated water supplies were known from observations of people drinking naturally fluoridated water worldwide well before CWF was introduced. In other words, they’ve been known for over seventy years. There have been, and always will be, minor jiggles in the evaluation of that threshold – but that’s just how the scientific method works.
The recommended concentration for optimally fluoridated water supplies always has been, and always will be, much less than the threshold known to cause harm.
Epidemiologists have been studying those populations with CWF for over seventy years, specifically looking for evidence of harm from CWF. They haven’t found any.
Amateurs (probably the kindest way of describing anti-fluoridationists) have also been looking for evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years as well. They haven’t found any evidence, either.
Let’s repeat that. No-one, not scientists, not epidemiologists, not anti-fluoridationists, has ever found evidence of anybody being harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water.
The simple reason that you can’t cite evidence of even a single person being harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, soundhill, is that no-one has actually been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
I’d have thought you would have figured it out by now.
I know that you won’t believe my comment above – simply because you think that everyone who doesn’t believe your fantasies are shills – but the comment is there for others to see why your belief/fantasy/faith that CWF causes harm means that you are denying the reality demonstrated by the scientific method.
As I see it, you’ve got a couple of options to choose from:
1. Ask an anti-fluoridationist cobber to cite evidence of harm to persons drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. (I doubt you’ll manage to find any yourself)
2. Go to high school classes, learn about science, statistics, logic and philosophy. Then maybe some advanced work at university. Then read the textbooks on Community Water Fluoridation, the references and their references. In other words, you can read and understand the scientific consensus on CWF.
If you attempt the first, you’ll find even Connett is unable to cite harm caused to an individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. And, believe me on this, he’ll have been looking longer and harder than you have.
If you manage the second, including the all important understand, it will take many years of your time and at the end of it all I suspect that you will find that you support CWF. Because by then you’ll have learned and understand the scientific method, what the evidence is, and why your current beliefs have no supporting evidence.
Or you can go to option 3:
Keep on attempting diversion to irrelevant topics in your endeavours to conceal your basic lack of knowledge of science, statistics, medicine and logic.
Stuartg: “So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?”
Accepts there is harm when there has been a death.
“Threshold concentrations for harm from fluoridated water supplies were known from observations of people drinking naturally fluoridated water worldwide well before CWF was introduced.”
Please cite evidence in support of your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has caused harm to individuals or to populations in the more than seventy years it has been available.
I will repeat myself: you are able to define both “harm” and “optimally fluoridated” provided you are able to justify those definitions. Do you want to re-define “drinking”, “water” and “seventy years” as well?
So far you appear to have defined “optimally fluoridated” at one hundred and fifty times the NZ recommended level, but you have neglected to justify that definition.
Stuartg: “So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?”
Accepts there has been harm when fluoride level has got to 150mg/l and there has been a death.
But does not accept damage to the ameloblasts as harm, or it seems anything until the level gets up to 150mg per liter and there is a death.
I’ll repeat what I said earlier:
You can define “harm” to a human being in any way you like, providing you can justify that definition.
Personally though, If I were you, I would use one of the already accepted expert definitions of harm.
Following that, you can continue to demonstrate to us that there is no citable evidence of harm, to individuals or to populations, that is caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
And if you continue to insist that 150ppm fluoride causing harm is “optimally fluoridated”, then: {citation required}
Stuartg: ““Where are the papers that look at EQ on top of IQ yet?”
Haven’t you produced them yet?”
If EQ is to have anything to do with suicide I have to note suicide seems to have a small negative correlation of -0.26 to proportion of state fluoridated in USA. p value about 0.065 two-valued.
Could be that there may be more suicide in rural regions which may have less fluoridation. In NZ correlation of suicide to population of DHB gives about 0.4 p=about 0.06 two-tailed.
Taking a wild guess at fluoridation of NZ DHBs usng only 1 for more fluoridated , 0 for less fluoridated and 0.5 for Hastins/Napier sort of area I get a rank correlation about -0.3 but the p value is too large at two-tailed 0.18. But taken together with USA there may be an effect.
The partial correlation holding population constant is -0.29. Used Vassarstats.
“does not accept damage to the ameloblasts as harm (to a human being)”
Exactly what damage is caused to ameloblasts by exposure to optimal fluoride concentrations?
Before you start a rant, yes, I know that excess fluoride makes ameloblasts incorporate more fluoride into the enamel matrix and results in dental fluorosis, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells. And, yes, I know that zero fluoride means the enamel matrix ameloblasts produce is more porous and so more prone to dental caries, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells. And yes, I know that ameloblasts with optimal fluoride levels are also healthy, undamaged cells.
So can you cite anyone with evidence that the same optimal fluoride levels are causing damage to ameloblasts? And if you can, exactly what sort of harm does that cause to the human organism? After all, you are the one with the “I am not making claims” insistence of human harm from CWF.
And, once you’ve done that, you can continue to demonstrate the lack of citable evidence you have that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to individuals or to populations, even though some have drunk it for a lifetime.
Stuartg: “Before you start a rant, yes, I know that excess fluoride makes ameloblasts incorporate more fluoride into the enamel matrix and results in dental fluorosis, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells.”
Cite please.I don’t think you will find a cite and you still have the misconception I have spoken of several times.
What I have read is that fluorotic white marks are “hypomineralisation.” Hypo meaning less than should be.
The ameloblasts no longer form proper transparent hydroxyapatite.
In severe cases protein is left where enamel should be causing brown marks.
Stuartg: “I am not making claims” insistence of human harm from CWF.”
No just caution. Even if fluoridation were to be reducing suicide would it be doing it by some mechansim such as that other very light and reactive element lithium which though may dampen the affect may damage the liver?
Suicide: another diversion attempting redirection from your inability to cite evidence to support your “I am not making claims” insistence that CWF causes harm.
Perhaps you can tell us why you are unable to cite harm to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
After all, with more than seventy years of data and research into the effects of CWF, your lack of citations makes it highly unlikely that CWF causes any harm to humans from drinking it.
If your “I am not making claims” insistence is indeed “just caution” then the absolute lack of evidence available in its support (millions of people, multiple decades…) would be indicative that the “just caution” is no longer warranted.
Initial opposition to the railways were concerned that humans would not survive speeds over 30 mph. In spite of the lack of evidence to support that concern, are you still exhibiting “just caution” and sticking to walking and horse riding like those people?
“For the first 10 kg of weight, a child needs 100 mL per kg of weight.”
“Children who are vomiting, have diarrhea, are sweating excessively, or who are exposed
to extremely high temperatures, require even more fluids than listed above.”
Now Stuartg from your second ref
“Enamel fluorosis is observed in young children at fluoride intakes as low as 0.03 mg F/kg body weight,”
That would be 0.3mg for a 10 kg child, and at a fluoridation rate of 0.7mg/l its fluid requirement of 1 litre would inflict over double that.
Stuartg: “If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.”
Your imagination is running away again. Read the scientific consensus. Or, failing that, the citations I provided.”
Thanks for reminding me about those citations.
Non-porous hydroxyapatite is not as resistant to acid as fluorapatite.
Due to the scattering of light at the interface between the apatite and any pores in it, porous hydroxyapatite would be translucent but not transparent.
Stuartg’s second ref: “the effects of fluoride on ER stress require further study at lower doses.”
The endoplasmic reticulum is involved in many body processes.
As a doctor do you know how a person’s kidneys have to have their function considerably reduced before they present with symptoms? The kidneys have quite an amount of spare capacity. What percent would you say would be gone before a patient presents? Would a hard working sports person, like Jonah Lomu, notice the impairment earlier?
Would the number of hard working sports people in the Dunedin Study be sufficient for them to statistically significantly sway the population picture about any bodily development aspects where the ER may have affected reserves?
Soundhill1: “Even if fluoridation were to be reducing suicide would it be doing it by some mechansim such as that other very light and reactive element lithium which though may dampen the affect may damage the liver?”
“The affect” there related to affection, and being sort of the set of emotions.
Lithium is used to treat manic depression but can result in death from failed liver.
So, still no citations to support your evidence-free fantasies that CWF causes harm?
After all, more than seven decades of research, seven decades of data accumulation, multiple countries, millions of people benefiting, yet you’re still not able to find evidence that even one person in the real world has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
You can fantasise and speculate for as long as you like, but your inability to provide supporting evidence from the real world exposes those fantasies for exactly what they are: make-believe from your world of pure imagination.
“Stuartg: “If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.””
I suggest that you read back. The reason I placed that phrase in quotation marks is because it originated with you. Don’t try attributing it to me. It has nothing to do with my opinions and everything to do with yours.
We note, yet again, your attempt at diversion from your inability to provide evidence supporting your claims. It still doesn’t work. It still makes you look foolish – your insistence that others produce evidence whilst you convincingly demonstrate that you are incapable of doing so yourself is somewhat injudicious of you.
You haven’t even acknowledged that your completely inaccurate evidence-free belief that fluoride damages ameloblasts has been shown to be wrong – by evidence available from the real world.
So, yet again, where are your citations from the real world that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to humans? Surely somewhere amongst those millions of people, decades of data, you can find evidence that even one person has been harmed by CWF? Or do we conclude that your “I am not making claims” assertations and speculations are the products of pure fantasy?
Stuartg: “So, yet again, where are your citations from the real world that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to humans? ”
You are talking legal proof. Knowledge that the speed of train travel shouldn’t be feared indeed took a while to develop and legal proof of asbestos and lead injury took a while to develop.
Just because there may be no legal proof of fluoridation injury in NZ does not have to mean there to be no impairment.
I think Stuart was actually talking about scientific proof â not âlegal proof.â One does not rely on lawyers when considering safety issues.
But you have certainly exposed your desperation n with this comment that absence of âproof of fluoridation injury in NZ does not have to mean there to be no impairment.
There is no proof there are fairies at the bottom of your garden â are you then going to use this absence to argue that they are really there?
“Knowledge that the speed of train travel shouldn’t be feared indeed took a while to develop”
Certainly. It took one short trip lasting less than an hour.
Confirming Ken’s comment: I don’t have the knowledge of law or the legal system to make comments about legal proof. Unless otherwise stated, all my comments are, and have been, about scientific proof. (FYI, in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s why I keep mentioning science, the scientific method and the scientific consensus)
So how long do you think we have to wait for (scientific) proof that CWF does not cause harm?
Many countries (not just your insistence of NZ). Millions of people. More than seven decades. Even entire lifetimes. There’s lots of proof of the health benefits of CWF. There’s lots of proof showing how CWF works. There’s lots of proof showing that CWF does work. There’s even lots of proof of the financial benefits of CWF (But here I’ll take the word of others because I’m not an economist)
And yet you still have no citable evidence, despite those millions of people and those multiple decades, that even a single person worldwide has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Probably because CWF does not actually cause harm?
Ken: “There is no proof there are fairies at the bottom of your garden â are you then going to use this absence to argue that they are really there?”
We tend to attribute things to fairies when we do not understand them such as the rate of infant language acquisition about which there has been much debate.
I think you left out “not.”
Just because Marie Curie did not scientifically know she was being damaged by nuclear radiation doesn’t mean she wasn’t being damaged.
Just because my observations are not as yet accepted in a scientific journal does not mean there is nothing in them. And Stuartg seems to want a much higher level of testing than is normally required for a pilot study. And what he is asking like for all sports to be tested does not work unless all those sports are played in as wide areas and for a similar long duration spanning years before fluoridation as rugby in NZ.
“Just because my observations are not as yet accepted in a scientific journal does not mean there is nothing in them.”
And it does not mean there is anything in them.
It is up to you to provide evidence – and arguing along those line is not evidence. It is simply an admission of lack of evidence and pleading for a free pass – the right to claim something as a fact when you have no evidence.
That is religion, not science.
You are demanding a free pass to scaremonger. You don’t get it here. You only get laughed at.
Ken: “You are demanding a free pass to scaremonger. You don’t get it here. You only get laughed at.”
No I am just responding to Stuartg who is keeping on suggesting many times that because I have not provided peer-reviewed published evidence that there must be no effect.
“Stuartg seems to want a much higher level of testing than is normally required for a pilot study.”
No. Just any testing at all.
Perhaps attending high school lessons in statistics, where you would learn what is actually required of a pilot study, would be of help?
Hint: a pilot study needs a larger, entirely new set of related data to test for non-coincidence. Looking at scanty numbers and saying “that’s odd” does not consist a pilot study.
But epidemiologists looking at multiple countries, over multiple decades, with millions of people involved, and finding absolutely no citable evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, well that does provide some pretty compelling evidence that Community Water Fluoridation does not harm the populations that benefit from it. And the level of evidence from that science is much, much greater than that of a pilot study.
So can tell us why you are denying the science of thousands of experts? Why do you fantasise that the scanty numbers of your make-believe “studies” are so much more definitive than those thousands of experts?
Perhaps, not having learned the basics of science, statistics, logic and philosophy, you have succumbed to the Dunning-Kruger effect and your knowledge is insufficient to know that you lack knowledge?
You maintain “I am not making claims” protestations that Community Water Fluoridation causes harm – by impairing sporting performance in rugby, football, Olympic and probably other sports. To everyone but yourself, those are claims. You even provided a couple of dozen observations and called them “studies”, imagining they supported your claims.
Those are extraordinary claims, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So where is your extraordinary evidence? Where is even a single citation that just one person has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
All you have given us is make-believe fantasies based on some observations that would be consistent with the coincidences that occur in all sporting endeavours from time to time.
You need scientific evidence to support your claims, not fantasies from your imagination.
I ask for the scientific evidence to support your claims that CWF causes harm.
You repeatedly demonstrate that you are unable to supply any scientific evidence in support of those claims.
As Ken says, the obvious conclusion is that you have a religious fantasy belief that CWF causes harm. You certainly don’t have any evidence from the real world.
Brian – again you are demanding a free pass to scaremonger.. You say:
“because I have not provided peer-reviewed published evidence that there must be no effect.”
Your statement means either that you are completely inept at searching the literature or that there is no credible published evidence. If the latter is the case then according to logic and the normal process of human progress the best conclusion is that there is no effect.
We are theretofore justified in proceeding with CWF, always keeping in mind that new evidence may appear to cause us to review our consensus. And, no, you are not advancing any credible new evidence despite your hubris.
We do that with lost of things – if we didn’t we would have long ago expired as a species.
Your demand for a free pass is again rejected and I repeat – such demands just get you laughed at around here.
Ken I am gradually extending back my list of All Black captains to compare who were born in Auckland before fluoridation started to after it started. You are keen for me to do multiple regression. What variables do you suggest?
“I am gradually extending back my list of All Black captains…”
If the effect you postulate actually exists, then the effect would be seen among the full backs of the All Blacks, among the hookers of the All Blacks, the five-eighths of the All Blacks, indeed in every position of the All Blacks.
It would also be found among the captains of the All Whites, Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, Silver Ferns, Black Caps… And in every position of the All Whites, Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, Silver Ferns, Black Caps…
It would be found among the captains of all international rugby teams, netball teams, football teams, cricket teams, hockey teams… No matter from which country they originated. And found in every position of all international rugby teams, netball teams, football teams, cricket teams, hockey teams… No matter from which country they originated.
Actually, it would be found in every level of competitive sport in every country in the world and there would be no need for you to cherry pick your teams and players. It would be obvious in any team, any sport, no matter which level of competition.
Your inability to cite any evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies is extremely good evidence that you will never be able to scientifically demonstrate the validity of your claims that CWF impairs sporting performance.
All your cherry picking does is to remind us that runs of coincidences are a feature of competitive sports, because of the vagaries of chance, and that we need to test any unusual run of results for non-coincidence before we can reach any conclusions.
You have approached from the opposite direction: you have reached the conclusion, as a religious belief, and are now obviously cherry-picking in the entirely erroneous belief that you are emulating the scientific process. You really need to go to those high school classes to learn exactly what the scientific process involves. It would help if you attended classes in statistics at the same time.
I’ve repeatedly informed you how you can get new information to test for non-coincidence, in the quantities that are needed for statistical significance. It would be extremely easy for you to gather the required information and then test for non-coincidence, but you haven’t bothered to do so. You actually have no idea why the scientific process requires you to do the testing.
Instead, your words tell us that you are examining each sportsperson as a single entity before deciding whether to include them in your make-believe “studies” or not.
It’s self-confessed cherry-picking.
But I guess that you are unaware of that because you haven’t even been taught high school statistics or science. The Dunning-Kruger effect means that you don’t even know what is wrong with your approach.
Stuartg Ken asked for multiple regression. Are you going to deny their possibility in Auckland by not commenting?
I presume he would want them in every region/team if you require every team to be calculated for.
But you do know vaccines do not have to be proved in every person in every country before they are declared sufficiently safe. What proportion of the world was tested for Gardasil?
No I am not cherry picking. You say “obviously” because your “religious” belief (if you are wanting to down grade religion) is that fluoridation could not be causing harm and when you see my figures you flail around looking to how to discredit them.
I am just reporting as I go along. As I said women’s rugby may not fit the pattern. It may not be so widely played. Ahead of my study I mentioned EQ and had the notion to look at suicide as one indicator of poor EQ, But I found it to be negatively correlated to fluoridation in US and NZ. Now because I suggest fluoridation may blunt emotions therefore it may reduce suicide, like the other compound of a very reactive very light substance, lithium, do you say I am cherry picking about that?
In most research the notion is about a positive result. Choosing what you are going to statistically check when it looks like it might be positive is not cherry picking. It happens to be the normal way of science.
Bluster again? Is that why you’re attempting diversion to vaccines? It hasn’t worked.
All I did was suggest, long ago, that you test your observations for non-coincidence.
You didn’t test them.
So, I suggested ways that you could get larger amounts of new data that would be needed to test for non-coincidence.
You didn’t get that new data to test.
“when you see my figures you flail around looking to how to discredit them”. Actually, soundhill, I ignore them:
A couple of dozen rugby players from tens of thousands worldwide? That’s either cherry picked or coincidence unless further testing for non-coincidence is done.
Two football teams out of thousands in the UK? Out of tens of thousands worldwide? Again, either cherry picked or coincidental unless further testing for non-coincidence is done.
One rugby team out of a local league? Out of 18,000 teams worldwide? Yet again, it’s either cherry picked or coincidental unless further testing for non-coincidence is done
And now “I am just reporting as I go along” and “women’s rugby may not fit the pattern” – in other words, you’re examining each result and then deciding whether it fits your fantasy “pattern” or not. You are telling us that you are picking results and fitting them to a pattern!
If, as is likely in the real world, women’s rugby results don’t fit your fantasy “pattern”, it provides evidence to scientists and statisticians that your “pattern” does not exist. But that won’t matter to you; you will just ignore and disregard the contrary data.
As everyone but yourself seems to understand, first you get the data, in sufficient numbers (at least hundreds of data points for significance, out of the many thousands available, rather than the few non-random points that you think is sufficient), and once you have obtained the data, only then do you analyse it. You do not perform statistical analysis by “just reporting as I go along” …well, obviously you do, and that’s a marvelous way for you to introduce bias when statistics is supposed to be about elimination of bias.
If we step back and look objectively at the way you are approaching your “observations”, we see a few options:
You don’t understand about coincidence and why you need to test for non-coincidence (lack of basic knowledge about science)
You don’t understand how to test for non-coincidence (lack of basic knowledge about statistics)
You don’t understand why we have to use statistics in analysis (lack of basic knowledge about statistics)
You have a belief that CWF causes harm so there’s no way you are going to test your ideas for non-coincidence, and you will ignore anything that does not “fit the pattern” (your fantasy means that no amount of scientific evidence is going to influence your religious beliefs)
It’s obvious that your “self-taught” methods have sent you down multiple dead end byways that have many times been shown to be detrimental and useless in both science and statistics. Not having a teacher able to point out your most basic of errors has been a complete waste of your time. The textbooks you “self-taught” from were not rudimentary enough and you missed out on many of the basics.
So, soundhill, that’s why I recommend that you attend your local high school classes in science and statistics.
Stuartg: “If, as is likely in the real world, women’s rugby results don’t fit your fantasy “pattern”, it provides evidence to scientists and statisticians that your “pattern” does not exist. But that won’t matter to you; you will just ignore and disregard the contrary data.
No just that women rugby players may not be selected from a wide enough geographical area. I have lived by a rugby club for many years and women do not play here except for touch in the summer.
Here is the proportion of Black Ferns to All Blacks that the provinces have produced. Mid Canterbury proportion looks high but it is only total 1 Black Fern 3 All Blacks to make the 33%
0.00% BULLER
0.00% EAST COAST
0.00% HOROWHENUA-KAPITI
0.00% KING COUNTRY
0.00% NORTH HARBOUR
0.00% NORTH OTAGO
0.00% POVERTY BAY
0.00% SOUTH CANTERBURY
0.00% TASMAN
0.00% THAMES VALLEY
0.00% WAIRARAPA BUSH
0.00% WEST COAST
1.35% TARANAKI
2.00% SOUTHLAND
5.88% WANGANUI
9.30% HAWKE’S BAY
10.00% NORTHLAND
10.53% COUNTIES MANUKAU
13.51% OTAGO
14.71% MANAWATU
17.57% WELLINGTON
19.25% CANTERBURY
24.19% WAIKATO
27.27% BAY OF PLENTY
30.27% AUCKLAND
33.33% MID-CANTERBURY
Stuartg: “So, soundhill, that’s why I recommend that you attend your local high school classes in science and statistics.”
But you are not offering the name of a text book. How do you know what is being taught?
Look back quite a few years when you may have taken UE physics. It could have been the PSSC course which attempted to introduce the scientific process Newton &c.
But a lot of kids found it too boring or hard and I think school physics went back to explaining principles and problem-solving didn’t it?
Mostly now when I look up about the normal distribution and physics all I get is about scaling up marks to get more kids to pass.
Stuartg: “And now “I am just reporting as I go along” and “women’s rugby may not fit the pattern” – in other words, you’re examining each result and then deciding whether it fits your fantasy “pattern” or not. You are telling us that you are picking results and fitting them to a pattern!”
Yes or matching them up against a pattern to see if more fit or not.
How about this for a null hypothesis?: “There is no difference between the fraction of All Black captains born in the area of Auckland which was fluoridated, before and after fluoridation.”
Or: “There is no difference between the number of Black Caps matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
But we already know there is difference.
Fluoride is said to have a different effect on female hormones compared to male.
It may decrease testosterone in men and increase it in women. Though the high level in this paper is higher than fluoridation level by a factor of 3 or a bit more:
I am not right up with this but I’ll get some thought going:
—————————-born——————Fluor–caps
Katrina Grant 1987 Papakura 1 94
Laura Langman 1986 Hamilton 1 141
Casey Kopua 1985 Hamilton 1 101
Adine Wilson 1979 Hawera 1 79
Anna Stanley 1976 Christchurch 0 92
Julie Seymour 1971 Wigan 0 90
Belinda Colling 1975 Cromwell 0 92
Bernice Mene 1975 Christchurch 0 76
Lesley Rumball 1975 Invercargill 1 110
Sandra Edge 1962 Gisborne 0 94
Julie Carter 1975
Julie Townsend 1960 Waipawa 0
It looks like the null hypothesis might be destroyed with more caps to captains from fluoridated areas.
Let’s imagine for a few minutes that CWF does have an effect on sporting performance, and then contemplate what effects we would expect to see.
(Sorry about the length of this comment, Ken)
You’ve previously suggested a 10% deterioration in sports performance, but such an effect would be immediately obvious, being similar to the difference between high school sports performance and international representative sports performance. So exactly how much sporting performance deterioration do we expect from CWF?
If we look at the peak of performance, say your favourite of the All Blacks, then a change in individual performance of a mere 1% would be sufficient to drop a player out of the squad. It could be argued that so would a change of 0.1%; after all much less than 0.1% of NZ rugby players are in the All Black squad.
So, since you can name at least some All Blacks from CWF areas, that implies the change in sporting performance between CWF and non-CWF players has to be less than 1%, and probably less than 0.1%.
That tiny signal, if it existed, would be very difficult to pick out from random background noise. No scientist or statistician would expect to be able to pick it out from a random list of a couple of dozen players; it would need several hundred players chosen at random in order to have a chance to detect the signal. But then we all noted that your list is not a random list of players, but is actually a carefully chosen list.
So, your tiny list of All Black captains does not have the numbers to detect such small changes in performance, unless it has been cherry-picked precisely for that reason. Such a tiny list, if randomly selected, would only be able to detect massive changes of performance that were immediately obvious to coaches, spectators, journalists, etc.
That’s why I suggest that you need to test your idea on a much larger and random list. But if you knew the basics of statistics then you would already know that to detect such small changes in performance a random list needs to be much larger than a couple of dozen.
So, let’s get a larger list of randomised players, one that has a chance of picking out a signal from random noise. Or, more accurately, a chance of determining that there is no weak signal present among the noise. How large a list do we need? Well, you claim to be the expert at statistics so I’ll let you decide. But it’s going to be several hundred. At least. Not just your cherry-picked couple of dozen.
So you’ll need to look at all other positions in the All Blacks. After all, if that tiny difference in sports performance is really there from CWF, we can expect to see it in all positions in the team, not just the captain. Or are you arguing that the rest of the All Blacks are not at the peak of their sport? (And anyway, you claim the effect is present at much lower levels of sports, otherwise why did you mention Petone, Timaru, Birmingham City?)
If we look at the entire All Black squads since the start of fluoridation in NZ, will we have sufficient numbers to rule out the presence of a weak signal among the noise? Possibly, but I doubt it. I suspect that you are going to have to include other international squads to get sufficient numbers, which is why I previously suggested that you will need to look at the squads from England, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, etc.
But then again, if there really was a diminution from sporting performance from CWF, would we have to go that far? Is there another way? Wouldn’t we expect to see the same result in all All Black positions as you cherry-picked with the captains? Because even a slight diminution of performance would mean that almost no players from CWF areas would be in the All Black squad, wouldn’t it?
So, soundhill, what percentage of All Blacks would be expected to be from non-CWF areas if CWF impaired sports performance? 90%? 95%? 98%? Higher? I’ll leave it to you, as the self-taught expert in statistics, to work out which of those you would expect.
I’m not going to do the research for you, but a brief look at the All Black squad shows many members from Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin – all areas with CWF. The percentage appears to be nearer to 50%.
If there were any difference in sporting performance attributable to optimally fluoridated water supplies then it would be overwhelmingly obvious. To everybody. Not just to one electronic technician self-taught in science and statistics. More than 90% of the All Blacks would be from non-fluoridated areas. So would the Black Sticks. And the Silver Ferns. And the Black Ferns. And the All Whites. And the Black Caps… And the members of any international squad from any sport, from any country you care to name.
(Just a random thought – would anyone with dental fluorosis (meaning they’re drinking water with a higher than optimum fluoride level) be capable of playing any sport at international level? Wouldn’t that be in accordance with your ideas? Or do you go to special pleading again?)
So, we can reach some conclusions. The cherry-picked list(s) that you supply do not have the numbers required to demonstrate a non-coincidental correlation between CWF and impaired sporting performance. Findings that we would expect if CWF actually did impair sporting performance are not present. Findings from the real world are highly suggestive of no effect on sporting performance from CWF.
But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? You have been unable to produce any citable evidence that anyone has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. Not from among millions of people. Not from multiple countries. Not from over seventy decades of research and data. Not even from your anti-fluoridationist cronies.
The lack of effect on sporting performance from CWF is just extending the evidence you are unable to provide in trying to bolster your “I am not making claims” assertions that CWF causes harm.
“Fluoride is said to have a different effect on female hormones compared to male.”
Said? An opinion?
How about citing evidence showing harm from optimally fluoridated water supplies, rather than evidence of fluoride poisoning from water with toxic levels of fluoride?
Exactly how valid is a statistical analysis performed on just twelve people?
I’ll bear in mind that I’m asking the question of a self-taught, self-proclaimed, “expert” in statistics, so I don’t exactly expect an intelligible answer.
“But you are not offering the name of a text book.”
Because the textbooks you “self-taught” from previously were obviously not rudimentary enough and you manifestly missed out on many of the basics.
You need a teacher who can correlate your lack of learning with the level of textbook required. Then they would have to point out where you are fantasising that you have read something different to what was actually in the book.
Stuartg: “Exactly how valid is a statistical analysis performed on just twelve people?”
A couple of those were born before fluoridation started in most places. So it’s really would be just 10 in any analysis. Same as with the Black Caps captains are holding on for quite a while. In both cases it is possible to think of the games as the variable. Then the statistics is a bit like tossing a coin for each game of which there are quite a number.
In the case of males the ones in non-fluoridated areas show up in many more games, while for females the converse.
Besides the restricted geographical areas the Black Ferns are arising from this sex-fluoride effect might be showing up for Black Ferns, too.
Why wouldn’t there be any sex difference? Sex differences can be obvious as for premature menopause after Gardasil. But sex differences don’t only show in obvious ways.
“Look back quite a few years when you may have taken UE physics. It could have been the PSSC course which attempted to introduce the scientific process Newton &c.”
You’re making assumptions again.
At the age of 11, well before UE, I knew about and was using the scientific process. And Newton. At the age most sit UE, I was playing with the physics of fission and fusion. I’m still interested in physics today, it’s just not my job.
How do I know what is being taught in high schools? Because I work with high school children and help them at times when they have difficulties.
Not all education is capable of being taught from books, as you so obviously demonstrate, so the ideal way of acquiring knowledge requires human interactions as well as book learning.
Your local high school science teacher will advise you on the best textbook for your level of education, and they will expect to have to assist you with the parts you don’t realise you aren’t understanding.
Stuartg: “Why not use the same “hypothesis” for all three?”
“There is no difference between the number of (a) All Black (b) Black Caps (c) Silver Ferns, matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
However it loses the possibility that Auckland’s climate may have an effect and controlling for that.
“There is no difference between the number of (a) All Black (b) Black Caps (c) Silver Ferns, matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
“But we already know there is a difference.”
Yeah, right.
“However it loses the possibility that Auckland’s climate may have an effect and controlling for that.”
No, it doesn’t.
For you it’s got to be fluoride. Nothing but fluoride. No matter that you have exactly zero citable scientific evidence in support of your idea, it just has to be fluoride. It can’t be any other reason, can it?
The captains of international teams come from non-fluoridated areas! All of them! Well, except for all rugby teams that aren’t the All Blacks. Or women’s teams. And maybe a lot of other teams as well. It looks a lot like cherry-picking, soundhill.
Fluoridated football teams don’t win as many games as non-fluoridated and they get demoted! Except for the ones that win more games and get promoted. And I’ll just ignore the non-fluoridated teams that lost games and got demoted. Looks like cherry-picking again, soundhill.
Non-fluoridated Petone wins more games after the rest of the league they play in gets CWF! Let’s not mention Onehunga and Mosgiel which didn’t start winning after the rest of their leagues got CWF. Yet again we see you cherry-picking, soundhill.
So. More than seventy years of data and research. Millions of people involved. Multiple countries involved. Thousands of researchers. Even multiple languages. And not a single citation demonstrating harm to an individual or to a population.
It’s exactly as if drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies doesn’t actually cause harm in the real world.
Sruartg: “…Mosgiel which didn’t start winning after the rest of their leagues got CWF. ”
Taieri is the Mosgiel Club. I can’t find many results but Taieri seem to several times be the top team holding the Speights Challenge Shield for the Metro rugby. I would like to see history.
Stuartg: “Fluoridated football teams don’t win as many games as non-fluoridated and they get demoted! Except for the ones that win more games and get promoted.”
Do you know of some teams from fluoridated areas which got promoted when in a league playing against teams from non-fluoridated areas? Please tell me which ones then I can calculate what happens on average.
I wonder if Stuartg is able to avoid, when coaching school pupils, getting them to think it all has to be one way or one other way, and nothing in between.
So would we all. In this case it’s called evidence.
You haven’t yet managed to produce any scientific evidence from the real world that supports your fantasies about CWF.
Tiny numbers from the sportsfield, incapable of producing valid statistical results – interesting, and short runs of coincidence can be expected, especially in sports, so why don’t you test them to see if they are coincidence or not?
More than seventy years of data and research from multiple countries, involving many millions of people, and absolutely no citable evidence showing harm to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Haven’t you noticed the cognitive dissonance that you hold? You consider a couple of dozen sports players to be absolute proof that CWF causes harm. Yet you also consider that the evidence from millions of people over multiple decades is insufficient to demonstrate lack of harm from CWF.
Clear demonstration that you don’t understand the first principles of statistics. Also highly suggestive that you are a science denier.
“I wonder if Stuartg is able to avoid, when coaching school pupils, getting them to think it all has to be one way or one other way, and nothing in between ”
Like your fantasy that CWF causes harm? In spite of absolutely no citable evidence?
I’m prepared to accept that it is possible for CWF to cause harm. I just need to see some evidence of the harm.
In contrast, you say CWF HAS to cause harm, even though you have zero citable evidence of such harm. And remember – thousands of researchers, many countries, millions of people, and more than seventy years of data and research suggesting (not proving) no harm.
You definitely demonstrate a binary outlook on life.
Ken: “Your statement means either that you are completely inept at searching the literature or that there is no credible published evidence. If the latter is the case then according to logic and the normal process of human progress the best conclusion is that there is no effect.”
“according to logic and the normal process of human progress” – an assertion of faith?
Brian, you dihoestly deleted important aspects of what I wrote.
“We are theretofore justified in proceeding with CWF, always keeping in mind that new evidence may appear to cause us to review our consensus. And, no, you are not advancing any credible new evidence despite your hubris.
We do that with lots of things – if we didn’t we would have long ago expired as a species.
Your demand for a free pass is again rejected and I repeat – such demands just get you laughed at around here.”
You are demanding a free pass – arguing that absence of evidence supports your position because evidence may well turn yup in the future. Ignoring all the evidence against your position we currently have and may well get in future.
Now that does require faith – and if humanity had operated that way we would have become extinct long ago.
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” – Carl Sagan.
And, just like Carl Sagan, I rely on scientific evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
On one hand there is an electronic technician with no training in logic, philosophy, science or statistics who asserts that CWF causes harm in everyone who drinks it, yet is unable to supply any citable scientific evidence at all to support his protestations.
On the other hand there is the scientific consensus, reached by thousands of epidemiologists, dentists, and other researchers, that Community Water Fluoridation is cheap, effective and safe. And backing that consensus there is more than seventy years of experience, research and data, sourced from millions of people in multiple countries, which has failed to find scientific evidence of harm in either individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Which of the two is most likely to be correct? soundhill or the scientific consensus?
I would submit that with the current state of evidence it is self-evident that the scientific consensus is correct. It is likely to remain so, no matter how much soundhill tries to oppose and ridicule it.
Open Parachute 
Nothing new there. Ms Spencer is a master at quoting Papers that have nothing to do with the argument she is trying to defend.
So the point, cited to check all anti fluoride links is so relevent
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More water can be consumed in pregnancy but less probably at higher altitudes which are cooler.
Rather than extent of fluoridation need to work with extent of fluoridated water consumed as that increases fluoride intake.
Elevated towns may be smaller and use sodium fluoride for fluoridation. Do they add lime in similar quantities or maybe alkalinise with sodium carbonate or hydroxide?
And we already came across a sodium fluoride fluoridation health problem didn’t we?
And its all crap unless you allow for magnesium
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Brian, I am afraid your comment is all crap – it does not even refer to the point of my article – the misuse of statistics.
A proper look at these shows absolutely no association of infant death or preterm births with fluoridation. None at all!
Hence your attempted diversion.
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I was saying the things a “proper look” should consider.
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So your comment is a criticism of FFNZ and of Karen Favazza Spencer, Brian?
Well, why didn’t you say. I think my criticism was fundamental.
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“And it’s all crap.”
That sentence would have been accurate if it stopped there.
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Writers should be encouraged to take many possible variables into account.
Altitude affects air pressure which is not good for pre-term births. It also affects UVB which may be good for pregnancy via vitamin D.
If some individuals be more susceptible to fluoride via COMT variant I assert it be not fair to write them off using the excuse altitude shows a greater affect over the whole population.
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Even low air pressure at altitude does not affect all individuals the same.
Here compare Tibet: the “original” inhabitants vs the newly arrived Han Chinese as regards neonatal troubles:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199511093331903#t=article
The Dunedin Study which TV series Ken asked us to watch related of the COMT variant and how it did not have to be followed by antisocial characteristics but might even be banked on for special ability. It would be interesting to look at advanced rugby players and their COMT variants. They may be more affected by fluoride.
I assert it be not the simple affect on all the sports people that Stuartg is suggesting.
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Ken I think your chart of infant deaths vs average state elevation should be segmented with an increase in the rate to about 7,000 feet as air pressure decreases followed by a decrease as the increased UVB effect shows.
There are a few high outliers possibly.
Need also to investigate residence in high rise buildings and note the Trumps live on the 66th floor where the air pressure must be a percent lower than ground level.
(I can find my thinking to be not so clear even on a plane ascending to 18,000 feet where pressurisation keeps it like 900 – about 3,000 feet.)
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soundhill,
“the simple affect on all the sports people that Stuartg is suggesting”
If you read back, you will see that I’ve made no mention at all about the mental health of sports people. Oh, wait, it’s yet another spelling mistake that wasn’t picked up by proof reading.
I suggest that you read back over the last few years and see exactly who has suggested that CWF has an effect, either simple or complex, on sports people.
All I’ve ever done is ask that person to provide evidence why they believed the coincidences they’d found weren’t. They haven’t provided any.
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14th June last year TV1 played a Dunedin Study episode which dealt the forms of the MAOA gene. 30% of people have the weak form and it is claimed they can become antisocial if maltreated up to age 11. Professor James Fallon who found 7 convicted murderers in his father’s family tree got his own brain scanned and it showed the problem pattern. But his mother had treated him well and his energy chanelled him to be a professor if you call that mental health.
Stuartg: “If you read back, you will see that I’ve made no mention at all about the mental health of sports people.”
I imagine top rugby players need controlled aggression if you call that mental health.
I have been talking about top players but Stuartg wants me to extend the study to all players, suggesting that any problem of fluoridation on top players should affect all players.
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soundhill,
“I have been talking about top players”
I suggest that you read back.
Let us know who extended their fantasy to lower grade players by first mentioning lower grade rugby teams, such as Timaru and Petone.
Let us know who first mentioned football teams in the lower UK leagues such as Birmingham City.
In fact, you could let us know who first raised the fantasy that CWF could reduce sports players performance by “more than 10%”.
Then let us know who hasn’t been able to demonstrate significance in the tiny number of coincidences he’s been able to cherry pick among the thousands (millions?) of results available for him to peruse.
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soundhill,
FYI, affect ≠ effect.
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soundhill,
“Stuartg wants me to extend the study to all players, suggesting that any problem of fluoridation on top players should affect all players.”
Read back.
I’ve asked you to follow the scientific method:
1. Spot an oddity – done
2. Get an idea – done
3. Formulate a hypothesis – not yet achieved
4. Test the hypothesis for non-coincidence – not yet achieved
5. Present your research findings to the rest of the world – not yet achieved
6. Defend your research findings by answering the questions expected from the rest of the world – not yet achieved
You’ve gone from stage 1, where you’ve spotted an odd result, to stage 2, getting an idea. You then appear to fantasise that means you’ve achieved all the rest of the stages. Or maybe you imagine that you’ve achieved ultimate proof, definitively established cause and effect, and that you are now merely awaiting the Nobel?
In reality, you’ve managed to get stuck at the stage many non-scientist or anti-science people end up at. And you’ve even started calling your idea a “study”.
You haven’t been able to recognise logical extensions to your idea. (eg more than 10% impairment in sports performance would be immediately obvious over all sports, over all grades)
You haven’t been able to recognise when your ideas are self-contradictory. (eg you tell us that more than 10% impairment in sports performance would only be evident in the very peak grades whilst telling us you’ve observed it in lower grades)
You haven’t been able to answer valid questioning of your ideas.
You have perceived valid questions of your ideas as a personal attack.
It would appear that you are unaware that all scientists have to defend their findings and reasoning. I suggest that you look up what earning a PhD entails.
All in all, soudhill, you’re not managing the scientific method very well.
Perhaps you should follow my suggestion and attend high school classes in the subject?
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Stuartg: “Let us know who extended their fantasy to lower grade players by first mentioning lower grade rugby teams, such as Timaru and Petone.
Let us know who first mentioned football teams in the lower UK leagues such as Birmingham City.”
Timaru (Sounth Canterbury) was in Division 1 until fluoridation and producing lots of All Blacks.
Petone was in the top Wellington competition (Jubilee Cup) until the Petone Tech closed and boys had to go to school in fluoridated Hutt.
Birmingham CIty was winning against Manchester United and playing in the top competition (becoming Premier League). 8 years after fluoridation it was still playing in the top competition but not winning against Manchester United. So it was relegated.
And Stuartg claims I am comparing top teams against lower ones. Only because they become lower some time after fluoridation.
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Stuartg wrote: “You haven’t been able to recognise logical extensions to your idea. (eg more than 10% impairment in sports performance would be immediately obvious over all sports, over all grades)”
Unless the genetics and environment are different for the top players.
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Stuartg: “Then let us know who hasn’t been able to demonstrate significance in the tiny number of coincidences he’s been able to cherry pick among the thousands (millions?) of results available for him to peruse.”
Going through your list to check here’s one I have come across that does not give a correlation: Aston Villa vs Blackburn Rovers. But the p value is so high using my system that the result cannot be trusted.
While 47 clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, only six have won the title: Manchester United (13), Chelsea (4), Arsenal (3), Manchester City (2), Blackburn Rovers (1) and Leicester City (1). The current champions are Leicester City, who won the title in 2015–16. A small part of Leicester is fluoridated but I can’t find when it started.
With 10% of England fluoridated shouldn’t 10% of the winning years tend to be from fluoridated areas?
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Stuartg: “and that you are now merely awaiting the Nobel?”
No I know I make too many spelling mistakes.
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soundhill,
Good spotting of unusual results. You’ve obviously had an idea. 💡
Now it’s up to you to do something with that idea. Don’t just remain stuck there and complain no-one pays attention to your idea. Do something with the idea that’s worth someone paying attention to. Be scientific about it.
First you’ve got to formulate a hypothesis.
Then you need to test your hypothesis for non-coincidence by using fresh data. (Re-using data that was used to generate a hypothesis isn’t testing it). I’ve already pointed out how you can get such data from the ‘net.
Then publish your observations, your data and your results.
Then defend your data, thinking and results against scientists’ questioning.
At that stage you may, or may not, have demonstrated a correlation between CWF and sports performance. You want it investigated further? Then you have to demonstrate non-coincidental correlation.
Until you’ve done all of that, your appearance to the world remains that of an anti-fluoridationist living in a conspiracist fantasy world of your own imagination, one who is denying the many decades of epidemiological research that confirm the benefits and safety of optimally fluoridated water supplies.
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“Then you need to test your hypothesis for non-coincidence by using fresh data.”
How about you testing your claim that anything which affects some teams must affect all,
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Ken if it makes a difference you may have used the maximum elevations rather than the average for the states. Colorado is the highest at 6,800 ft.
Maximum elevation is only “explaining” a bit over 60% of average elevation
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soundhill,
I make no claim other than that you appear to have spotted coincidence.
You, however, claim to have observed detrimental effects (more than 10%) from CWF over multiple sports, multiple teams, multiple grades of sport, and multiple countries.
But if you’ve changed your mind and are now no longer claiming there’s an effect on all teams, all sports, all grades, all countries, then you’ll have to allow for that when you produce your hypothesis before testing it. Your idea now begins to sound very close to the default of you having spotted coincidence.
Personally, I think that you’ll be unnecessarily complicating your hypothesis if you start claiming the effect only occurs sometimes, some places, some sports, some grades: it would be like you, as an electrical technician, trying to find an rare intermittent fault on a circuit board – most of the time your testing would show nothing wrong with the board.
Now, how about you providing some evidence of this effect (more than 10%) you claim to have observed?
Bear in mind that repeating the coincidences that you’ve cherry picked to highlight your idea does not constitute providing evidence.
Form your hypothesis from your cherry picked data, then use fresh data to test that hypothesis for non-coincidence. You could even pretend to be a scientist when you use the scientific method.
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Stuartg as with the “testing” of earthquake hypotheses which you related of, new types of foundations, it may take some time for new test circumstances to occur.
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Stuartg: “Bear in mind that repeating the coincidences that you’ve cherry picked to highlight your idea does not constitute providing evidence.”
I relate them as a reminder then in discussion with you new ideas emerge that I have not seen before such as early this morning: “With 10% of England fluoridated shouldn’t 10% of the winning years tend to be from fluoridated areas?”
I find it hard to do a correlation test over all the sorts of things I noticed, but maybe someone else can become interested.
As I said I noticed unfluoridated Canterbury to be doing well. That formed my hypothesis then I started looking more widely. I don’t think myself to be seriously cherry picking.
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soundhill,
“I find it hard to do a correlation test over all the sorts of things I noticed”
Why can’t you do it? Your comments about other people’s statistical analyses imply that you are conversant with doing them yourself. Go ahead, no-one is stopping you. No data? Well, I’ve pointed out how to find sources for the new data that you need to do the testing. Why don’t you use them? Not doing the correlation testing suggests that you already know there is no correlation between sports performance and CWF.
“But maybe someone else can become interested”
Highly unlikely. After the multiple decades of epidemiological research into populations with optimally fluoridated water supplies that completely contradict your beliefs, scientists are aware that the prior probability that your observations are non-coincidental is close to zero. So why should they waste the time and energy?
But maybe you could interest some of your anti-fluoride cronies in doing the correlation studies that are evidently beyond your abilities? Or maybe they also think you’ve noticed coincidence and so can’t be bothered?
“That formed my hypothesis”
No. Hypotheses are for testing. That you haven’t tested one in – how many years now? – shows that you don’t have a hypothesis. Just fantasies.
**********
You claim to have observed detrimental effects (more than 10%) from sports people drinking optimally fluoridated water, occurring over multiple sports, over multiple teams, over multiple grades of sport, and over multiple countries. You now say you are unable to provide evidence to back that claim.
I think an applicable phrase is: put up, or shut up.
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Stuartg: “Highly unlikely. After the multiple decades of epidemiological research into populations with optimally fluoridated water supplies that completely contradict your beliefs,”
I have asked for how many studies. Let’s make it easier, which of these ranges?:
1-10
11-100
101-1,000
1,001- 10,000
Or better still give me some citations.
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Stuartg I wonder if you have ever seen cases of pellagra.
Is ir showing again with poverty or idiosyncratic diets reappearing which were extremely uncommon when you went to medical school?
Imagine yourself back in history you are seeing patients with varying degrees of dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia, death.
What sort of proof would you have wanted of a cause before treatment? Could you have encompassed the three or four symptoms into one disease or would you have had to separate them?
How is correlation done when one cause can have a number of outcomes, as you note for my fluoridation/sport picture?
And my fluoridation picture is further complicated by temperature/water consumption, modification of calcium/magnesium level and balance in water and the possibility for effects pre-conception to current with possibility for apparently delayed action.
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Stuartg you must have come across pellagra, possibly without knowing it and prescribing antidepressants, in patients on certain medications or even alcoholics.
“The classical triad of pellagra is dermatitis, diarrhea and
dementia. The symptoms do not have to appear in this order.
Early symptoms of pellagra include lassitude, weakness,
loss of appetite, mild digestive disturbances and psychiatric or emotional distress (anxiety, irritability and depression).”
Click to access 56c0990b08aeedba05647102.pdf
You will say I am diverting the topic but I say you are trying to force an oversimplified approach to studying
possible fluoridation effects.
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soundhill,
As I said: put up, or shut up.
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Brian – thanks for pointing out my mistake with the figure where I use maximum rather than mean state elevations. I have checked it out and fortunately, the mistake is only with that graph (I pulled out some information at the last minute for the graph and must have been confused). Fortunately, I have used the correct elevation figures in all the statistical analysis, etc.
I have also corrected the figures where I wrongly cited infant death rates as percent.
I guess that comes from missing my daily power nap. 🙂
Thanks again.
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Stuartg wrote: “As I said: put up, or shut up.”
How about you stop shutting up and answer my questions which help elucidate about getting an agreed framework.
Some of the time pellagra shows up as black tongue in creatures. But you can’t demand black tongue as a symptom before your treat with vitamin B3 rather than antidepressants like Prozac.
Fluoridation could have one or more of several possible synptoms in sports teams from an area. The effects could be caused by
1. quantity of water consumed by players
2. change in the balance and concentration of calcium/magnesium when the water is treated.
3. interaction with other issues such as low iodine and or COMT and MAOA gene variants which may affect drives.
4. epigenetic effects – that gene switching on or off adaptation is inherited by offspring.
5. effect of results of 1-4 above on secondary school players with a follow on result on the adult teams they may be at the top of in 8 years.
6. possible other interactions or direct effects.
So the sampling and correlation testing be not simple,
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Ken possibly to improve your analysis please note that the average dweller in a state may be in cities which are on average below or above the average elevation of the state.
That if your elevation – preterm/morbidity/morality figures be correct they impact on the assumption in the Han/Tibetan blood oxygen saturation I cited, don’t they?
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Itâs not my analysis, Brian, and I am not interested in digging deeper into searching for causes. I do not have such expertise.
I was simply showing how that the information being promoted by the FFNZ is completely wrong.
They are scaremongering.
Just as they did with the offensive email to Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter:
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Ken though when research papers are claiming that altitude reduces oxygen saturation and causes trouble and your result claims altitude reduces trouble doesn’t that clash need to be sorted?
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Not by me.
Are you attempting to divert again away from the lies being told by the FFNZ people?
That is what the article is about.
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Ken your relationship with altitude could be a coincidence just as Stuartg claims about a result of mine even though it had an excellent p value.
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Of course it could be, possibly. Correlation is never causation.
But we do know that the association with fluoridation is bogus, don’t we?
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Correlation is not causation. But the issue is that your p value of 0.002 means that there are 2 chances in a 100 that the correlation is only by chance before even thinking about causation.
My correlation at 3:05pm https://openparachute.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/fluoride-coffee-and-activist-confusion/#comment-81572
Results n=106, Rs=0.3041, t=3.26,
p (two tailed) = 0.001506
has a better p value than yours but Stuartg pointed out it could be coincidence.
You must be careful not to be tending to get people to think into circular thinking when you say, “But we do know that the association with fluoridation is bogus, don’t we?” since you are basing the bogusity claim on the correlation aren’t you?
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No I am not – did you not understand the article.
I am basing the bogus charge on the fact that there is no statistically significant correlation with percentage of fluoridation in a state. And when covariates are included the level of significance drops even further – through the floor.
Fluoridation should be the last fact to consider.
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Ken your p value of 0.592 means that your calculation cannot be relied on for its assertion of low correlation.
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What do you mean, Brian? Do you interpret such a large p value as indicating a statistically significant association? Surely not!
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Ken the p value says whether the r value (correlation) obtained is “significant.”
You haven’t given the r value you obtained. Whatever it be, high or low means little since the p value is high.
To claim a low correlation you state it and p must be<0.05 or better.
Al you have shown is that your calculation has not come up with a good enough p value to say anything.
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I am not the one saying anything – it is your mates in FFNZ claiming that fluoridation is associated with increased infant deaths.
The extremely high p value shows they are wrong when elevation is included as a covariate. Even without including any covariates their association is still not statistically significant.
There is absolutely no association between fluoridation and infant death – why try to claim there is?
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Ken: “The extremely high p value shows they are wrong when elevation is included as a covariate.”
No it just shows that the data you have put into that sort of calculation is not sufficient to make any claim and the p value is telling you.
The high p value means a correlation cannot be claimed using those figures and that method. But it cannot be ruled out.
To rule it out the calculation needs to produce a very low r
and p<0.05 or better.
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Ken you might try this, entering in say your r values you have for any relationships between say pre-term and fluoridation, pre-term and altitude, and altitude and fluoridation. I presume N will be 51 if you have data for every state. Vassarstats will do its sort of calculation and give t and two-tailed p values., holding each of the three variables controlled in turn.
http://vassarstats.net/par.html
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By putting in larger values of N it is possible to see how many states would be necessary to give significant partial correlations when the non-partial correlations are low.
Please do not confuse “significant” with notable – the magnitude of the correlation. “Significance” (the p value) only indicates whether the correlation which has been calculated can be trusted.
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soundhill,
“Fluoridation could have one or more of several possible synptoms (sic) in sports teams from an area. The effects could be caused by”
“could”? You’re not sure?
The first thing you need to do then is to actually show if an effect actually exists. If the effect is “more than 10%”, as you say, then there should be plenty of evidence for you to cite.
Why are you not able to cite evidence that the effect actually exists? Why are you unable to “put up”?
The logical answer is that you can’t provide evidence for the simple reason that CWF has no effect on sports performance.
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Brian, you are welcome to try whatever you want in your efforts to retrieve a nasty role of fluoride. The data is freely available. But I am not going to waste my time.
But there is clearly no association of preterm births with fluoridation extent – you can tell that just be eyeballing the data in the figure. Why bother attempting to revive the claim. It is clearly another lie from the FFNZ people. You are just attempting to cover that lie up with yet another diversion.
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Stuartg I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion. They are of differing scenarios. I am not all the way there yet as you aren’t when you prescribe mental health treatment without checking vitamin B3 status.
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soundhill,
“the average dweller in a state may be in cities which are on average below or above the average elevation of the state.”
Yep. Average is average.
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soundhill,
“I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion”
But you still haven’t produced any evidence that your observations are not coincidence. Until you do so the suspicion remains entirely your own fantasy.
As I said: put up, or…
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soundhill,
As Ken, along with many others, said: correlation is not causation.
You haven’t yet demonstrated correlation. But you fantasise that you’ve demonstrated causation.
You really should attend classes about the basics of science.
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soundhill,
Perhaps someone else talking about the toxicity of fluoride may help?
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Ken perhaps you should also take into account induced abortion rate. On your preterm births chart the high points would be Mississippi, Louisianna, Alabama and West Virginnia. They are in the lower half of abortion rates. So might it be expected that less viable babies are being kept as long as possible?
Those states are about half way long your altitude chart, making the line more horizontal than it would be if they were not at that point.
Induced abortion rates are negatively correlated with altitude
r -0.3638
t -2.62
N 45
P two-tailed
0.011946
so presumably positively correlated with fluoridation extent, so going by averages these four states could be further along the chart increasing the slope.
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Have you not got the message, Brian?
My article pointed out how FFNZ was using cherry picked data to lie about the relationship of infant deaths to fluoridation. I showed there is no statistically significant association – particularly when one possible covariate (which is related to fluoridation extent) is included. The weak and statistically non-significant relations they claimed is not due to fluoridation.
As for preterm births – they advanced a conspiracy theory to imply measurements have found a statistically significant relationship but this information had been suppressed. I simply showed there is no statistically significant relationship, the data is readily available and they are lying about suppression.
I have shown that yet again, FFNZ is lying and they a fiddling statistics. Yet again!
My task is complete – I have absolutely no interest in doing any of the things you suggest. You are simply trying to divert attention away from the purpose of my article and what I have shown.
That FFNZ is lying – yet again.
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And the top 3 of those states have African American percentages of MS 37.3 (2nd in US)
LA 32.4 (3rd)
AL 26.38 (7th)
and when working with all subjects you still need to be fair comparing like with like, then the line would be steeper.
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One way of lying with statistics – in epidemiology – is to leave out categories who don’t support your case, as the CDC did with MMR, Black boys and ADHD. Or to include non-equivalent group members when it suits.
Making a start to get equivalent groups I have left off Hawaii and the 10 states with about 20% or more African American population. (Actually 19.91% or above).
Then correlating preterm births against fluoridation extent I calculate from Vassarstats
number of states 40
correlation 0.3628 or fluoridation “explaining” 13% of preterm births.
t value 2.4
P
(two-tailed)
0.021401
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soundhill,
That last comment demonstrates two things you lack: knowledge of statistics and inability to question anti-fluoride propaganda.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/01/06/the-cdc-whistleblower-data-dump-redux-even-william-thompson-appears-not-to-believe-the-antivaccine-spin/
But well done for trying to divert again.
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Stuartg so you make a big thing about where Thompson saved the computer files at the time of the document destruction: “All the associated MMR-Autism Study computer files have been retained on the Immunization Safety Office computer servers since the inception of the study and they continue to reside there today.”
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Stuartg:”you lack: knowledge of statistics”
I think you to be referring to my race-based selection of subjects which then shows a result.
What protocol would you use about comparing likes with likes?
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soundhill,
I’d refer to a statistician, someone who knew more than me about the subject.
I’m aware I don’t have the knowledge to comment.
I only have two years of statistics at university so am much less qualified to talk on the subject than an electrical technician who hasn’t managed high school science.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
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soundhill,
“Thompson saved the computer files at the time of the document destruction”
Haven’t you heard? Hooker’s incompetent “re-analysis” (subsequently retracted) was of Destefano et al’s already published data. He had no need to save data files already in the public arena.
You continue to demonstrate that you are unable to question anti-fluoride doctrine.
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soundhill,
I’m curious.
Do you have an anti-fluoride catechism? One that you use for cut and paste? One that you’re not allowed to deviate from? Even when it’s been repeatedly proven wrong?
You give that impression.
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Stuartg: “He had no need to save data files already in the public arena.”
The files only remained on the computer because Thompson saved them. They are not exactly in the public arena now it is very hard to get permission to review them.
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Stuartg: “Do you have an anti-fluoride catechism? One that you use for cut and paste? One that you’re not allowed to deviate from?”
No I think things out for myself. Another example 7 or 8 years ago
http://tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2009/03/someone-please-tell-national-that.html
“At 27/4/09 3:47 pm, Blogger soundhill said…
Ian Wishart wrote:
“And memo to Bomber, the planet is currently cooling overall, not warming. Latest data, FWIW, shows Antarctica in particular has cooled by up to 0.21C since 1980.”
I would expect Antarctica to cool with global warming. Deep ocean currents bring heat to calve icebergs which then travel to latitudes where they reflect away heat which was formerly being absorbed by seawater. ”
I also sent emails to some scientists and the subject is turning up in Scientific American years later.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctica-rsquo-s-sleeping-ice-giant-could-wake-soon/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20170412
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Stuartg are you referring to this DeStefano paper?:
Click to access PediatricsDeStefanoMMRAtlanta113(2)259.pdf
They specify male and female, and race but do not give race by sex.
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soundhill,
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/01/05/the-cdc-whistleblower-documents-a-whole-lot-of-nothing-and-no-conspiracy-to-hide-an-mmr-autism-link/
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soundhill,
An earlier comment of mine was:
“I have produced many observations putting fluoridation under suspicion”
But you still haven’t produced any evidence that your observations are not coincidence. Until you do so the suspicion remains entirely your own fantasy.
As I said: put up, or…
I notice that you still haven’t shown correlation, that you still haven’t shown that your observations are not coinidental.
The obvious conclusion is that any relationship between CWF and sports performance that you noticed is pure coincidence.
Unless you show correlation, that is…
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Coincidental, not coinidental.
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soundhill,
“Stuartg are you referring to this DeStefano paper?:”
No, I refer to the complete original paper.
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Stuartg my cite was a complete paper not just an abstract. If you think there to be something more “original” dividing Blacks by sex, then please cite.
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Stuartg I have shown several correlations.
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soundhill,
You have not shown any correlations. What you have done is to mention some interesting coincidences.
Nothing you have written or cited has demonstrated non-coincidence of those observations.
I’ve pointed several ways that you can demonstrate non-coincidence of your observations, any of which could be easily used by an expert statistician.
Once you demonstrate non-coincidence, then you have correlation.
Unless you demonstrate correlation, all you have is coincidence.
But then, expert statistician that you claim to be, you already know all of that.
Failing to attempt demonstration of non-coincidence suggests that you already know there is no correlation and that your entire purpose is spreading FUD about CWF.
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soundhill,
You want the original data from Destefano et al?
Simple. Such data is never deleted as the authors may want to re-analyse when additional data becomes available. It’s still available from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/maddsp-data-sets.html
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Stuartg, from that how is anyone supposed to know what data sets are available?
And Dr Hooker says Destefano was the one who had ordered the destruction of the data and took over from Thompson and presented fraudulent data in a talk to the Institute of Medicine which Thompson had been supposed to give.
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Stuartg a correlation can be by coincidence – chance. The associated p value tells of the chance the correlation is only the result of chance.
At p=0.05 there is one chance in 20 that that correlation only happened by chance – coincidence. My p values were usually better. So my correlations are regarded as statistically significant.
You may only claim I have not demonstrated a causal connection – the same with any set of correlations.
The figures I gave for South Canterbury’s contribution to the All Blacks appears that I would get a significant negative correlation with fluoridation. That does not mean that I would get the same for other places say like Tauranga, Then I would look for other factors such as low South Canterbury iodine compared to Tauranga.
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soundhill,
Small numbers mean unreliable statistics. Even a high school student of statistics could tell you that. But then, as an electrical technician who has never done science, your skills with statistics are obviously so much greater than someone who’s actually been taught statistics.
“That does not mean that I would get the same for other places say like Tauranga” – and I’m encouraging you to do the same for places like Tauranga. Or New Plymouth. Or Southland. Or Marlborough. Or Northland… In fact, why don’t you include everywhere in the country so that you have significant numbers and can allow for confounding variables?
I’ve pointed out how you can do the same for UK football teams. I’ve pointed out how you can check secondary level NZ teams. I’ve pointed out how you can check with different sports, using different grades, both sexes, all ages.
…But you don’t do so.
I suspect that you already know that you would demonstrate coincidence and non-correlation by checking other, larger, numbers.
So, instead, you ignore the science and continue to use cherry-picked coincidences to spread FUD about CWF.
Here’s a simple challenge for you, directly related to your “observations’ and “studies”:
After over 70 years and many hundreds of millions of people enjoying the benefits of optimally fluoridated water, please cite one documented example of any physical harm to any person, or to any population, because they drank optimally fluoridated water, even for as much as a lifetime.
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Stuartg, if I do the same for Tauranga, then if the correlation for Tauranga be statistically significant, then it be worth comparing it to Timaru, if Timaru also be statistically significant.
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Stuartg perhaps an analogy will help.
If I am on holiday Is it safer to drive a car on the right or left side of the road? Say I holiday in Australia of Japan and do OK on the left in a statistically significant fashion, then you are like someone who holidayed in the USA or China who claims driving on the left be not safe for them in a statistically significant fashion. You are like saying I ought take a larger sample over more countries.
In that case there is the obvious difference where we know that the rules are different. Some countries drive on the left and some on the right. Taking the wider average does not help. If I holiday in several countries I should soon find out the two statistically significant patterns. Unless I am slow at learning and think there should be one way overall to be testing.
If my thinking ability develops I may see there may be something to do with which side of the car the steering wheel is on. Or there may be arrows on the road.
All that is so easy to see so why not for possible interactions of fluoridation with temperature, activity, amount of water drunk, in combination with other inputs, balances of minerals and sunlight/ vitamin D at various latitudes/altitudes/skin colours, other genetic types of person?
Do you see that to leave out more principles and just ask for one overall tally for fluoridation be wrong, just as it be wrong to leave out knowledge of different driving rules in various countries?
It is like you keep asking me for one example where driving on the left side of the road isn’t safe because it has been proven it works in the whole “British Commonwealth.” There may be better analogies.
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soundhill,
Do go on…
Everyone is noting how you are unable to provide any evidence that people or individuals have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in more than seventy years.
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soundhill,
“perhaps an analogy will help”
No. Evidence would help your argument. If you have any.
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Stuartg please define “optimally fluoridated water.”
Are you going to give me the 1990 version or what?
Why has the definition changed? If no harm then no need for change.
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soundhill,
Unable to answer the question?
You can use today’s definition, or that of 70 years ago, or any intervening, as long as you justify your choice.
Everyone is still noting how you are unable to provide any evidence that populations or individuals have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years, even over entire lifetimes.
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soundhill,
Evidence would really help your argument.
But you still haven’t produced any.
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soundhill,
If you have difficulty in deciding what an optimal level of CWF is, you could always use the level from somewhere that democratically chose to continue CWF.
Perhaps the level in Ken’s home, Hamilton?
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Stuartg: “As I said: put up, or…”
Do you only accept overt symptoms?
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Stuartg do you have to see bandy legs in a child before you prescribe vitamin D? (By which time it be too late of course)
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Stuartg how large does a patient’s thyroid have to be before you are prepared to send them for a thyroid test? Don’t you think it be more fair to be awake to earlier signs?
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Stuartg: “I suspect that you already know that you would demonstrate coincidence and non-correlation by checking other, larger, numbers.”
I have shown correlation figures and their associated p values which demonstrate statistical significance at much better than what may be accepted in many studies.
What level of p value do you demand?
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Stuartg: “If you have difficulty in deciding what an optimal level of CWF is, you could always use the level from somewhere that democratically chose to continue CWF.
Perhaps the level in Ken’s home, Hamilton?”
In other words, not answering my question but proclaiming: “Obey me! Abracadabra you shall forget history.”
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It should be obvious that my references to overt symptoms, bandy legs and enlarged thyroid are follow-ons to earlier indications that could have been dealt with to prevent the eventual aggravated conditions. And that I maintain such matters as correlations between fluoridation and poorer community sports performance ought to be noted and acted upon before overt symptoms in individuals appear.
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soundhill,
We can still see that you are unable to cite any evidence that individuals or populations have been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years since CWF was started.
Even when you are allowed to define “optimally” and “harm” yourself, provided you also justify your definition, you are still unable to cite evidence.
What next? Do you need someone else to define the terms “water”, “drinking”, “fluoridated”, “seventy”, or “years” for you?
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soundhill,
You may have shown “correlation figures”, but you have not yet shown correlation or non-coincidence.
But then, could we expect an electrical technician with no secondary education in science to understand that? Maybe not, especially when the Dunning-Kruger effect is so strong.
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Stuartg: “You may have shown “correlation figures”, but you have not yet shown correlation or non-coincidence.”
The likelihood of “coincidence,” or the calculated correlation value happening by chance is given by the p value. At p=0.05 it is a 1 in 20 chance, which is accepted in many studies as a statistically significant correlation.
What p value limit do you require?
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Stuartg: “What next? Do you need someone else to define the terms “water”, “drinking”, “fluoridated”, “seventy”, or “years” for you?”
The point is that “optimally fluoridated,” has changed from meaning a range: 0.7 – 1.2 mg/l to meaning only 0.7 mg/l in USA and NZ may be catching up.
The story goes mild dental fluorosis is not an illness in fact it be good for you. But because it is increasing a little with better tooth brushing with fluoridated toothpaste the level put into water is going to be decreased. You weren’t being harmed it has been good for you but we’re going to decrease fluoridation level because of that increase in that good effect.
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“That good effect in which fluoride was damaging the cells which form tooth enamel causing the enamel to get develop with white opacities.”
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soundhill,
…And the point is that even though you are able to specify your own level for optimal fluoridation, provided you justify that level, you still have been unable to cite an individual or a population that has been harmed by drinking such optimally fluoridated water, even for over seventy years consumption.
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And though fluoridation plus toothpaste was damaging the cells which form your tooth enamel especially in some people, and so causing the white opacities on the teeth, we don’t know if it be genetic and we don’t think it to be damaging anything else.
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Stuartg: “you still have been unable to cite an individual or a population that has been harmed by drinking such optimally fluoridated water”
I have cited populations it is just that you have a mind set that illness has to be really bad before you accept it. Bad like too late to do anything much except arrange extra carers.
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soundhill,
You have the option to define “harm”, as long as you are able to justify your definition.
You have the option to define the level of fluoride at which “optimal fluoridation” occurs. Again, you have to be able to justify your definition.
Now, given your ability to set those definitions, could you please explain to us why you are unable to cite any documentation of harm that has occurred to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water over at least the past seventy years?
Of course, the default answer, the obvious answer, is that in more than seventy years of study epidemiologists have never found any harm to individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Your inability to cite evidence to the contrary is merely supporting the epidemiologist finding of no harm.
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Stuartg: “You have the option to define “harm”, as long as you are able to justify your definition.”
Why not reduced community rugby performance?
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Stuartg: “You have the option to define the level of fluoride at which “optimal fluoridation” occurs. Again, you have to be able to justify your definition.”
The accepted level for that community at that time.
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Stuartg: “could you please explain to us why you are unable to cite any documentation of harm”
The discussion on this group could lead to eventual publication by me or others. Until then no citation of published work can be produced.
You appear to try to be convincing readers that since nothing has been peer reviewed yet that it never can be. Funny, by your logic we would never see any new discoveries.
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soundhill,
You believe that harm is/has been produced by CWF. At least, that’s what you tell us.
So why is it that you cannot cite any documents that support your beliefs? Unless there is no evidence out there?
After all, CWF has been used by millions of people for more than seven decades now. Hundreds, if not thousands, of epidemiologist have been studying those communities, searching for harm. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental departments have been monitoring those communities – and most, if not all, of their monitoring data has been published online.
And yet you are still unable to cite any published documents that support your beliefs.
Maybe those unsubstantiated beliefs are better called fantasies?
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Stuartg: “You believe that harm is/has been produced by CWF. At least, that’s what you tell us.”
Reduced community football performance for one thing
“So why is it that you cannot cite any documents that support your beliefs? Unless there is no evidence out there?”
Documents have to be written before they can be cited.
“After all, CWF has been used by millions of people for more than seven decades now. Hundreds, if not thousands, of epidemiologist have been studying those communities, searching for harm. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental departments have been monitoring those communities – and most, if not all, of their monitoring data has been published online.”
How about 100 cites then? I doubrt they be what you imply.
“And yet you are still unable to cite any published documents that support your beliefs.”
It always has to start somewhere.
“Maybe those unsubstantiated beliefs are better called fantasies?”
Everything starts as a fantasy.
You brought up the factor of trading of players between teams. I think it would work against my observations as players move from fluoridated to non-fluoridated areas or vice versa, not reinforce them. That will be something to eventually publish then people will be able to cite it.
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Stuartg cited: “Now, at this point, inevitably lots of people are going to get offended and respond with something to the effect of, “I’m not anti-science, but…I disagree with the way that science is being done, I think that massive corporations are buying off scientists, I have anecdotes that don’t match the science, scientists have been wrong in the past, scientists are close-minded, etc.,” but those aren’t valid responses and by using them you are standing in opposition to science, which makes you, by definition, anti-science.”
Give a verification for that, please.
You are not standing in opposition to science you are doing what science demands – challenge.
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Continuing, one thing we are led to believe is science, that is vaccines, is actually just a business venture.
The vaccine manufacturers don’t even have need to work for safety since unlike most health areas they are absolved from any liability.
Dr Hooker: “There is no inertia and there is no impetus for the CDC or the vaccine manufacturers to
make safe vaccines. They know that vaccines are block-buster business. Many employees
at the CDC end up in industry. Case in point Dr. Julie Gerberding, who was the director of
the CDC from 2001 until 2008, took a very lucrative position as the head of the vaccine
division in Merck in 2009. She was given stock options in the millions for that particular
position so she overnight became a millionaire. There have been other employees that
have gone on to lucrative positions. There’s actually a revolving door between the CDC
and the vaccine industry.
Dr. Thompson himself came from Merck. He worked at Merck before he worked at the
CDC. Dr. Frank DiStefano who is the current head of the immunization safety office at
the CDC actually left the CDC, went into industry and then came back to the CDC.”
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soudhill,
OK, I understand what you’re saying. I suspect that so does everyone else.
You fantasise that drinking optimally fluoridated water impairs sports performance. By about 10%, you said, which would reduce professional or Olympic grade athletes to about high school level.
Absolutely no epidemiologists have ever noted that drop in performance, even though they’ve been actively searching for something like this for over seventy years. Neither have sports scientists – and they look for fractions of a percentage improvement or impairment.
The truth is that you’ve observed some minor sporting coincidences, none of which have been duplicated elsewhere, and you now believe that with those coincidences you have proved harm occurs from CWF.
Go ahead, write it up. Don’t forget to mention that you have no references to cite and that the entire thing depends on those coincidences you’ve observed.
Even your anti-fluoride cronies will recognise it as fantasy.
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soundhill,
All your comments up to date show you agree with the scientific maxim that the dose makes the poison; the higher the amount of fluoride ingested, the greater the degree of fluorosis on teeth and the greater degree of other effects.
That maxim means that any effect of fluoride on sports performance is not going to be an on/off effect. It would be expected to be greater with increased fluoride intake, just as happens with other effects.
The effect would be most evident in areas with high levels of fluoride in the water, exactly like the increased level of fluorosis in those areas.
We can find such areas around the world: China, India, parts of the USA, many areas in Africa, areas in South America, areas of the Middle East, several of the ‘Stans, parts of Australia.
How come no epidemiologists in those areas have noted a massive (“greater than 10%”, remember?) impairment of sporting performance from fluoride? Not even Chinese researchers, those that you have so frequently cited in the past for their dubious recognition of effects of high water fluoride, managed to observe the massive changes in sporting performance that you claim occur.
Thousands of scientists, working worldwide, haven’t been able to detect an effect of CWF on sporting performance, in over seventy years of searching, even though they were actively searching for such things.
Or what if the effect was not dose dependent, but instead it actually was an on/off effect, with optimally fluoridated water capable of triggering your claimed 10% impairment of sporting performance? 10% impairment would mean that NZ would not have any international level athletes from Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Dunedin… Indeed, there would not be any international level athletes from any areas of the world with CWF or higher water fluoride.
We can readily see that’s not the case by looking at the sporting pages of most newspapers. Why look at p values when even The Press contradicts the idea of an on/off effect?
p values (sigh!) You claim Birmingham City results to be statistically significant, p=0.05 for significance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_England.
Birmingham City is just one club in the top 27 leagues in England. Each league has about 20 clubs, some more. Each club has several teams. And you’ve noticed an effect on just one team from a list of well over 500 clubs? There should be many more teams with similar records, purely by coincidence. (Back of the envelope calculation: over 2,500 teams, so we should be able to identify similar records in over 120 teams)
You have failed to identify a simple coincidence; instead you used that coincidence to reinforce your own beliefs, fantasising that you had identified cause and effect.
Your logical reasoning is highly flawed, soundhill. Maybe if you had taken secondary school classes in science it would be better? Maybe you would understand statistics enough to recognise your lack of knowledge in the area? Maybe you would be able to identify coincidence?
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Stuartg: “Not even Chinese researchers, those that you have so frequently cited in the past for their dubious recognition of effects of high water fluoride, managed to observe the massive changes in sporting performance that you claim occur.”
Tibet has to compete under the Chinese flag in the Olympics. Out of its over 3 million people it has only ever achieved one medal: a bronze in a women’s walk in 2012. Compare to New Zealand which achieved 18 for 4.5 million people last year. Tibetans drink a lot of brick tea which is high in fluoride.
China with 1.7B people came 76th in the number of population per medal (70 total medals.)
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soundhill,
Yet again you cherry pick. Didn’t you notice that China has multiple high fluoride areas, not just Tibet, yet continues to gain multiple gold medals? So does the USA. And Australia. And African countries. And even NZ, with its areas of CWF, still manages to gain gold medals at the Olympics.
And, hadn’t you noticed, your idea of “more than 10%” impairment in sports performance from CWF (or even high fluoride area) implies that no-one from Tibet would even qualify for the Olympics? Someone from Tibet winning a gold medal at the Olympics implicitly suggests that your idea is wrong.
And, yet again, I will point out that you are still unable to cite any published evidence that any individual or population has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years during which such harm has been sought.
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Stuartg: “And, hadn’t you noticed, your idea of “more than 10%” impairment in sports performance from CWF (or even high fluoride area) implies that no-one from Tibet would even qualify for the Olympics?”
It is that the correlation offers 10% and in the case of Aston Villa 5%, if I remember, explanation for the order of wins related to fluoridation plus 8 years. It does not mean take the percent off the score. Sorry I let you say it a few times before commenting.
So to comment on your other Olympic comments take a look overall at the Olympics.
http://fluoridealert.org/content/bfs-2012/ gives the percent of a country which is fluoridated. If not shown I have assigned 0.
http://www.medalspercapita.com gives the number of Olympic medals per capita.
86 countries are shown. For ones on the fluoridation list but not on the medals list such as SIngapore (100% fluoridation) I have assigned rank 87.
Using Vassarstats rank correlation I get those further down the rank are correlated to greater percent fluoridation of the countries.
95 values entered.
rank correlation 0.2382 and squaring that gives 5.7% explanation.
t value 2.36
P one-tailed
0.0101825
two-tailed
0.020365
whether you think this to be one or two-tailed.
Check it for me please.
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And please note if I were working with fluoride in the water the correlation may be greater. That be because countries like China with 0 fluoridation actually have quite a lot of natural fluoride. Its low medal ranking would then be associated with more fluoride not zero as for its fluoridation.
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Please note I work with rank correlations, that is comparing the 1st 2nd 3rd …&c. largest variables in each set. So my correlations relate to position on the list, not the scores.
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soundhill,
You still have not cited any published evidence to demonstrate that drinking optimally fluoridated water has caused harm to individuals or populations for more than seventy years, in spite of millions of people benefiting from CWF.
Some actual evidence from you may benefit your claim.
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Stuartg just because evidence is published does not mean it to be infallible. See Retraction Watch.
And the lack of publication is not infallible either. Have you heard of publication bias?
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soundhill,
I never interpreted your claim of “more than 10%” sports impairment by CWF as “take the percent off the score.” (Except maybe in your imagination?)
I interpreted it to mean what you typed, that CWF impairs sports performance by “more than 10%”. After all, if that’s not what you meant, then why did you bother to type it?
You have previously claimed that what you typed is not what you meant, and so I then advised that you should review your typing before hitting “Post.” Obviously you didn’t bother to take that advice, either.
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soundhill,
So what made you decide that, among all the people in the world, you are the only one whose claims do not require any evidential support?
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soundhill,
Claims without evidence are known as fantasies.
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soundhill,
I note that at least one paper you cite (on a topic other than CWF) has had the distinction of appearing on Retraction Watch.
But you still appear to treat it as infallible gospel.
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Stuartg: “I note that at least one paper you cite (on a topic other than CWF) has had the distinction of appearing on Retraction Watch.”
The paper by Seralini et al was retracted by Food and Chemical Toxicology after a Monsanto employee came on to the board of the journal and a story was made up that Seralini had not used enough rats for a cancer study but it was not a cancer study. It was a toxicology study and used same number and type of rats as Monsanto. Unlike the Monsanto study it did not stop at 3 months. Since then several authorities are classifying glyphoste as a cancer promoting possibility. Seralini was only reporting tumours as is proper protocol if they occur.
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Stuartg: “So what made you decide that, among all the people in the world, you are the only one whose claims do not require any evidential support?”
I am not making claims I am pointing out possible connections. I am working with published sports data.
If everyone has to work with cited research data then new discoveries could not show up.
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Stuartg:”I interpreted it to mean what you typed, that CWF impairs sports performance by “more than 10%”. After all, if that’s not what you meant, then why did you bother to type it?”
I can’t find the original statement but here’s what I said to David Gierstien:
“Using the Manchester United vs Birmingham City football results – 106 games starting 19th century I have given Manchester United 1 for a win 0 for a draw and -1 for a loss.
Starting from 1979, 8 years after fluoridation stated in Birmingham City, Manchester United had no more losses against them. I assert that Birmingham City players were harmed by fluoridation.
Using 0 for the years up to 1978 and 1 for the years from then on I have used Vassarstats to do a rank correlation.
Results n=106, Rs=0.3041, t=3.26,
p (two tailed) = 0.001506.
Correlation is not causation, however in this case the chance is 15 parts per 10,000 that it is only chance that fluoridation after a short delay “explains” over 9% of the results.”
Have you converted 9 to 10 Stuartg? Not that that amount is important just that you seem to be bending things then being so sure about your bent results. Sorry I let you go on so long with the “10%.” If I did say it I apologize and how about you refer me to the place.
There is no claim there that fluoridation has affected the results. It is stating results and a calculation to think about. Note “explains” I put in in inverted commas. It is a common use of the word, isn’t it, for statistical connection and does not mean actual causation?
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soundhill,
I didn’t recall the Seralini paper. That makes at least three retracted papers that you continue to cite.
“More than 10%” – note the quotation marks I use when quoting you directly.
“I am not making claims” – in that case, why are you attempting to use statistics to back up your non-claims?
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soundhill,
Let’s summarise.
You’ve observed some interesting results in multiple sports in multiple countries.
You haven’t investigated them further, for instance by looking to see if the results extend to other, similar teams.
That’s commonly known as cherry picking.
You have then directly related those interesting observations to the presence or absence of CWF at various stages in the life of the players.
You have not considered other causes, including coincidence.
You have attempted some statistics without actually identifying the complete population you need to work with, making your results irrelevant.
Based on your cherry picking and inappropriate statistics, you then claim that CWF causes harm to populations: “Reduced community football performance for one thing” – yes, that’s a claim made by “I am not making claims” soundhill.
Another claim you make is “more than 10%” impairment of sporting performance.
And all of this without being able to cite a single shred of evidence.
CWF has been in use for over seventy years. Millions of people drinking CWF have been extensively studied by epidemiologists and both local and national governmental organisations for those seventy plus years. Many of their results and studies are freely available.
And, amongst all that evidence, you have been unable to find anything to support your claims.
That alone is a pretty good refutation of your claims.
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Stuartg: “WOW! More than 10% impairment in sports performance is attributable to CWF! That amount of impairment is really noticeable:
About 1 second in the 100 metres
About 23 seconds in the 1500 metres
…”
Then please explain what you said:
“I never interpreted your claim of “more than 10%” sports impairment by CWF as “take the percent off the score.””
I have been talking about ranks.
I see you quoted me about the 10% before:
““(The reference) says 10% which does not explain the differences I believe may be related to fluoridation.””
[I am not sure if you or I wrote “(the reference)” which is by the way]
but it is not what you say: ““More than 10%” – note the quotation marks I use when quoting you directly.”
What I was saying was that you had said it had been said the colour of the gear could produce a 10% improvement. I thought you were serious, and I said I thought (believed) fluoridation to have more effect than that, yes. But when I calculated the correlation from the Birminghan Manchester United results it only came out to just over 9% – obtained by squaring the correlation I obtained.
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Stuartg: “I didn’t recall the Seralini paper. That makes at least three retracted papers that you continue to cite.”
Please cite again.
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Stuartg, I am not making claims I am pointing out statistically significant correlations in certain groups from certain geographical areas.
You have wanted me to look wider which I believe my Olympics medals rate and percent fluoridation does.
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Stuartg: ““I am not making claims” – in that case, why are you attempting to use statistics to back up your non-claims?”
You are the one making a claim – fluoridation to be safe. I have not made a claim that it isn’t – I have only presented statistically significant correlations which caste doubt and which need to be investigated carefully, not just write them off as many coincidences.
Ken investigates – he introduces new possible “causes” (statistically thinking.) then does multiple regressions and finds no statistically signficant result in the controlled situation. That does not prove no connection. A statistically significant near-zero correlation be required for that. Also Ken ought to try to compare similar populations across USA. Some of the states have very different African American population proportions, and we know from Thompson of the CDC that their young males can relate differently in some matters, for example MMR- autism.
It be no use the way you did, Stuartg, giving the anecdotes about a few fluoridated countries and their Olympic successes. Well it would be if it led to better correlating.
Come on science!
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soundhill,
I’ve told you this before, several times, but it bears repeating.
One of the first rules of statistics is that you do not use the data used to generate an idea or hypothesis to then test the hypothesis. After all, you already know the outcome and are just duplicating your own work.
To test an idea or hypothesis you need to generate a completely new set of data and do the statistical analysis on the new data.
I’ve pointed out several ways to get new data to test your ideas but you have completely ignored my suggestions.
Because you’ve never sought out new data (possibly because it disproves your ideas?), we can completely ignore any statistical work you have done on the original, idea generating, observations.
But then you would already know that if you had bothered to learn science at secondary school level.
You give a brilliant example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action, believing you have an advanced knowledge in a subject because you don’t actually understand the basics.
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Stuartg don’t you think the Olympics data to be new?
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“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is.”
No Stuartg, I always express a level of uncertainty, sometimes quantified as a p value in a particular set of circumstances.
I am working with new ideas, which have to enter into science somehow. I seems to be rather your high-handed “we can only take proven publications into account,” to be Dunning Kruger.
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Should be “It seems to be.”
And Stuartg like Unison Network wanting to tax solar power you come under suspicion of trying to suppress new stuff.
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soundhill,
“don’t you think the Olympics data to be new?”
No. Just another idea created by an entirely unrelated set of data.
To test an idea, the new set of data actually has to be related to the original idea:
To test an idea about team captains, you need data about the captains of other teams.
To test an idea about UK football team results, you need data from the results of other UK football teams.
To test an idea about second grade rugby teams, you need data from other second grade rugby teams.
Yet you appear to be trying to test an idea about rugby team captains by using data from the Olympic games. And it’s not even data from Olympic rugby games!
And yet you can’t understand what’s wrong with your “study”.
So why is it that you think you’re an expert at statistics?
As I said previously, you provide a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
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soundhill,
You would get better reception for your “new stuff” if you actually had some evidence to support it.
You now accuse me of “trying to suppress new stuff” when I’m asking you to supply evidence in support of your “new stuff.”
When you prove you can’t provide the evidence, I’m giving you advice on how to actually obtain such evidence.
Exactly how is that suppressing you?
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soundhill,
…Or is accusing me of “trying to suppress new stuff” another claim that you’re not making?
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You now accuse me of “trying to suppress new stuff” when I’m asking you to supply evidence in support of your “new stuff.”
You appear not to listen unless it already be published evidence.
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Any already published is old, not new.
Stuartg has been saying put up published evidence or shut up. What is that if not intended to discourage the new as yet unpublished material from being discussed?
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soundhill,
Of course I’m asking for published evidence.
Tell us exactly how, if evidence has not been published, anyone is expected to evaluate it? How can it even be called evidence?
Evidence: “that which is seen”
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soundhill,
You want me to cite retracted papers you keep referring to? Hardly.
Some names: Seralini. Hooker. Wakefield.
Is that enough?
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“What is that if not intended to discourage the new as yet unpublished material from being discussed?”(sic)
Soundhill, explain exactly how you expect unpublished material to be discussed.
Or maybe I could “suppress” you further by encouraging you to publish your observations and subsequent “studies”, along with the claims you’re not making, so that we can see the data, the data analysis, the results of the analysis and your interpretation of them, any claims that you’re not making, and open all of that for discussion.
After all, if there is any evidence to support the claims you aren’t making then shouldn’t it be released to the world rather than remaining hidden inside a single persons’ brain?
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soundhill,
I see that you are still unable to cite evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water has resulted in harm to any individual or population in the more than seventy years that CWF has been around.
After all, there’s been more than seventy years of epidemiologists actively searching for any harm. More than seventy years of local and national governmental agencies publishing data about those populations.
But up to now, your silence makes it appear that you haven’t found even one citation to support your “I am not making claims” claim.
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Stuartg: “But up to now, your silence makes it appear that you haven’t found even one citation to support your “I am not making claims” claim.”
I am dealing with as yet unpublished, maybe never to published, things I have observed, and stating appropriate caution and p values where i have done correlations. They are things for discussion, not claims.
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Stuartg: “Soundhill, explain exactly how you expect unpublished material to be discussed.”
On groups like this.
Such as I cited from Tumeke and perhaps also sci.geo.oceanography I think about mechanisms of polar ice and temperature, some of which has now appeared in Nature to some extent.
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Tell me, Brian, why you donât submit such âthings for discussion, not claimsâ to FFNZ blogs, websites or Facebook pages?
You might get a more sympathetic hearing there than you are going to get here where we recognise your bias and eccentricity.
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Ken I am not looking for sympathetic hearing.
FFNZ Facebook page is complex as it has in it a lot of material easy to contradict, and I wonder if some of it has posted there with that purpose.
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soundhill,
“FFNZ Facebook page is…easy to contradict”
And so are your “I am not making claims” claims. The more so because you are unable to cite any evidence supporting them, even with more than seventy years of published research into the topic.
Since you seem to be keen on discussing things that have never been published, please discuss why seventy years of epidemiological research have been unable to demonstrate any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, resulting in no publications being able to support your “I am not making claims” claim of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water?
Bear in mind that, since you ask others to cite evidence supporting their viewpoint, the same is expected of you.
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Stuartg: “Bear in mind that, since you ask others to cite evidence supporting their viewpoint, the same is expected of you.”
I have presented figures which indicate not enough research has been done. Let’s see yours to criticise it, especially for lack of looking at genetic types and other factors such as iodine intake.
Do you have an opinion on whether quality of sleep ,may affect athletic performance?
The pineal gland is close to the blood stream and so able to uptake fluoride. Where is your research which says all genetics types are safe and none will suffer early menarche and or poorer sleep from impaired pineal melatonin or other hormone production?
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soundhill,
I note that, in spite of your claim of wanting to discuss unpublished data, you are not willing to discuss the dearth of data showing harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even though there’s more than seventy years of research data that has been unable to show harm.
You also seem to be going on to a Gish Gallop in an attempt to divert from your inability to demonstrate harm from CWF. That’s being kind: sleep, menarche, pineal gland, blood supply, iodine and genetics in one comment are probably better described as flight of ideas.
You appear to be more concerned about imaginary unpublished “studies” (for want of a better word) than about what science actually shows us about the real world.
If you are complaining that no-one has done the studies, then nothing prevents you from doing them yourself. (Apart from maybe the lack of knowledge about high school science and statistics, lack of grounding in research methods from university bachelors, masters and doctorates, lack of decades of research work and experience in the field…)
“I have presented figures which indicate not enough research has been done” Have you? Please cite your publication.
CWF has been place for more than seventy years. Epidemiological research into CWF has been continuing and being published for all that time. Local and governmental organisations have been monitoring and publishing about those populations for all that time. Millions of people have been documented as benefiting from CWF over that time.
Yet from amongst that flood of research and evidence you are unable to cite anything that documents harm in an individual or population from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even for entire lifetimes.
You make “I am not making claims” claims that CWF effects IQ, thyroid function, sports performance, (and now menarche, pineal function, sleep and genetics?).
Well, if any of those things happen in the real world, you have more than seventy years of research and data, involving populations of millions of people, that will be capable of demonstrating just those effects.
That’s why it is so telling that you are unable to cite anything that documents harm in an individual or population that has resulted from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Seventy years of research. No harm shown. It’s highly improbable that any harm results from CWF.
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Stuartg: “CWF has been place for more than seventy years. Epidemiological research into CWF has been continuing and being published for all that time. ”
Show me one that has followed up on Lin FF et al low iodine interaction. Or else there must be publication bias or bias on what research is approved for funding.
Show me the followups on COMT variants.
Show me the followup division of early menarche related to fluoridation studies divided by genetic types.
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If I ask for funding for a study and Stuartg is on the approvals panel it is likely I would be told, there is no evidence of that therefore we will not fund it. So new evidence is being suppressed. Same for other people, possibly.
Drug companies do not publish so many negative studies. And governments want to fund things to prove their policy.
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soundhill,
I believe that I asked you to cite evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that harm has been caused to either individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water in the millions of people who have had documented benefits.
For instance: show that there has been an effect on menarche from CWF that actually requires further research. Why do the research if there’s no effect to study?
For instance: Lin et al studied high fluoride areas. Show that the same effect (which can also be termed “harm”) is present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies. If the effect is not present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies, then why does Lin et al have to be followed up? The most generous interpretation of their paper is that fluoride levels in those areas need to be reduced to the optimum level.
So, where is your cited evidence that anyone has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years it has been supplied to the millions of people who have documented benefits?
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soundhill,
I’m not on any approval panel.
But if I were, anyone who could cite evidence of harm to individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water would get my support.
There’s more than seventy years of data out there, not all of which has been included in the published research. If there is any documentation of harm in that data, I would want to know a lot more and would support more research – after all, that’s how science works (or weren’t you aware?)
Or you could bear in mind that large amounts of research are published for which the author(s) did not request or require funding. I would suspect that online data mining of public databases from local and national governmental agencies and comparing whether CWF was present or not, such as I’ve previously suggested that you do, does not require much, if any, funding to support. A few hours on the ‘net and you’d have your data ready for statistical analysis. How much funding support does that require?
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soundhill,
Many years ago there was a comedy song “My boomerang won’t come back”, about a little aboriginal boy full of misery. The culminating line of the song was “first, you’ve got to throw it!”
You’re like that miserable little boy in that you’re complaining that no-one is discussing or paying attention to your data. In your case the culminating line is “first, you’ve got to show us!”
Humans have not evolved the ability to directly extract data by mind reading. That’s why we use the medium of written language to convey ideas and data between each other. You seem to have missed out on learning that point, instead expecting others to be able to discuss ideas and data that exist only in your head.
I encourage you to publish your ideas, data, analyses and references so that people other than just yourself are able to discuss them.
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Stuartg: “In your case the culminating line is “first, you’ve got to show us!”
“I would suspect that online data mining of public databases from local and national governmental agencies and comparing whether CWF was present or not,”
but not from sports bodies? For that’s really what I have been doing.
Anyway you now seem to be being less demanding about it being already published research.
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soundhill,
So, are you actually going to cite any evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claims about CWF?
Or just carry on whining that, because you don’t cite any supporting evidence, no-one wants to discuss your evidence-free fantasies?
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soundhill,
In case you hadn’t noticed, sports results are also available on the ‘net.
I’ve even pointed you to them and how to use them when you asked in another thread.
Just because someone uses a single example does not mean that example cannot be expanded upon.
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soundhill,
“You now seem to be being less demanding about it being already published research”
You want to discuss data, ideas and hypotheses that have not yet been published?
Fine. Tell us exactly how you fantasise that anyone can partake in a discussion without the subject of the discussion having been published.
Then you can cite the evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused harm to individuals or populations in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
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Stuartg: “Fine. Tell us exactly how you fantasise that anyone can partake in a discussion without the subject of the discussion having been published.”
When they are interested in helping to check out or formulate new ideas with a view to building towards an excellent publication.
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Sruartg: “Then you can cite the evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused harm to individuals or populations in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.”
My claim is that my annoying statistically significant localised correlations be noted.
“For instance: Lin et al studied high fluoride areas. Show that the same effect (which can also be termed “harm”) is present in areas with optimally fluoridated water supplies.”
Their words “high fluoride” and “low fluoride” were just distinguishing their two groupings. Their “high” was like optimally fluoridated water.
Click to access fa-fu-et-al-1980-low-iodine-and-high-fluoride-environment-to-subclinical-cretinism-ln-xinjiang-term-effects-of-theiodine-slow-re.pdf
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soundhill,
“When they are interested in helping to check out or formulate new ideas with a view to building towards an excellent publication”
That sounds like authors writing an article for publication.
How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?
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soundhill,
CWF has been used for more than seventy years.
Millions of people have received the documented benefits of CWF.
Investigation of fluoride in water began prior to introduction of CWF.
Epidemiologist have monitored the populations and individuals with CWF for more than seventy years so far.
Epidemiologists continue to monitor those populations.
National governments release population data for those areas with/without CWF.
Local governments release population data from those areas with/without CWF.
Many other agencies release data about populations with/without CWF.
In more than seventy years of research and data analysis, no-one has been able to demonstrate any harm, to individuals or to populations, from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
What do you think is the most likely reason that drinking optimally fluoridated water has never been shown to cause harm? People with an understanding of science or logic would consider it’s because optimally fluoridated water does not cause harm.
But not you?
You argue that CWF causes reduction in IQ because of some poor quality studies from high fluoride areas. Well, you’ve got more than seventy years of data from both fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, data from tens of millions of people, and more than seventy years of examination results from those same areas as a marker for IQ. Show us that there’s an effect of CWF on IQ in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue (I think – do you intentionally stay vague?) that CWF prevents people from captaining international sports teams by cherry picking a coincidence from the All Blacks. Well, it should be easy enough to demonstrate that’s not a cherry picked coincidental result. Look at the captains of other international sports teams – All Whites, Tall Blacks, Silver Ferns, Wallabies, FIFA teams, etc, etc. Show us that there’s an effect from CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue that there’s an impairment in sporting ability caused by CWF by cherry picking some coincidental results from an individual rugby team in the Wellington area. Well, it should be easy enough to demonstrate whether this is coincidental or not. There are many other rugby teams from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. Their results are freely available on the ‘net. How do their results compare? Show us that there’s an effect from CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue that there’s an impairment in sporting ability caused by CWF in the UK football leagues. You’ve again cherry picked a set of coincidental results, this time from two teams that play in different leagues because they have different skill levels. You claim that the, not unsurprising, result of the team in the higher league winning more games is because the lower league team drinks CWF. Well, there are many other pairs of fluoridated and non-fluoridated clubs out there, in many countries, some of them even playing in the same league. Their results are all on the ‘net. Use those other results to show us you haven’t just cherry picked a coincidental set of results. Show us that there’s a harmful effect of CWF in the real world, not just in your imagination.
You argue something about thyroid function and CWF. Again on the basis of very poor quality studies (has there ever been a negative study out of China?) Well, population health and diagnoses are available for both CWF and non-CWF areas on the ‘net. Even from outside of china. Why not look up incidences of thyroid disease in those areas and compare? Or you could compare use of thyroid medication between CWF and non-CWF areas. Show us that there’s an effect of CWF on thyroid metabolism in the real world, not just in your imagination.
I could go on, but you, and others, should get the picture.
Imagination is a great thing, but when it comes to discussions about the real world, evidence is of huge benefit.
You imagine great harm from CWF. You even manage to cherry pick a few coincidences. But you have not managed to produce or cite any evidence to support your imagination.
In the real world there has been more than seventy years of ongoing epidemiological and other research into populations drinking optimally fluoridated water. None of that research has found any harm.
Against that there’s a single person with a scattering of cherry picked results who cannot demonstrate that those results are not coincidental.
Please discuss.
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Stuartg: “You argue that CWF causes reduction in IQ because of some poor quality studies from high fluoride areas.”
In true political fashion Stuartg repeats assertions over and over in the hope it will be believed which they often are.
People who have taken the time to read the Lin Fa Fu study note their “high fluoride” level was 0.88 mg/L, which is like NZ’s optimally fluoridated water.:
“Area with high fluoride and low iodine levels (Area A) – ln
the township Xinyuan in the lower reaches of Kliya river in the county of Yutian, north of the highway, we examined 250 schoolchildren, aged 7-14 years. The goiter prevalence was 91 % and dental fluorosis 20.80%. The average level of iodine in drinking water was 5.21 micrograms per litre, and that of fluoride 0.88 milligrams per litre.”
The “low fluoride” level was 0.34 milligrams per litre, some 50% more than the Waikato River before fluoridation for Hamilton:
“Area with low iodine level (area B) – ln the townships of
Langan and Jiayi in the alluvial plain before the mountains and to the south of the highway, we examined 256 schoolchildren, aged 7-14 years. The goiter prevalence was 82% and dental fluorosis of 16.00%. The average water iodine level was 0.96 mcg/L and that of fluoride 0.34 mg/L.
Ken has maintained the Lin FF article to be in a ‘news’ publication. A translation of it was in “Iodine Deficiency Disease News.” But as I have said before the original was in the “Endemic Disease Bulletin.”
http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-DFBT199102016.htm
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Stuartg: “How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?”
On blogs.
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Stuartg: “You argue (I think – do you intentionally stay vague?) that CWF prevents people from captaining international sports teams by cherry picking a coincidence from the All Blacks.”
I point out that Auckland being NZ’s largest city and mainly fluoridated with some 30% of our inhabitants it should be statistically likely for a good proportion of our All Black captains to be born there. Indeed that was the case until 1966 and fluoridation. Since then not one has been born there, which is statistically unlikely out of the 12 born in NZ since then.
30% population gives a probability of 0.3. There are 12 choices since then (I’ll neglect Samoa). The number of “successes” for Auckland is 0.
From the binomial calcuator
http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc/calculator.aspx?id=69
I get the chance of that to happen coincidentally to be about 1.4%.
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Donât misrepresent me again, Brian. I have never asserted that Linâs article was âin a ‘news’ publication.â
I have simply pointed out it was a brief article in a newsletter.
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Stuartg: “But you have not managed to produce or cite any evidence to support your imagination.”
This is the blog discussion time searching for associates to work with me and demonstrate evidence by publishing which you demand has to be in respected journal.
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Brian you writeâ
âStuartg: “How do you expect others, not included in the list of authors, to participate in the discussion without communicating the data, analysis, thoughts and ideas to them, ie publication?”
On blogs.â
The why do you not set up your own blog to facilitate this?
Our experience of your comments is that they are rambling nonsense. Completely undisciplined and unorganised.
If you had your own blog you could set forth your ideas as organised articles â rather than obscure comments.
Get to it.
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Ken “The why do you not set up your own blog to facilitate this?”
“Why” because yours has somewhat academic fluoridation readership already.
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Ken: “I have never asserted that Linâs article was âin a ‘news’ publication.â”
Somehow Stuartg thinks the article to be low quality. I would call it concise rather than brief.
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Brian â doesnât this show a degree of opportunism or dishonesty: â”Why” because yours has somewhat academic fluoridation readership already.â
The fact is you have not been able to win a single example of approval from this readership.
If you honestly think there is any substance to your ideas then it would be normal to present them consistently and in an organised fashion. Impossible to do in a brief comment â but a blog article would be ideal.
Personally, I would offer you space for an article here if I thought there was anything in your claims â but I cannot see anything at all. I donât think anyone else can either -although you might find some sort of acceptance at FFNZ.
So, I repeat â why not produce your own blog. It is not difficult. If your articles prove useful it will win a readership.
You are not winning either acceptance or readership with these weird comments here.
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soundhill,
Over seventy years of CWF worldwide.
Millions of people worldwide experiencing documented benefits from CWF.
More than seventy years of research and publications into the effects of humans drinking optimally fluoridated water worldwide.
That’s more than seventy years of testing for harm from CWF! And you are unable to cite any harm to individuals, or to populations, from drinking optimally fluoridated water. Well, welcome to the rest of the world!
Instead you try to provoke FUD about CWF by repeating your cherry-picked coincidences or repeatedly mentioning poor quality newsletter articles with faulty mathematics and uncertainties of translation.
You steadfastly refuse to test your cherry-pickings for non-coincidence even though simple methods of doing so have been repeatedly pointed out to you.
When you “discuss” your ideas, you ignore comments of others. If they contradict your ideas they are immediately discarded. Advice is disregarded with disdain. Anyone using established data to reason contrary to you is instantly wrong. Your ideas have to be correct, because they are yours, and anyone questioning them has to be wrong (I suggest that you look up the “Galileo gambit.”)
Your unwillingness to test your ideas, your refusal to use the scientific method on them, your hesitance in discussion of them – all give the impression that you have a total lack of confidence in the veracity of your “I am not making claims” claims.
Have you ever considered that you convey the impression of someone living in a blinkered fantasy world? Someone who is completely unable to accept reality?
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Stuartg: “You steadfastly refuse to test your cherry-pickings for non-coincidence even though simple methods of doing so have been repeatedly pointed out to you.”
I just use available data. Got any other places to look for lists of representative NZ captains? Not easy to find.
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soundhill,
You have told us that you can see the effects of CWF in multiple sports.
“Got any other places to look for lists of representative NZ captains?”
As I’ve suggested before: captains of the All Whites, the Silver Ferns, the Black Sticks, the Black Ferns, the Tall Blacks, the Black Caps… All are available on the ‘net.
Or are you now denying that you see an effect of CWF in Association Football and all the sports of the Olympics as you previously suggested?
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soundhill,
Thanks for confirming my recent comment: “Advice is disregarded with disdain.”
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Stuartg, I can’t see a list of captains for the Black Sticks. Hockey is an interesting game because it does not perhaps have so much head injury as rugby or soccer. My impression is that team photos of hockey teams show more smiley faces than rugby or soccer. So maybe they have more brain space left to cope with other impacts if fluoridation may be called one.
It is fairly time consuming looking for sports results. I have tried NZ cricket captains since around the time of fluoridation. Since about half the people of NZ live in fluoridated water areas I would wonder if half the NZ representative cricket matches should be captained by men from fluoridated areas.
Sorry this is hard to read:
Captain grew up fluoridated matches captained total
Lee Germon 1968 Christchurch 0 12
Stephen Fleming 1973 Christchurch 0 80
Dion Nash 1971 Dargaville 0 3
Kane Williamson 1990 Tauranga 0 9 104
Daniel Vettori 1979 Auckland/Hamilton 1 32
Ross Taylor 1984 Masterton 1 14
Brendan McCullum 1981 Dunedin 1 31 77
So 104 matches captained by men who grew up in non-fluoridated areas and 77 from fluoridated areas.
I test that with http://vassarstats.net/binomialX.html
which tells me that the probability that the fluoridated areas could get 77 or less captained matches is about 0.027 with a p value of just over 0.05 if you are thinking of this as a two-tailed situation which is still confusing me.
I am not sure how the calculation is affected by the way captains hold on to the top job for a long time.
Now Stuartg will say this data is part of what I use to form my hypothesis so I can not used it in testing?
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soundhill,
If data is used to generate a hypothesis, it cannot be used to test the hypothesis. Since the data has already been used, how can it test itself? Fresh data is needed to test a hypothesis.
That’s basic science. Stuff you’d already know if you’d attended high school classes in science or statistics.
“I can’t see a list of captains for the Black Sticks”
Well, I can’t see one for All Black captains. It just takes a bit of searching.
“It is fairly time consuming looking for sports results.”
But you are willing to do so if it supports your fantasies? Like All Black captains? Like MUFC vs BCFC? But not Black Sticks captains? Not MCFC vs BCFC?
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soundhill,
And we’re still waiting for any citations from you that demonstrate that anyone has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water during the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
Why no citations?
1. No-one has been harmed by CWF in over seventy years?
2. Is there any other reasonable answer?
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Stuartg: “Fresh data is needed to test a hypothesis.”
Every time I produce fresh data Stuartg says that it is just being used to formulate the hypothesis.
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soundhill,
Count your hypotheses (allowing for your vagueness):
1. Something to do with All Black captains and whether the place they were born has CWF.
2. Something about second rate rugby teams and players currently drinking CWF.
3. Something about three rugby teams in NZ and their relative altitude. (There’s something about CWF there, too, but it’s not clear.)
4. Something about an English lower league football team losing games to a top league team about a decade after they started drinking CWF.
5. Something about people from areas with CWF not being able to win Olympic medals. Apart from the exceptions.
6. I can’t be bothered with others, these will suffice…
Basic science tells us these are separate hypotheses and require separate sets of data. But you’d know that if you had lessons in high school science.
Since you didn’t have those lessons in high school science, you think that English football results can be used as data to test All Black birthplaces. Or Tibetan athletes can test lower division NZ rugby team results. Or…
I’m beginning to wonder if you are intentionally attempting to parody the scientific method. …but to be successful with parody, first you would have learn about what you’re parodying.
I really do suggest that you take high school classes in science.
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soundhill,
You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?
Your blinkered view of CWF has completely blinded you to the lack of evidence supporting your fantasies. It’s also blinded you to what evidence actually is.
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Stuartg, if an adult patient presents to you with some of these symptoms you know to suspect lead poisoning as a possibility:
High blood pressure
Joint and muscle pain
Difficulties with memory or concentration
Headache
Abdominal pain
Mood disorders
Reduced sperm count and abnormal sperm
Miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth in pregnant women.
If the patient has only reported the mood disorders I suspect you will tend to think of prescribing an antidepressant. I am asking you to check for bigger patterns.
With CWF I am asking for acknowledgment not just of patterns in individuals but in communities. If you have all members of a family in your practice you might diagnose an environmental toxin by the various members of the family showing various aspects of the poisoning in varying degrees. Or of a deficiency.
One person with a headache might not suggest to you to send them for a blood test for lead. And even if another is becoming forgetful. What when a third is suffering stomach pain and a fourth has stillbirth? None of those symptoms by themselves might suggest to you to send the patient for a lead test but seeing the range in a family you might. Each by itself could be weak evidence of lead poisoning.
Could there be a pattern like that with CWF where it may be useful to be awake to several possible symptoms when together correlated by some mathematical means, I am not sure what?
Still there would be room for mistake.
I see I have made a mistake about the date of fluoridation in Birmingham which is 6 years earlier than I thought. So a longer delay may be involved for soccer symptoms to appear.
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Stuartg: MCFC v BCFC
The correlation is smaller though still statistically significant at the accepted level if we think of this as one-tailed, which still confuses me for this sort of example.
n= 146 games,
correlation r=0.156
one-tailed p= 0.03
I have put the changeover when ability is tending to drop at 1980, that being about 16 years after fluoridation in Birmingham.
Teams can change in what division they play. Birmingham has not always been in a lower division than Manchester.
And contrary to what you are suggesting teams mainly do not play one another if they are not in the same division. In NZ a team in any division can challenge for the Ranfurly shield. In the case of Birmingham vs Manchester the results stop at 2011 and so Birmingham must have been relegated then. The drop in division could be pointing to CWF or other factors.
I understand computer diagnosis of medical conditions is available. How does it deal with family patterns when different members show different symptoms of a conditions such as scurvy? What is the correlation algorithm?
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Ken: “You are not winning either acceptance or readership with these weird comments here.”
I think that because my points are a bit challenging Stuartg tries to take a laugh which is not amenable to readership. Readers want some serious discussion.
Stuartg: “You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?”
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soundhill,
You just don’t get it, do you?
I’ll reiterate:
The scientific method is a process.
Data generates an idea – “That’s odd”
Further thinking about the idea generates a hypothesis.
To test the hypothesis, the original data is discarded and new data is sought – fresh data, appropriate data, larger amounts of data.
Then a statistician works on the new data.
The statistician can determine whether a correlation is present or not by using that completely new data.
…and after all that there’s still no proof, just an indication of where further research may point to proof.
Your method:
An idea: “CWF causes harm”
How can I prove it?
Here’s some coincidences from the world of sport.
Data? Why do I need more data? Aren’t these coincidences enough?
Look, I’ve found some more coincidences.
“The coincidences are mounting”.
Hey, I’ve managed to use a computer program to produce some numbers.
These numbers prove CWF causes harm.
No, I can’t cite any actual evidence that CWF causes harm, even though scientists have been searching for harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years. (Actually, I won’t admit that because my ideas can never be wrong)
My coincidences and numbers prove CWF causes harm.
Why does nobody think CWF causes harm? I’ve proved it.
You proudly proclaim that you are self taught in science. It’s obvious that you had a terrible teacher. Maybe those high school classes in science that I suggested you undertake wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.
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soundhill,
“With CWF I am asking for acknowledgment not just of patterns in individuals but in communities.”
Then it’s simple. All you have to do is to demonstrate non-coincidental patterns, in either individuals or in communities, that can actually be acknowledged by scientists. That’s what you’ve repeatedly been told but don’t seem to understand.
Your most appropriate comment so far has been: “The coincidences are mounting.” And that comment tells us that you are certainly aware that the examples you uses are coincidence.
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soudhill,
I asked: You really don’t understand why Tibetan Olympic results, English football teams, or second rate NZ rugby teams cannot be used to test All Black birthplaces, do you?
Why do you think I’m trying to inject humour?
Look back. You brought up English football results to support your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces. You brought up results of lower grade rugby teams to support the same idea. You even asked me whether I thought your Olympic data was new enough to support your idea: “Stuartg don’t you think the Olympics data to be new?”
OK, some humour was there. But it truly appears that you don’t understand why data from English football teams is irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You don’t understand why rugby team results are irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You certainly didn’t understand why I rejected your “new” Olympic data as irrelevant to your “studies” about All Black birthplaces.
In your fantasy world any coincidences that you see have to be due to CWF in some way or another. All it takes is sufficient mangling of coincidences to allow you to reject reality.
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Stuartg you are like: A med student is interested in public health. They want to confirm or not their hypothesis that lead poisoning may be a cause of stomach pain. In the initial observations they notice still-births. You tell them that has nothing to do with their study. Rather you should allow two studies.
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Stuartg: “You don’t understand why rugby team results are irrelevant to All Black birthplaces.”
Is memory loss relevant to premature birth? Yes if they are both caused by lead poisoning.
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soundhill,
You’re continuing to ignore the science.
You’re continuing to ignore your errors.
You’re continuing to ignore when others point out your errors (exactly the opposite of what a scientist does).
You’re continuing to attempt diversion away from your errors, “if I ignore people pointing out my errors then they’ll never have happened, because I can never be wrong.”
Your obvious opinions on fluoride: “I am correct. I cannot be wrong. More than seventy years of research is wrong. Science is wrong. The rest of the world is wrong, because my fantasies have to be correct.”
And you still don’t understand why lower rugby team results, English football results, and Olympic medal totals are completely irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You brought them all up, saying they were a test of your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces, yet not even your cronies at FFNZ can understand how you reached that conclusion.
You really do need to be taught the basics of science and logic.
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Introduction of new evidence to a pre-existing worldview (with a USAnian bent)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
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Stuartg: “And you still don’t understand why lower rugby team results, English football results, and Olympic medal totals are completely irrelevant to All Black birthplaces. You brought them all up, saying they were a test of your vague ideas about All Black birthplaces,”
The non-fluoridation status of All Black birthplaces, or rather where the parents and infants were living around the time of birth appears to be correlated to appointment as captains. It is not vague.
Olympic medal status of a country per population appears to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.
English football successes appear to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.
In Wellington the team from Petone which remained non-fluoridated did much better after fluoridation of the other teams’ areas. It was a top team until Petone Tech closed and the boys went across the Hutt River to school in a fluoridated area. Then it was no longer a top team. You are trying to apply that label as if it remains constant same as you are doing about Birmingham soccer teams. What part of your medical training is that? Do they teach you to try to confuse patients in drug company seminars? Or do you just learn it yourself in order to get the target prescription levels?
I did not bring up those points saying they were a test of All Black birthplaces!! (Are you trying to suggest I have been talking astrology?!!) I brought them up as part of a picture in which fluoride is present as a variable and because of the correlations it has to be considered as to whether it may be a cause in them. And please note with your sales talk that is not a claim of fluoridation’s harm. It is a list of correlations. It is not even a claim that the fluoride has to be a problem. It could be that a change in the calcium and magnesium levels in the water or their balance owing to the treatment process may be implicated.
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soundhill,
“appears”
You keep saying that.
I simply ask you to demonstrate that your “studies”, relating to multiple ideas, are not coincidental.
You don’t, won’t, or can’t demonstrate that your “studies” are not coincidences.
Why not?
If you can’t, or won’t, answer that question, then you could answer a simpler one: given that thousands of epidemiologists have been searching for harm caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water for more than seventy years, and neither they nor yourself are able to cite such harm, why do you think that no harm has ever been documented from drinking optimally fluoridated water in millions of people in the real world?
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Stuartg: “You don’t, won’t, or can’t demonstrate that your “studies” are not coincidences.
Why not?”
I am gradually working through the Birmingham Manchester water related teams if you hadn’t noticed.
Even a small correlation has not turned to negative. Would expect half to be negative if it were only random.
All Black captains were easy to find. Not so easy for other teams. They list current players and a few eminent ones. Searching “black sticks” “grew up” seems to show more ones from non-fluoridated areas. That is not just captains.
Do you know the history of the knowledge about scurvy? I suppose for a while it colud have been treated as a number of unrelated diseases by some physicians.
Were there experiments done to prove each symptom is caused by a lack of vitamin C totally in isolation from developing a whole picture? Or was it easy to realise all the various symptoms were part of the same disease?
Like the sports facets I relate of considering any fluoridation connection.
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And Stuartg you don’t seem to have acknowledged the Black Caps captains analysis: https://openparachute.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/anti-fluoridationists-exploit-infant-deaths-by-fiddling-statistics/#comment-82128
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soundhill,
You’ve completed a circular argument, from All Black captains to All Black captains. What you haven’t done is produce any evidence.
Why does no-one pay attention to your ideas? Because you haven’t provided any evidence.
You have not, will not, or can not show that your “studies” are not coincidence. For that to happen you need to produce evidence, and you don’t realise that observations used to develop an idea, or even a hypothesis, are not evidence.
It appears that you are unable to understand even the basics of science and statistics, that you have to test a hypothesis and show non-coincidence before anyone will pay attention to your ideas.
You don’t even understand that you have to formulate a hypothesis before you gather data to test it.
So, soundhill, can you tell us what your hypothesis about English football results actually is? If you can’t produce the hypothesis, why then are you “gradually working through the Birmingham Manchester water related teams”?
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Stuartg
Leave out All Black captains if you so judge as part of a case for checking on whether fluoridation impairs sporting performance by impinging at any stage of of a player’s or future player’s development. Though I maintain my hypothesis was generated before checking up on them.
Are you going to be like: “This patient’s teeth are falling out. It could be scurvy. My hypothesis will be that the patient has scurvy and I shall not take the falling teeth into account as part of my diagnosis since it generated my hypothesis.
By circular argument I think you mean I am suggesting that because All Black captains were not born in Auckland after fluoridation started that they were not born in Auckland after fluoridation started. They are just one point on the chart of fluoridation’s correlation to sport impairment.
I had thought Birmingham to be fluoridated in 1970, I am not sure why. I saw Birmingham teams impaired 8 years after that. Though some of the correlations are low none are negative which would be expected if the effect were random coincidence. Now I see it was fluoridated in 1964 so the time of impact could go back to infancy. So that adolescence effect hypothesis (if you want me to generate separate hypotheses) disappears to some extent though I need to think more about Petone boys starting to go to Hutt Valley High School. There may be another impact on the Petone team there, that the boys started playing for Hutt Valley and went on to the Old Boys there. However that would not affect the earlier rise of Petone after fluoridation of the other areas of Wellington playing in the top competition the Jubilee Cup.
How about a comment on the Black Caps calculation?
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soundhill,
You don’t even understand that you haven’t provided any evidence, do you?
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soundhill,
“What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan.
Where is your evidence, soundhill, so that it can be examined?
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Stuartg: “Where is your evidence, soundhill, so that it can be examined?”
It’s a bit of a long list. Where shall we start?
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soundhill,
“Where shall we start?”
Maybe by producing some evidence?
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Which do you wish to examine first?
A science paper does not start by producing evidence, if it be the published sort you need.
Publication comes after review so we need to start with that.
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soundhill,
Evidence?
Well, since CWF has been used for more than seventy years, with millions of people, you could start by citing evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. You haven’t managed to find any evidence so far – care to tell us why not?
There’s hundreds of international sports teams – rugby, football, netball, hockey, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, American football, Australian rules, etc, etc. Both male and female. Tens of countries – NZ, Australia, England, Scotland, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, etc, etc. You only use the All Blacks – why don’t you use any other teams? There’s thousands of captains of international sports teams to get data from, but you cherry-pick a couple of dozen All Blacks and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, if not thousands, of English football clubs, but you cherry-pick the results of only two teams and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of lower grade rugby teams around the world, but you ignore most of them and cherry-pick only Timaru and Petone. Care to explain why you don’t use results from anywhere else?
You’ve had some ideas. Great.
You haven’t yet produced hypotheses from those ideas. Not good.
And that’s it. Nothing further.
You still haven’t provided any evidence.
What’s worse, you don’t even seem to understand that you haven’t provided any evidence.
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soundhill,
“Publication comes after review”
Actually, reviewing of papers by other scientists can’t actually happen until after publication.
Unless you’ve managed to discover a method of distribution of knowledge that doesn’t involve publication/communication?
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Stuartg: “Actually, reviewing of papers by other scientists can’t actually happen until after publication.”
Very few papers are published without peer review happening before publishing. Often the peer reviewers make suggestions which the authors must attend to before the journal will accept the paper for publication.
A study covering the whole world is often preceded by a limited pilot study. The peer reviewers will not turn it down stating the reason it does not cover the whole world yet.
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Stuartg: “You haven’t yet produced hypotheses from those ideas. Not good.”
That CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels.
You don’t seem to wish to comment about my statistical approach with regards to Black Caps captains.
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soundhill,
“CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels” is not yet a testable hypothesis. As you would know if you had attended high school classes in science. But a least you have acknowledged what everyone else has identified – that you have not demonstrated any correlation between CWF and sports performance.
“You don’t seem to wish to comment about my statistical approach with regards to Black Caps captains” – statistics relating to less than a couple of dozen people’s birthplaces? It’s just as useless as your “statistical analysis” of All Black birthplaces. Is that a good enough comment for you?
If you knew the basics of statistics you would know not to bother with such small numbers; they won’t tell you anything. Why else would I be encouraging you to test your idea using hundreds, if not thousands, of international sporting team captains?
And you still don’t seem to wish to comment about your inability to cite any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water, even though scientists have been looking for such harm in millions of people for more than seventy years worldwide. Even though you make “I am not making claims” claims alleging such harm.
Look in all that data, soundhill. Millions of people. Decades of CWF. Hundreds, if not thousands, of research papers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local and national governmental agencies looking at and providing data. Hundreds, if not thousands, of NGOs looking at and providing data. And amongst all of that data, you are still unable to cite any harm from CWF.
So, since you can’t find any harm from CWF in those millions of people in that huge mass of data, you try to perform a completely useless “statistical analysis” on a couple of dozen people with birthdates scattered over a century or so?
Very much the non-scientist.
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Stuartg how do you quantify how many subjects required for a statistically significant result?
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Stuartg: ““CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels” is not yet a testable hypothesis.”
Winter is correlated with worse weather. Is that testable?
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Worse weather has a number of facets: lack of sunshine, frost, hail, rain, wind, snow. (Though they can occur in summer.)
Fluoridation is correlated with poorer sport performance: fewer captains, fewer wins, relegation to lower division.
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“Stuartg how do you quantify how many subjects required for a statistically significant result?”
soundhill, if you have to ask that question then you obviously know very little about statistics. Perhaps you should start with a high school course?
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Stuartg they do not teach me about you, Stuartg, in a school class. I want you to say what you think because it seems different from what others think.
How much frost, snow, wind, hail, rain. cloud, fog, sunshine, blue sky weather in how many cities for how many years at how many latitudes is it necessary to check up before a summer – winter pattern starts to appear and Stuartg no longer calls it coincidence?
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soundhill,
“Fluoridation is correlated with poorer sport performance”
Feel free to cite some evidence in support of your belief. You haven’t done so yet.
Maybe you weren’t taught what evidence actually is because you haven’t taken lessons in high school science?
But, then again, maybe you could find some evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water among the millions of people drinking fluoridated water supplies worldwide? There’s been more than seven decades of data and research into the subject.
It’s been more than a month since you were asked to cite evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
Not only have you been unable to cite evidence of harm, you’ve undertaken the Gish Gallop several times, squirming and wriggling in your attempts to divert attention away from your inability to cite evidence.
Well, it hasn’t worked.
We can still see that you are unable to cite evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water.
To those watching, it is obvious that you have no evidence to cite.
Have you considered that maybe the reason you can’t cite any harm from CWF is because drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has not actually caused harm to anybody?
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soundhill,
The way I think is known as “scientific” to all but the self-taught in science.
If someone claims “my car can do 400 km/hr”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims “I’ve built a man-powered helicopter”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims “Fluoridation is correlated with poorer sport performance”, the scientist says “prove it”.
If someone claims CWF causes reduction in IQ, the scientist says “prove it”.
When soundhill makes an “l am not making claims” claim that CWF has caused any harm at all in the millions of people drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years it has been available, I ask soundhill to cite evidence to back up that claim – in other words “prove it”.
soundhill obviously is unaware of how a scientist thinks and is also unaware that proof is required when someone makes a claim.
“An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.” Marcello Truzzi.
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Stuartg, I gave correlation figures and p values.
You say it is coincidence and it could be at the 1 in 20 to 1 in 1000 or something level. For the indivual results.
But when several effects like captains, losses, relegations are taken together, like cold temperatures, rain, cloud in summer/winter then the 1 in 20 and better coincidence possibility of each of the scenarios reduces considerably.
I said a long time ago I am not quite sure about how much adding of the various scenarios reduces the coincidence probability that fluoridation is doing something.
Enough of your 400km per hour talk! We know fluoridation at optimal levels damages the cells of infants which are supposed to be producing tooth enamel in many more of the population than are likely to have a 400 km/hr car.
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As I has said before it does not have to be fluoride causing trouble. Does anyone know if lime started to be added to Auckland water at a similar time to when fluoridation was begun?
For calcium can affect the thyroid.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229080539_Dietary_calcium_induced_cytological_and_biochemical_changes_in_thyroid
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There once was a boy named StuG
Who came to New Zealand from England.
So puzzled was he
When he did see
The very good weather at Christmas.
So he got to thinking in whispers
I’ll wait for June to see what is brought
Cause that ought
To be warm holiday weather
But oh my I never,
Snow
Was putting on a show.
It’s a small sample
Only one example
So probably coincidence
But in great diligence
He wrote home
To find if snow on its own
As a sign of winter
Could begin to
With help of other sign
Like more days fine
Sort the Christmas matter
But came back the old patter
What’s that got to do
With the snow?
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soundhill,
“We know fluoridation at optimal levels damages the cells of infants which are supposed to be producing tooth enamel”
Prove it. Cite any harm done in the real world to people drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the more than seventy years since they were introduced.
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soundhill,
Another coincidence to add to your list:
Fluoridated Birmingham City remains in Championship League; non-fluoridated teams relegated.
Any comments?
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Since 1991 the Premier League has been the top of the table. So Div 1 was no longer as high after then.
Wiki: “The Football League Championship, which was introduced for the 2004–05 season, was previously known as the Football League First Division (1992–2004), and before that was known as Division Two (1892–1992).”
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Stuartg it is a misconception to think that the white markings on teeth are something extra added by fluoride. They are where the enamel is not properly mineralised because the cells which are supposed to do it are no longer working as a result of fluoride or other trauma.
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soundhill,
So, you’re saying that we can ignore your claims about Birmingham City because they’re not in the Premier League.
I recall saying something similar early on when you first started comparing football teams in different leagues.
You still haven’t cited any evidence that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies can cause harm, even though the research and data collection has been happening for more than seventy years and involves millions of people.
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Stuartg: “I recall saying something similar early on when you first started comparing football teams in different leagues.”
I was comparing competing teams. Usually they have to be in the same league to compete.
Birmingham were in LEVEL ONE about 65% of the years before fluoridation (leaving out 12 for the wars) and 37% of the of the years since fluoridation.
They were in LEVEL THREE for 4 years starting 15 years after fluoridation, but not at all before fluoridation.
Because the names of the levels have changed I have given the names “LEVEL ONE” to the new Premier League and to the old division one which it was. LEVEL TWO to the Championship, which was introduced for the 2004–05 season, was previously known as the Football League First Division (1992–2004), and before that was known as Division Two (1892–1992). LEVEL THREE to the old Division Three equivalent to the new Division Two.
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soundhill,
There’s no need for you to rename the football leagues – they have perfectly good and understandable names already.
I undersrtand that you are saying that the purported effect of CWF on sporting performance only occurs at the very highest levels of a sport. You imply that we can ignore promotion and relegation in the Championship League because it is not the highest level of the sport.
In that case, we can ignore your observations about Petone since they play in local Wellington leagues – hardly the very highest level of the sport. Certainly nowhere near as high in the sport as Birmingham City is in theirs.
And do we ignore your observations about Timaru as well? Every one of Birmingham City’s players is a full time professional, but the same can’t be said of Timaru.
It appears that your observations are now limited to just two “coincidences” – your term – that you have noted:
Some of the All Black captains are from non-fluoridated areas.
Manchester United started paying more for better players several years after CWF was introduced to Birmingham.
Conversely, if you still wish to include lower level NZ rugby teams in your list of “coincidences”, then you must also include lower league teams in the England. In that case, your ideas have to account for why non-fluoridated teams are relegated this year and fluoridated teams are not.
Extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence.
I’m going to repeat something I said earlier, something that you have previously completely ignored, in the (I suspect vain) hope that you will not ignore it this time:
“Evidence?
Well, since CWF has been used for more than seventy years, with millions of people, you could start by citing evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. You haven’t managed to find any evidence so far – care to tell us why not?
There’s hundreds of international sports teams – rugby, football, netball, hockey, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, American football, Australian rules, etc, etc. Both male and female. Tens of countries – NZ, Australia, England, Scotland, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, etc, etc. You only use the All Blacks – why don’t you use any other teams? There’s thousands of captains of international sports teams to get data from, but you cherry-pick a couple of dozen All Blacks and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, if not thousands, of English football clubs, but you cherry-pick the results of only two teams and ignore the rest – why is that?
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of lower grade rugby teams around the world, but you ignore most of them and cherry-pick only Timaru and Petone. Care to explain why you don’t use results from anywhere else?
You’ve had some ideas. Great.
You haven’t yet produced hypotheses from those ideas. Not good.
And that’s it. Nothing further.
You still haven’t provided any evidence.
What’s worse, you don’t even seem to understand that you haven’t provided any evidence.”
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Stuartg the thing about the highest level **in an area** is that it tends to eliminate teams just having social fun.
They will be players working to their max the whole week/season and putting stresses on their metabolism so showing up any weak link in the chain.
Petone indeed did not compete nationally. But it was frequently at the top of Greater Wellington, some half million people. And it was much more at the top after most of the rest of Greater Wellington became fluoridated but not Petone.
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Stuartg: “What’s worse, you don’t even seem to understand that you haven’t provided any evidence.”
According to you I can’t provide it till I have published it.
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soundhill,
“They will be players working to their max the whole week/season”
You mean just like the full time professionals that play in the Championship League? Those with CWF Birmingham City remaining in the League and other full time professional non-fluoridated teams being relegated?
Or do you mean “teams and players that are only able to be found by soundhill and by no-one else”?
It seems like you mean the latter, doesn’t it? And if you are the only person able to find affected teams or players, then that suggests it’s purely your imagination doing the finding.
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soundhill,
Publish: to make information available to people.
Providing, even on a blog, is publishing.
You may have made some hypothesis-generating observations, but you haven’t done anything with them other than spread FUD about CWF. You haven’t even managed to generate a testable hypothesis!
Idea: “That CWF is correlated with facets of reduced community competitive sport levels.”
What type of correlation?
What facets?
“community” – so not necessarily international, professional, levels? What sort of “community” levels? High school, primary school, semi-professional, keen amateur, local pub teams?
“sports” – what sports? We’ve got rugby, football, Olympic sports from you so far. Any others? Are any sports not included? If not, why not?
“competitive” – what level of competition is required for it to be evident? Why is it not evident below that level?
Your idea needs to be turned into a testable hypothesis. Or do you just want to leave it untestable, demonstrating how little you know about the scientific method?
Publish/provide your hypothesis.
Publish/provide your additional research data, the data needed to test your hypothesis.
You could provide it to a peer reviewed journal and let them “publish”. You could provide it to a non-peer reviewed journal. You could provide it to Fluoride. You could set up a blog of your own to publish/provide the data and hypotheses. Maybe Ken would let you provide it here?
What you have not done so far is go to beyond observing a few “coincidences”, telling people that “the coincidences are multiplying”, and having an idea.
If you really want to discuss your ideas, your hypotheses, your data, – don’t you think it would be a good idea to let others actually know what they are?
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soundhill,
“English football successes appear to be correlated to non-fluoridation status.”
Erm… not quite. Maybe you’ve got it the wrong way around?
Non-fluoridated Hull City, Middlesbrough and Sunderland have been relegated from the Premier League.
Fluoridated Newcastle is being promoted, and non-fluoridated Blackburn, Wigan and Rotherham are being relegated from the Championship League.
Remember, soundhill, all of these clubs are composed of full time professional players. These clubs aren’t playing in local amateur leagues like Petone is.
Are you going to ignore those results because they don’t fit in with your fantasy world?
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soundhill,
Remember: fluoride in water has been studied for well over seventy years. Community water fluoridation has been used worldwide for over seventy years. Millions of people have been drinking optimally fluoridated water for over seventy years. Those populations have been extensively studied by epidemiologists, by local government agencies, by national government agencies, by non-governmental agencies. Many of those studies and much of the data is freely available on the ‘net.
And amongst all those studies and data, you are unable to cite anything that shows harm, even to a single individual, that has been caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
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soundhill,
“In God we trust. All others must bring data.” – attributed to W. Edwards Deming.
You have not brought any data with which to test your observed “coincidences”.
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Stuartg: “And amongst all those studies and data, you are unable to cite anything that shows harm, even to a single individual”
I talked of lead poisoning but take noise deafness.
Workers go deaf when exposed to noise over a certain level. That level having been found then if a worker goes deaf it will be accepted it is noise damage and they will get compensation if they have been exposed to over that level.
If a person has bigger outer ears collecting more I maintain or for some other genetic reason they may be more susceptible to noise deafness from a certain level of sound.
If the levels had not been determined by the plight of unfortunate individiduals as in the early days of industrial noise there would be no compensation – no proof of noise deafness in an individual.
I maintain that as with my idea of the size of the outer ear in hearing loss (not proven either) or other genetic difference or perhaps environmental difference, that sports players working extremely hard will be more at risk from fluoride toxicity or from something else done to the water at the time of water treatment associated with fluoride like changing the balance/levels of calcium and magnesium.
I suspect I shall eventually be able to prove damage to a single individual form fluoride but not until after I have proved a connection in a group.
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soundhill,
“I talked of lead poisoning” That’s right, among many other things. You talked of anything but water fluoridation in a discussion that was about water fluoridation. It was as though you had no evidence and were doing anything to avoid revealing your lack of evidence.
The one thing that you never did was to cite any harm caused to individuals, or to communities, caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water. Millions of people, more than seventy decades, and you are still unable to cite any harm done by CWF. Even after I’ve given you suggestions on how to go about searching for it.
You’ve been given the opportunity to provide your own definition of harm, or your own definition of optimal fluoridation level, provided that you could justify the definitions, but you have still been unable to cite any harm, to individuals or to populations, caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. It’s exactly as though optimally fluoridated water supplies do not cause harm, isn’t it?
“I shall eventually be able to prove damage to a single individual form (sic) fluoride but not until after I have proved a connection in a group.”
That’s nice. But will you?
You still haven’t provided anything other than an idea after observing “coincidences.” You haven’t even produced a hypothesis from that idea that can be tested for non-coincidence. Develop the hypothesis, then you will know in what population to look for data in order to test for non-coincidence.
I guess you believe you have had a vision of harm from CWF. You certainly haven’t seen any proof. I urge you to remember that most visions turn out to be hallucinations.
By the way, where are your comments about the apparent inverse correlation between English football success and non-fluoridation seen in the Leagues this year? You were so keen on that subject before…
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Stuartg: “By the way, where are your comments about the apparent inverse correlation between English football success and non-fluoridation seen in the Leagues this year? You were so keen on that subject before…”
Need to average over a number of years. Probably also average out where players come from. As soccer has become big business the amount of player trading may have increased.
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soundhill,
Changing your mind again?
“Need to average over a number of years” – how many years? Does you now mean that if a change happens immediately CWF is introduced (Petone…) then we can ignore CWF as the cause?
“As soccer has become big business the amount of player trading may have increased.”
Football has been big business with player trading since before CWF was introduced. Previously you were saying it was all about whether there was fluoridation at the sportspersons’ birthplace. Is it? Or is it about CWF where a person works – as with football teams? What happens to rugby teams with player trading?
You really need to develop hypotheses that can be tested, not this wishy-washy changing your ideas every time someone points out where the real world disagrees with your ideas.
And I still note that you are unable to cite any harm documented by anybody drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, even though those supplies have been drunk by millions of people over multiple decades.
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Stuartg: ““Need to average over a number of years” – how many years? Does you now mean that if a change happens immediately CWF is introduced (Petone…) then we can ignore CWF as the cause?”
Don’t draw a conclusion from one year.
“Football has been big business with player trading since before CWF was introduced.”
Proportion not changed of players traded?
“What happens to rugby teams with player trading?”
If teams get enough good players from non-fluoridated areas they may start to win and spoil my effect.
“And I still note that you are unable to cite any harm documented by anybody drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, even though those supplies have been drunk by millions of people over multiple decades.”
You also think vaccines have not caused serious harm whereas hundreds of millions of dollars per year are paid out in vaccine injury compensation in USA.
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soundhill,
Vaccines have nothing to do with CWF.
That comment is just yourself trying to divert from your inability to cite any evidence that anybody has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water in the more than seventy years it has been supplied.
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soundhill,
Try three thought experiments.
Suppose that CWF actually did impair sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF actually improves sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Awaiting your response…
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Stuartg: “Vaccines have nothing to do with CWF.”
So you can say whatever you want about them., true or not, without making people suspicious about your statements about CWF?
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Stuartg: “Suppose that CWF actually did impair sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF actually improves sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?
Suppose that CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. What evidence would you expect to find?”
You will try to tell me that nothing has anything to do with anything else but I suggest that there are certain principles underlying metabolic effects.
Varying effects depending on the intake if a proportional effect is to be expected.
On or off effects like light switching the body’s hormonal cycle from the night time relaxing cycle to the more constrictive daytime serotonin cycle.
Effects which vary depending on different types genetic or epigenetic.
Interactive effects depending on other environmental influences UVB from sunlight, iodine from food or water,
That studies would be produced averaging out effects so bringing the effect on some genetic types or activity types to be below statistical significance.
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I would also consider the principle like a car without its petrol gauge working which works very well till the petrol runs out.
If you have had contact with heavy alcohol drinkers you may know of some saying they cannot drink spirits any more. I presume some of their liver, which detoxifies alcohol, has been converted to fatty – cirrhosis.
So if the fluoride metabolism has been overloaded in early life, when the body sends some half of intake to bones and teeth, then there may be less ability to deal with intake later on, under stress. Or perhaps other mechanisms which may have been damaged such as the pineal gland (melatonin serotonin) may be more noticeably impaired when the organism is placed under stress such as in demanding sport.
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soundhill,
You can try to divert from the subject of CWF all you like.
All that it achieves is to show that you are unable to maintain the subject; that you prefer to divert away from your inability to provide evidence supporting your claims about CWF.
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soundhill,
What would we expect to see if CWF provided an advantage in sporting performance? I’ll use your already used assumptions.
Rugby: captains of international teams would all come from areas with CWF. So would the locks. And the backs. In fact the entire of the team and squad would be expected to come from areas with CWF. Because they would outperform players from unfluoridated areas.
The same would apply to international netball teams. Cricket teams. Basketball teams. Football teams. Hockey teams. Even bowls teams.
The Premier and Championship Leagues would be absolutely full of clubs from CWF areas. Maybe one or two clubs from unfluoridated areas. After all, it takes years to get to the highest spots in the UK football leagues.
Unfluoridated Petone would be bottom of its Wellington league, beaten by the rest of CWF Wellington. So would Onehunga in Auckland. And Mosgiel in Dunedin. That would apply to rugby clubs. Or football clubs. Or netball clubs…
That’s just a brief summary of what we would expect to see if CWF provided an advantage in sporting performance. You can extend it if you wish.
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soundhill,
What would we expect to see if non-fluoridation provided an advantage in sporting performance over CWF? Again, I’ll use your already used assumptions.
Rugby: captains of international teams would all come from non-fluoridated areas. So would the locks. And the backs. In fact the entire of the team and squad would be expected to come from non-fluoridated areas. Because they would outperform players from areas with CWF.
The same would apply to international netball teams. Cricket teams. Basketball teams. Football teams. Hockey teams. Even bowls teams.
The Premier and Championship Leagues would be absolutely full of clubs from non-fluoridated areas. Maybe one or two clubs from areas with CWF. After all, it takes years of consistent performance to get to the highest spots in the UK football leagues.
Unfluoridated Petone would be top of its Wellington league, beating the rest of fluoridated Wellington. So would Onehunga in Auckland. And Mosgiel in Dunedin. That would apply to rugby clubs. Or football clubs. Or netball clubs…
That’s just a brief summary of what we would expect to see if non-fluoridation provided an advantage in sporting performance over CWF. You can extend it if you wish
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soundhill,
What would we expect to see if there were no adverse effects on sporting performance from CWF? That sporting performance from CWF and non-CWF areas were exactly the same?
Well, we’d expect that international rugby teams and squads would have a mix of players from CWF and non-CWF areas. That there may be some coincidental runs of locks or captains from CWF areas. Or non-CWF areas. That the same could be seen in international football teams. And netball teams. And hockey teams. And croquet teams.
We would see that the UK Premier and Championship Leagues were full of a mixture of teams from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. That promotion and relegation between the major (and minor) UK football leagues would be randomised between fluoridated and non-fluoridated clubs.
We would see random results in local leagues – Petone may rise or fall. Onehunga may rise or fall. Mosgiel may rise or fall. Whether the team be rugby, football, netball or bowls.
That’s a brief summary of what we would expect to see if community water fluoridation had absolutely no effect on sporting performance. Again, you can extend the thought experiment if you wish.
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Now, soundhill, which of the three thought experiments give results closest to those seen in the real world?
Well, obviously, the All Blacks are composed of players from a mix of CWF and non-CWF areas. So are the All Whites. And the Silver Ferns. And the Black Caps. And the rugby teams from Australia, England, Argentina… And the FIFA football teams. Even Olympic bowling teams.
So there may be an occasional run of captains, or goalkeepers, or full backs, or goal defence, or goal keepers, from fluoridated or non-fluoridated areas. But we can be expect that merely from random chance.
The Premier and Championship Leagues have clubs from fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas distributed at random. Promotion and relegation of clubs are unrelated to fluoridation status – as has already been pointed out.
Local clubs show results entirely unrelated to fluoridation status, with rugby, football, netball, hockey and other teams being randomly scattered through their leagues irrespective of fluoridation status. Check out Petone, Onehunga, and Mosgiel sporting teams in their relevant leagues for instance.
Overall, the results we see in sporting teams, irrespective of the level at which they play, are exactly what we would expect if there were no effect of CWF on sporting performance.
You therefore have to show that the observations in your “studies” are not the occasional coincidental results that we would expect if there is no effect on sporting performance from CWF.
It would greatly help your position if you were able to cite any evidence, from more than seventy years of available data and studies, that there has been harm sustained by even one individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
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Stuartg how about some p values?
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Stuartg: “It would greatly help your position if you were able to cite any evidence, from more than seventy years of available data and studies, that there has been harm sustained by even one individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.”
As a doctor you ought to know that whereas some types of harm such as traffic accidents are obvious, there are other types that we accept because we know from effects to varying degrees on populations exposed.
People can be harmed without it being accepted as caused by a particular cause at the time but we know later.
Wiki: “Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at a sanatorium in Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, due to aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation while carrying test tubes of radium in her pockets during research, and in the course of her work at field hospitals during World War I.”
Surely if Marie Curie had known she were being harmed by the radium she carried in her pocket she would have stopped doing that.
“The acute effects of radiation exposure were first seen in 1896 when Nikola Tesla purposefully subjected his fingers to X-rays and reported that this caused burns to develop, although at the time he attributed the burns to ozone.”
http://www.news-medical.net/health/Radiation-Poisoning-History.aspx
The harm could not be attributed to radiation burn at that time. It had to wait for more researchers to notice damage associated with radiation. Then it would be proved in retrospect that Tesla was harmed by radiation.
So we must wait for population studies before we can say fluoridation be harmful to sports performance.
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Wiki “Discovery of X-ray mutagenesis
1926 marked the beginning of a series of major breakthroughs. Beginning in November, Muller carried out two experiments with varied doses of X-rays, the second of which used the crossing over suppressor stock (“ClB”) he had found in 1919. A clear, quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations quickly emerged. Muller’s discovery created a media sensation after he delivered a paper entitled “The Problem of Genetic Modification” at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin;”
(Muller sometimes written Meller)
“By 1928, others had replicated his dramatic results, expanding them to other model organisms such as wasps and maize.”
Stuartg please note it did not require a wait for the problem to be seen in wasps and maize before being accepted. It took a much smaller sample and in a similar fashion fluoridation injury does not have to be proven in every sports person on earth to be accepted as injury. A small group and a p value is all that is required to have a “statistically significant” result for someone to follow up on and who knows whether someone may be interested enough to be following up on my results?
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Furthermore even after injury from radiation to corn and wasps had been shown it still required a huge amount of work to have it accepted.
“An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in small crucibles, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The then-current rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (equivalent to $0.280 in 2016). The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the U.S. Radium supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips (“lip, dip, paint”), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.[6] Many of the workers became sick. It is unknown how many died from exposure to radiation.
Radiation sickness
Many of the women later began to suffer from anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers’ ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor.[4] U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the afflicted workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes; syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.[7]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
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soundhill,
Again we see you trying to divert attention from your inability to provide evidence supporting your “I am not making claims” claims about harm from CWF.
Vaccines, petrol gauges, now radiation – not one of them relevant to a discussion about purported harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water! Flailing around, trying to change the subject at random – all point towards your inability to support your claims.
In spite of more than seventy years of research and data, involving millions of people, you are unable to cite any evidence that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has ever caused harm, even to a single person.
Your own observations, or “studies”, show expected normal variations in sporting results, but you don’t recognise this and don’t bother actually testing your observations for non-coincidence.
You now tell us, in a poorly thought out sentence, that you expect any evidence not to reach statistical significance: “That studies would be produced averaging out effects so bringing the effect on some genetic types or activity types to be below statistical significance”. And then you ask others for p-values!
So, no evidence, failure to acknowledge coincidence, not expecting ever to see evidence, inability to understand how statistics works… What you have there is faith/belief/fantasy. It’s certainly not science.
But you don’t understand that. You provide a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
I really do think that you should attend some basic lessons in how science and statistics work, rather than relying on self-taught systematic errors. Maybe basic high school classes would be in order?
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Stuartg: “Vaccines, […] now radiation – not one of them relevant to a discussion about purported harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water! ”
They have relevance as to whether doctors tell the truth. You have strongly supported the safety of fluoridation and vaccination. Note that in the USA the vaccine injury court pays out hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
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soundhill,
“They have relevance as to whether doctors tell the truth” – which is yet again irrelevant to your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm.
All you are doing is attempting a diversion and hoping that people don’t remember what you have previously written.
You are unable to cite any harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies from more than seventy years of research and data.
You don’t recognise that your own “studies” merely show expected coincidences.
You are unwilling or unable to test your observations for non-coincidence.
You don’t expect any research to into harm from CWF to reach statistical significance – implying that you understand that harm is not being caused.
You don’t understand why your own “statistical analyses” aren’t.
You don’t understand the scientific method.
I recommend that you turn off your imagination and use science to find out how the real world works. For starters, go and learn about science and statistics at your local high school.
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Stuartg: “All you are doing is attempting a diversion”
No, you claim fluoridation has not been shown to hurt anyone but why should we trust your claim when you also claim vaccination is not harmful despite hundreds of millions of dollars in vaccine adverse event payouts?
I have given data which point to possible sport impairment by fluoridation.
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soundhill,
Look back. Just scroll back and read. It’s easy to do. Confirm your (fallible, human) memory, or realise that your fallible, human memory is wrong.
I make no claims about lack of harm from vaccination. It’s only your imagination that tells you that.
I also make no claim that CWF has never caused harm. Again, it’s just your imagination that tells you that.
All I have done is to ask you to provide evidence to back your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF has and does cause harm. But you have been and still are unable to back your claim. That’s in spite of you having more than seventy years of data and research available, involving millions of people, into the effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
You make the claim, so you have to provide the evidence. It’s one of the first things a high school student would learn in science classes. It’s a pity that you didn’t attend the lessons and admit only self teaching in science. You obviously had a poor teacher.
“I have given data which point to possible sport impairment by fluoridation”.
No. You have observed coincidences that are expected to be seen if CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. And you’ve probably observed them at a lower frequency than would be expected if no harm comes from CWF. You haven’t even bothered to test those observations for non-coincidence, even though you have had advice on how to go about that task.
And now you say you don’t expect to observe any evidence that reaches statistical significance.
Seriously, soundhill, all you are managing to do is to point out that your idea/fantasy/dream about optimally fluoridated water supplies affecting sporting performance is just that – a dream or fantasy.
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soundhill,
If you don’t wish to learn about science in high school classes, this may help: http://psc.dss.ucdavis.edu/sommerb/sommerdemo
The problem is, I suspect that you may need the basics of high school science before you gain any insight (that Dunning-Kruger effect again…)
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Stuartg: “I make no claims about lack of harm from vaccination.”
You implied it when you wrote on last Aug 4: “Just for your information, I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career.
I didn’t report it because we realised the painful deltoid was the opposite one to that which had been injected.”
A report to the NZ Parliamentary Select Committee: “Between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2009, 4,757 reports of adverse events following
immunisation were submitted to the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring.”
Now say there are some 4,000 or 5,000 doctors working in general practice in NZ that would mean on average one report per GP every 5 years but you have reported none in probably 40 years.
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From the same report: “The vast majority of reports describe known and expected reactions such as injection site pain, swelling, redness and itching or raised temperature, headache and general malaise. Expected
reactions such as these are estimated from clinical trial information to occur at a rate of between 2
to 10 percent of people immunised.”
So if a doctor happens to be reporting the adverse events at 1 every five years and those make up 3 percent of the vaccinations that would mean they are either severely under-reporting or else it means 1 vaccination is 3% of the vaccinations they perform in 5 years in other words they are doing in total some 6 vaccinations per year or one every two months.
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soundhill,
Exactly what has vaccination got to do with your inability to cite any evidence backing your claim that CWF causes harm?
Apart from you use of the subject to divert from your inability to use the scientific method, of course.
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soundhill,
“I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”.
According to your logic, since I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career, that means that I imply they don’t happen…
Your ability to think logically is demonstrably somewhat impaired.
I guess that’s why you still claim that CWF causes harm, even when you are unable to cite supporting evidence. You don’t bother, or are unable, to test your observations for non-coincidence. You are unable to recognise coincidence. You don’t understand how statistics works. You even tell us that you don’t expect an investigation to reach statistical significance.
…but you still believe/fantasise that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm. Definitely impaired logic.
Perhaps philosophy should be added to those lessons in science and statistics that you lack?
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Stuartg I have not a cite until someone gets around to publishing, the way they have done with other matters… in gradual progression. A fairly recent example is the recognition of a toxicity in glypohsate-based herbicides, now taking into account the interaction with tallowate surfactant substances in them, when up until recent times the toxicity of a glyphosate-based herbicide only took into account the glyphosate working in isolation.
You Stuartg are similarly hanging on to old reports about fluoridation which do not take into account interactions.
If you are trained properly you know not to vaccinate people in poor health if avoidable – you acknowledge that, but you want to apply blanket safety categorization for fluoridation to everyone, regardless of their iodine status of their environment, or the greater demands which may be placed on the metabolism of sports people.
I suggest you are working by a general principle of trying to suppress annoying new public knowledge. It shows in that you are not notifying adverse vaccine associated events. You are supposed to be notifying, not because you have proof that a vaccine caused the event, but to offer the info to others to analyse, in case they can see some pattern when taking into account the stuff from several doctors.
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Stuartg: ““I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”
According to your logic, since I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career, that means that I imply they don’t happen…”
You left off the bit where you say it was only caused by a squash ball implying that you have seen none in your career so implying to people who may not have read the data that they ought to believe there to be much less risk than there actually is, because you have reported none.
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Stuartg your UCDavis ref is interesting, however it does not deal with “self plagiarism.”
Self plagiarism is when you are still analysing your own data from last study in your new study, if you forgot to cite it I think. Oponents of your work can have your study retracted for self plagiarism. Then if the journal had asked for the rights to your study I am not sure what happens to your further work.
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soundhill,
“I have encountered exactly one post vaccination side effect in my entire career”.
“I have encountered only one traumatic arm amputation in my career”.
The logic is that if one statement implies I claim lack of harm from vaccination, as you say, then the second must also imply that I claim lack of harm from traumatic arm amputation. But then no-one ever accused you of clarity of logic, did they?
But again, you are merely trying to divert from your inability to cite any evidence, even though you have more than seventy years of data documenting its’ effects, that CWF has ever caused harm to any individual.
Can you explain to us why you are unable to cite any evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm? Evidence that the scientific method requires you to supply to endorse your claim?
You haven’t yet been able to show us that even one person, among the millions drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years, has had harm from CWF.
Please tell us why not.
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soundhill,
“your UCDavis ref is interesting, however…”
It is a semester long course from the University of California. How did you manage to complete it in under a day?
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soundhill,
Maybe your belief that you have completed a semester long course from the University of California in less than a day is merely another example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action?
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soundhill,
I note that there is no science that supports your fantasies. If there was, I assume that you would have produced it in the comments of this or other threads.
Since you have no evidence to support your “I am not making claims” claims, you attempt to divert to irrelevant topics (vaccines, lead, herbicides, VAERS, radiation, petrol gauges – in the last thirty or so comments in this thread alone) in your endeavours to hide your lack of evidence. It hasn’t worked. Then you start attacking persons who have asked you to cite your evidence, who have supplied advice on how to obtain evidence and test for non-coincidence…
It’s almost as though you know know that you are completely wrong with the science, yet still are trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about one of the most proven, effective, and cheap methods of improving the health of a community.
Are you a shill for “big dentistry”, trying to increase the incidence of dental caries by reducing the availability of optimally fluoridated water supplies and so assuring a greater number of teeth to repair? That seems to be the most likely reason for you comments.
Of course, lack of knowledge about science, statistics, logic and health care could be an alternative reason…
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Stuartg there is a difference between a vaccine side effect and a vaccine adverse effect. The adverse effects are bad effects which happen after vaccination but are not necessarily side effects. Vaccinators report them in case there may be a new side effect not yet known about or maybe in relation to further improving knowledge, of incidence, severity &c., of known side effects.
If accidents, such as your squash ball incident, increase in frequency after vaccination that might point to a side effect of poorer physical co-ordination in addition to headache, nausea &c., known side effects of vaccination.
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Stuartg: “You haven’t yet been able to show us that even one person, among the millions drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years, has had harm from CWF.
Please tell us why not.”
Because by “show” you mean cite a published paper.
A few years ago I could not cite a published paper that glyphosate-based herbicies cause harm. Now work has been published which does not only consider the effect of the glyphosate in isolation but in association with tallowate surfactants which increase its entry into cells. So now it is possible to show harm.
So far papers have been published showing increased harm from excess iodine in association with increased fluoride. Both excess and deficient iodine can cause thryoid trouble. I have discussed quite a bit the Lin Fa Fu paper which deals with iodine deficiency, fluoride at a level equivalent to that used in CWF, and increased IQ impairment. As with lead poisoning, knowing that populations are harmed by a certain lead level, individuals with that level are considered to be proven poisoned by lead if they have that level in association with accepted symptoms. With radium burns it took a while to associate them to radium’s ionisation radiation tissue damage. Dentists’ knowledge gradually increases and now it is known what was causing the burns on their finger when they held xray plates in many patients’ mouths with their finger. That was learned quite a while ago but about how glyphosate is much more toxic in association with surfactants is fairly recently proven as publicly released. So relying on studies before Lin FF to show CWF to be safe I maintain to be invalid. Maybe brick tea could have been involved with Lin FF but they did urinary fluoride tests.
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Stuartg you are claiming CWF to be perfectly safe.
I am not claiming it to be harmful, only that data I have casts doubt on its safety when considering certain ages of exposure, interacting factors such as iodine deficiency, genetic types and people like dedicated energetic sports players who may be using their metabolism to the max so any small impairment becomes more punishing.
So we shall go on and on, with Stuartg saying there is no evidence of harm of CWF and I shall go on saying published evidence is further starting to develop. I shall go on giving examples from other areas of how that happens and Stuartg will go on pretending he can see no relevance.
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soundhill,
You say “I am not making claims”, but go on to claim that CWF harms by reducing sporting performance. You do so even though the observations you have made, calling them your “studies” and “evidence”, show results less than would be expected by coincidence. You don’t bother testing for non-coincidence, even though how to develop the new data sets to test your observations for non-coincidence has been pointed out to you. You then tell us that you don’t expect any harm from CWF to reach statistical significance.
“I am not making claims.” Yeah, right.
You didn’t need to continue making this many comments if you hadn’t made the claims that you continue to attempt to justify.
“I shall go on saying published evidence is further starting to develop” …and I’ll keep asking you to cite that “published evidence” as long as you make evidence-free claims. So far your “published evidence” appears to exist only inside your imagination and you appear unwilling to actually share that evidence in any way whatsoever.
If you weren’t making claims, then just acknowledge you have absolutely no evidence supporting a claim of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. Don’t be ashamed of not having any evidence to support the claim; no-one else has any evidence either and that’s the simple reason why you are unable to cite anything.
Stop trying to divert away from your inability to provide any evidence that CWF causes harm. Just acknowledge that there is no evidence to cite, even though there’s more than seventy years of data and research available, and the harm caused by higher concentrations of fluoride in untreated drinking water supplies is well known.
Then you can keep your evidence-free fantasies to yourself and no-one will make any more comments about the evidence-free conspiracist world of fantasies that you appear to live in.
And let the rest of us live in the real world.
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Stuartg you are not understanding the process by which new points arise to be tested. You have not understood the vaccine adverse event reporting system and when I point that out you say I am attacking you, I thinking it must be about that point. A vaccine adverse event does not have to be caused by the vaccine in order to be reported. It is anything a little out of the ordinary which happens after vaccination that when reports from many vaccinators are taken into account may suggest the need for further study.
You say I have not proved non-coincidence but you should know such a proof is not possible. It is only possible to give a level of probability.
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soundhill,
Perhaps I’m just ignoring your comments about vaccines because you are merely using them to attempt diversion of discussion from your evidence-free “I am not making claims” claim that CWF causes harm?
“You say I have not proved non-coincidence”
No. You haven’t even attempted to prove non-coincidence, either because you are unable to or you can’t be bothered.
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soundhill,
At least seventy years of data and research into CWF for you to scrutinise. No citable evidence to show that CWF causes harm. A few coincidental observations (of your own?) No attempt to test those observations for non-coincidence. Inability to formulate a testable hypothesis. Expecting any future research (presumably by someone else) not to reach statistical significance.
It’s almost as though you believe that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies doesn’t cause harm to individuals or to populations.
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soundhill,
“I am not making claims”
Not even to the Health Services Select sub committee?
“Brian R SANDLE
Presentation to the Health Services Select sub committee on 23 March 2014 (corrected 2017) on the
Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill”
But you seemed so proud of those claims that you didn’t make!
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Stuartg you said I should not be looking at p values. It seem you want me to have proof of a relationship first?
How is “proof” found without the first researchers starting by examining p values and their associated correlation values?
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Stuartg I presented some facts to the Select Committee. In my **opinion** they cast doubt on the safety of fluoridation if your are going to want your baby to excel as a rugby player, or if you are living in a low iodine environment, or of a certain genetic type (COMT variant maybe). Therefore I asked for the legislation to require district health boards to enquire into possible costs other than than the technology and materials to fluoridate water.
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soundhill,
One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.
You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis. You are obviously unaware of both of those.
By the way, opinion without supporting data is commonly termed fantasy.
Your “facts” were evidence-free claims.
If you still have the belief that you have supporting data, after multiple comments advising you why you don’t actually have any data but rather have coincidental observations, then you really do need to enroll in science and statistics classes at your local high school to find out why.
“I am not making claims”
If they aren’t claims, they don’t require defending. So why write hundreds of comments on blogs attempting to defend them? The scientific method would suggest that you acknowledge your opinions are evidence-free and either test them for non-coincidence or just drop them.
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Stuartg: “One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.”
Before you go to the bother of developing new data sets you need to know whether it is going to be worth it. Stupid taking a guess and being wrong 95% of the time.
You are confusing facts with drawing conclusions.
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Stuartg: “One of the first things you would have learned, if you had ever been to classes on statistics, is that before you can test for non-coincidence you first have to develop new data sets.”
It still isn’t proof. It just reduces the probability of coincidence as the p value decreases.
I was thinking about troubles of fluoridation. I noticed Canterbury (non-fluoridated) rugby to be excellent.
So I hypothesised that fluoridation impairs strongly competitive sport performance. One area I am still thinking about, about the only one I have found so far that the effect may not seem to happen is women’s rugby.
Women’s rugby didn’t get serious until about the 1990s. And it seems more to attract Maori or maybe Polynesian players so will rugby be stronger where their population density and total number to select from is greater.
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Stuartg: “You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis.”
In other words when you form a hypothesis about a patient’s medical condition and do a diagnosis you do not include what formed your hypothesis in your diagnosis?
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Stuartg: “You would also have learned that the observations used to develop a hypothesis cannot be part of the data set used for testing the hypothesis.”
That is supposed to offer protection, from cherry picking a result at p <0.05 and then saying it to be significant.
Even starting with new data sets does not verify anything better than the p value says. So I think this new data set idea is pumping up false confidence. Am I the only one to have had that idea or is it dismissed in the text books?
This seems to have a connection to what Ken does when he does multiple correlations which alternatively may be connected to things fluoridation is said to be connected and cherry picks one like altitude, and you don't complain, Stuartg.
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soundhill,
Yet more bluster.
Still no evidence.
And very obviously no understanding. An excellent example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in fact.
Rather than you using the comments section of a blog to ask for advice on statistical methods, I really suggest that you take lessons in statistics. Your local high school may be able to help you.
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soundhill,
“when you form a … diagnosis you do not include what formed your hypothesis in your diagnosis”
You apparently have no idea of the process here, either. Dunning-Kruger again?
Any provisional diagnosis is tested by getting new data – labs, imaging, more history, repeat examinations, procedures… Just like a hypothesis in science is tested by getting new data.
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theStoartg: “Any provisional diagnosis is tested by getting new data – labs, imaging, more history, repeat examinations, procedures… Just like a hypothesis in science is tested by getting new data.”
Yes bur the parallel is the original symptom you saw is then ignored, going by your requirement that only new data may be used.
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Stuartg: “Still no evidence.”
But you have not denied that the original symptom in medical diagnosis, which instigated your hypothesis, still forms part of your diagnoisis, is actually part of your evidence for your diagnosis.
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Stuarth, so my initial cursory diagnosis was that sport is stronger in non-fluoridated Canterbury than fluoridated areas of NZ. So I looked for new data. * No All Black Captains born in our most populous city since fluoridation started there.
* English soccer teams do better from non-fluoridated areas after the young children raised there have time to grow up.
* Rugby in Greater Wellington’s half million population was topped much more frequently by Petone after the rest of Wellington was fluoridated.
* More of the Hawke’s Bay representative rugby team come from the unfluoridated part.
* Many All Blacks came from the South Canterbury/Timaru rugby team until fluoridation of Timaru then no more did and its division was also relegated.
In the Super Rugby that non-fluoridated Canterbury/West Coast-based Crusaders have achieved much better than teams from two fluoridated regions.
* Eminent All Black Captain Richie McCaw did not even achieve a place in the NZ secondary schools rugby team while boarding at a school in fluoridated Dunedin. He only started to excel when he went to non-fluoridated Lincoln.
* Captains from non-fluoridated areas have captained the NZ cricket team team in many more matches since fluoridation started than captains from fluoridated areas. Though the sample is not very large,
*Contrarily the pattern may not show in women’s rugby however the interest comes very much from Maori players who do not have such a wide geographical distribution in great numbers for testing and serious interest only started in the 1990s a long time after most fluoridation started in the mid 1960s. Or there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys.
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Brian – you said in a previous comment:
That misrepresents me. I have never “cherry-picked” altitude. Why should I? I am making absolutely no claims about altitude.
What I have done is included several likely covariates in a multiple regression of ADHD prevalence and fluoridation extent. This was to show how the Malin and Till paper was faulty7.
The lack of any significant relationship of ADHD prevalence with fluoridation is hardly surprising. Yet you avoid accepting that and look for any way to avoid facing up to the objective evidence.
As for altitude – it is Huber et al (2015) who made that investigation because of their existing model of possible causes of ADHD. I have no views on that model or their explanation of the significant correlation.
As I have often said parameters like altitude could really be acting as surrogates for other things connected to city living.
Similar parameters like fluoridation extent can also be acting proxies – as was certainly the case for Malin & Till’s faulty analysis.
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Ken but you originally did a correlation table and picked elevation but no mention of Huber. https://openparachute.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/adhd-linked-to-elevation-not-fluoridation/
Your p value was 0.009 and I think your were justified in pointing it out. However technically I maintain you were cherry picking. My point is whether cherry picking should always be ruled out. I think not.
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According to the protocol which Stuartg points out, Ken should have been only using his US ADHD – altitude correlation as forming a hypothesis, then discarding that data and testing the hypothesis in many other regions.
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Yes, I did, Brian. So what?
I identified a range of possible confounders which, because of the significance in a simple regression, should be considered as covariates.
I have not in any way promoted any significance for that except to point out that Malin and Tillâs conclusion was clearly wrong. Something you refuse to acknowledge because of your unfounded assumption that fluoride must be bad.
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Donât be silly, Brian.
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Ken: “Donât be silly, Brian.”
In this case Ken did not have to do the extra work since he later found it being done by Huber.
I do not say fluoridation to be bad for everyone, just there is the chance it impairs certain categories of people who are wiped out in the wider averaging. That always can be a problem in a democracy.
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Ken: “I identified a range of possible confounders which, because of the significance in a simple regression, should be considered as covariates.”
Same for me with the fluoridation confounder and strongly competitive sports success.
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Stop your continuing dishonest silliness, Brtan. No extra work was required because I showed that when several covariates were included the association claimed by Malin and Till was completely unsupported. You are refusing to accept that.
As for Huber, they did not include fluoridation as a covariate so in fact their contribution was not directly related to my original article (except to confirm altitude had a significant relationship.
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Brian, if you are into identifying a range of covariates let’s see them put together in a multiple regression.
I don’t think you have used any substantial data to establish a single covariate yet.
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Ken fluoridation is the single “covariate” or variable, that I have considered and I have given substantial data for pilot purposes. Why do you think not?
Do you suspect fluoridation might be overshadowed in its effect by altitude? In NZ and England there is not a great variation of altitude in the populated areas.
I might include climate, and note higher temperatures mean more water consumption.
Take a look at success of 3 rugby teams from varying temperature areas in New Zealand the the Super Rugby competition
In the first column I have the tally of the points won by the Auckland, Canterbury and Otago-based Super 12 rugby teams, less the points again st them.
In the second column is the population of the province.
The third column gives won – lost points per 10,000 population.
Unfluoridated Canterbury is far ahead.
Fluoridated, but cool climate Otago in southerly NZ is in the middle and hot fluoridated Auckland in hotter northerly NZ is very behind.
696— 1377000– 5 Auckland (Blues)
2141— 600100– 36 Canterbury (Crusaders)
518 –– 219200– 24 Otago (Highlanders)
So things are a bit complex.
Fluoridation of course includes possible changes to calcium and magnesium hardness of water, but they might be divided out. Including any interaction between them. I note you criticise studies of fluoride vs IQ when they fail to note low iodine. You seem to want the impairment to be thought of only as either/or fluoride/iodide (and indeed not fluoride), not having breadth for accounting for interaction between iodide and fluoride, meaning low iodide may not be so bad without fluoride’s increase.
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Brian, I have not seen any data from you – let alone substantial data. That is why I keep suggesting that you set up your won blog or website where such data can be presented. it cannot be presented in comments here and I simply refuse to attempt to sort out the mess you continually post in comments. If you do not respect readers sufficiently to use a forum enabling proper presentation then don’t expect us to read such messes.
And, really, don’t expect me to look at a 3 sample dataset. Come off it.
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soundhill,
“According to the protocol which Stuartg points out…”
That’s news to me. I can’t recall pointing out protocols, just the first things you need to do when you have a problem.
It’s like your own job. As an electronic technician, what is the first thing you do when given something that doesn’t work? It’s broken. How can you fix it?
Well, I would suggest that your first step is to seek new data. Look at the soldered joints, the wires, the individual components. Get out the multimeter and check for continuity, resistance, capacitance…
Without new data, how do you expect to fix that broken electronic device? Or is your method to just throw it out and tell the owner to get a new device?
Why is it that you believe that science, medicine, statistics, epidemiology, work any different to your own profession?
If you’ve got a problem, test it. Testing it means that you necessarily acquire new data.
Test whether the All Black captains being from non-fluoridated areas is coincidence? Get data about the captains from other national sports teams. You can use the captains from rugby teams around the world. You can use captains from the FIFA football teams. You can use captains from netball, hockey, ice hockey, cricket, bowls, baseball, basketball, Americas cup yachting… Thousands of team captains available for testing, but you restrict yourself to cherry-picking just a couple of dozen rugby players from NZ and don’t bother to test your idea.
If you did that as an electronic technician, you would rapidly lose your job.
The same can be said for your UK football league results. And I have done. But, again, you stick with your cherry-picked results and don’t bother to get new data in order to test your idea.
The same can be said for Petone. And I did. And, yet again, you stuck with your cherry-picked data and didn’t bother to get a new data set and test whether your idea had any validity.
I repeat, if you did that as an electronic technician, you would rapidly lose your job.
Your ideas are interesting, but the results you have observed are well within the normal range that would be expected if CWF has absolutely no effect on sporting performance. They are well within the normal range that would be expected if drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies does not cause harm to individuals or to populations.
If you wish to pursue your ideas further, you need to follow the well established methods of science, statistics and epidemiology.
My suggestion is that you start by learning the basics – high school classes in science and statistics would be a good start.
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soundhill,
“there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys”
Citation required.
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soundhill,
“(I) note higher temperatures mean more water consumption.”
Citation required.
Especially when you are discussing peak sporting performance where the cooling requirements are related more to the maximum heat generation capacity of the human body than to environmental temperatures.
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soundhill,
“Take a look at success of 3 rugby teams from varying temperature areas”
Citation required.
Especially about the temperature variations. Which province is hottest, coldest, has the highest temperature variations, rainfall, sunshine hours, etc.
Also about the transferring of players between those teams, overseas origins of those players, out of province origins, etc. And why you cherry-picked those teams and didn’t bother mentioning the many other provincial teams. And why you cherry-picked Super-12 rugby, but didn’t mention the performance of provincial teams in netball, football, hockey, cricket, other forms of rugby…
Or is the performance of other provincial teams and other sports in disagreement with your fantasies?
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soundhill,
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/5/21/15505812/lancet-teach-informed-health-choices-teaching-kids
Maybe it’s just too late for you to learn about science, statistics and epidemiology?
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Stuartg: “Well, I would suggest that your first step is to seek new data. Look at the soldered joints, the wires, the individual components. Get out the multimeter and check for continuity, resistance, capacitance…”
Indeed and make sure the big capacitors are not put in by the assemblers in reverse polarity or else the whole factory gets a big surprise. There is a lot to check and often only a small sample of each fault. You have to take action much sooner than a statistical research protocol would allow. Get the circuit diagram and component specifications books and make sure the printed circuit board is designed properly. There is a lot more discarding these days with new products being cheaper than time spent on repair. My notion is that the same discarding is happening to humans.
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Stuartg: “there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys”
Citation required.”
If you think the CDC were correct in eliminating children without easy access to birth certificate data which turned out to be the affected Back males then there is other stuff where sexes react differently a 2003 study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15562745
“Gender differences regarding reactogenicity were evident and should be considered when designing future studies.”
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Stuartg: “Citation required.
Especially about the temperature variations.”
I am not sure how trustworthy this may be anout avaerage monthly temperatures:
http://www.newzealand.com/int/feature/new-zealand-climate-and-weather/
Auckland 10.9 to 19.7
Dunedin 6.6 to 15.3
And it is not only about playing/training but amount drunk at other times including by the pregnant mum.
“For a given individual, water consumption increases with temperature,
humidity, exercise and state of health, and is modified by other factors including
diet. Roughly, the closer to the Equator, the higher the water consumption
(Murray, 1986).”
Click to access fluoride_drinking_water_full.pdf
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Stuartg your VOX cite:
A proper scientific educator would have explained to the children the power of placebo/suggestion and that that is what they were investigating. That course is very lacking,
“Colour of medication: Patients’ compliance of medication and treatment is strongly influenced by the role (they think) medicine plays [22]. The size and colour of the tablets are significant factors. Blue is seen as depressant-sedative, and yellow as stimulant antidepressants [23]. Blue preparations are more soothing; and red, pink or yellow as more stimulating [24]. De Craen et al. [25] confirmed that stimulation was associated with medicine which was marketed in hot colours (red, orange, yellow), and antidepressants were marketed in cold colours (blue, green, purple). In a study with volunteer medical students, similar observations were made [26]. Expectations thus drive the placebo effect [27]. Where patients see their illness as hot or cold, they will only accept medication which deals with the heat or cold. Buckalew and Coffield [23] demonstrated that white capsules were seen as analgesics by Caucasians, but as stimulants by African Americans, whereas black capsules were seen as stimulants by Caucasians and as analgesics by African Americans. Interestingly, among passive individuals who were intellectually oriented, sedative agents produced higher (than expected) levels of sedation [2].
Regrettably, in drug trials, these factors are not taken into account.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.12422/full
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Stuartg: “Also about the transferring of players between those teams, overseas origins of those players, out of province origins, etc.”
If it were happening more I would expect the differential to decrease. Maybe it is.
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soundhill,
“there could be a sex-based effect as with MMR-autism link showing in boys”
Citation still required.
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soundhill,
“Auckland 10.9 to 19.7
Dunedin 6.6 to 15.3”
…but your comment is about provincial rugby, not cities. Dunedin temperatures are hardly representative of Otago – try looking at Alexandra temperatures, for instance.
So, citation still required.
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soundhill,
And let’s not forget that, in spite of there being more than seventy years of data and research into the subject, you are completely incapable of citing any harm caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
So, as I said, interesting ideas, but no evidence available to support them.
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Stuartg: ““According to the protocol which Stuartg points out…”
That’s news to me. I can’t recall pointing out protocols, just the first things you need to do when you have a problem.”
You suggested I should not do some correlations and select the ones with low p and ignore others and say I have proven significance, didn’t you? It is a wrong protocol. For if I do 20 correlations I should by probability get one “statistically significant” at p<0.05 purely by chance.
You didn't call it a protocol but what is supposed to be done is to get a notion using reason then test it for statistical significance, as I have begun to do with temperature and fluoridation. Even at p<0.01 one correlation per 100 meeting that p value happens purely by chance.
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A notion I have to test: increase in violence and suicide against increase consumption of food with unfermented soy bean protein extender in it (soy being a problem for thyroid as a possibility), fluoridated toothpaste and water (fluoride also being a thyroid problem at low iodine which may add or interact.)
Fortunately NZ health ministry recommend not to feed infants on soy milk where avoidable. In rats soy has been shown to interfere with development of the endocrine system. It is strongly hormonal, more so if treated with glyphosate-based herbicide.
Traditional soy food in Asian countries is fermented which early peoples seem to have found improves it. The fermented products are called natto in Japan, fluffy tofu in China and Tempeh in Indonesia.
So I have set out that notion beforre doing a p value table and selecting.
Fluoridated toothpaste, water, soy consumption, violence and suicide have all increased. What else would you put in the list, giving a reason for the notion?
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Stuartg as far as I can see no Highlanders players come from Central Otago.
Out of the 41 current squad at least 16 were born in non-fluoridated areas maybe more since i do not know about 4 from places in Samoa and Tonga and I am not sure when Garth Evans’ mother came from Zimbabwe.
Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin.
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soundhill,
“You suggested I should not do some correlations and select the ones with low p and ignore others and say I have proven significance, didn’t you?”
No.
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soundhill,
“Out of the 41 current squad at least 16 were born in non-fluoridated areas” “Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin”
Check your maths. 41 – 16 = 27, not 4.
“Only 4 seem to be born in fluoridated Dunedin”
If less than 10% of the squad was born in Dunedin, why do you use weather averages for Dunedin as representative of the >90% not born there? Are you doing the same for Canterbury? For Auckland? Why haven’t you included Taranaki? Southland? Lot’s of other provinces?
The obvious lack of thought you have put into your “I am not making claims” claims implies egregious cherry picking.
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soundhill,
If you remember, I did suggest that you could cite any evidence you have to support your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, in the form of CWF, causes harm.
You still haven’t cited any evidence to support your claim.
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Stuartg: “If less than 10% of the squad was born in Dunedin, why do you use weather averages for Dunedin as representative of the >90% not born there?”
Stuartg I think you still have that either-or thing going. You want me not to claim fluoride could affect initial human development as well as later functioning. You were very big on it before, “what has that got to do with that?” in a very obfuscating fashion, too. Or maybe I suppose you are trying to hope people will realise that you want it to be two separate investigations.
One perhaps being the early-life effect on pineal development with ongoing change to the melatonin/serotonin mechanism, the other being the effect on the thyroid noticeable in people working extremely at their limit. Dunedin being better for environmental iodine may avoid that somewhat. Yes over half of these players came from fluoridated birth regions, it looks. About 5 from Palmerston North I think, though sometimes the description “Manawatu” could mean elsewhere.
Sorry it’s a bit hard to trace the players’ origins.
Josh Dickson was born in fluoridated Perth but grew up, went to primary school, in non-fluoridated Wanaka which is almost Central Otago. I don’t know at what age he went there. That may increase the non-F births to 18.
The team (with reserves) which is playing internationally (Perth) has some other players not in the main list. (Including 7 reserves 9 from fluoridated birth places 10 from non-fluoridated and 3 not sure. So there is a small shift to increased non-F proportion for international match.
Sorry I have not done every team yet. It takes a bit of time.
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Stuartg: “If you remember, I did suggest that you could cite any evidence you have to support your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, in the form of CWF, causes harm.
You still haven’t cited any evidence to support your claim.”
Whay don’t you consider Lin Fa Fu et al’s work to be evidence?
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soundhill,
Point out to us all where Lin Fa Fu et al studied people who had been drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
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soundhill,
http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/05/alternative-health-dunning-kruger-and-the-tuteur-corollary.html
Substitute your own thinking about Community Water Fluoridation if you wish.
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Stuartg: “Point out to us all where Lin Fa Fu et al studied people who had been drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies”
So you think there is more to fluoridation than the level of fluoride?
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soundhill,
Point out to us all where Lin Fa Fu et al studied people who had been drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Then tell us why their basic maths contains errors.
Then perhaps you could find a certified translation.
After all, if the authors/editor/typesetter/translator demonstrably leave numerical errors in their tables, who knows what other errors are present in their text?
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Stuartg: “Point out to us all where Lin Fa Fu et al studied people who had been drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.”
By “fluoridated” do you exclude naturally to a similar level as artificial?
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A problem of “science-based medicine” is that science finds it much easier to look at one illness one drug when the door may have more than one key to open it. Not just Ken’s confounding variables which may act independently but variables interacting – working together.
In the case of iodide Ken refers to its lack as a confounder but it’s lack in the presence of slightly elevated fluoride may make things worse.
What maths errors is it Stuartg?
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Stuartg: it is not a typesetting error.
ig means micrograms.
http://acronymsandslang.com/definition/103129/IG%2FDL-meaning.html
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Extremely rare? First time I have seen that abbreviation â after a long career in chemistry research.
I suggest one would only use it for pretentious reasons or out of ignorance. After all, the purpose of communication is to be understood â why resort to use of abbreviations not recognised by people in the appropriate community?
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soundhill,
Incredibly rare – first time I’ve ever seen that use as well!
But it was actually the numerical errors I referred to, not nomenclature. I’ve pointed out the errors to you in the past, as have others, and they are still present in the translation. It’s remarkable that you have elected to ignore those errors in your quest to find small, low quality, cherry picked studies that you believe add to your fund of anecdotes. It’s interesting to note that you were ready to defend this incredibly rare and non-recommended SI usage, though; I hadn’t even registered it!
Microgram is usually abbreviated to µg, or ug if your keyboard can’t manage the mu. That’s the SI standard. Handwritten medical notes are recommended to use mcg to reduce risk of error (handwritten µg often misinterpreted as mg).
But those comments are just another example of your use of diversion.
You still are unable to provide any citations to support your evidence-free imaginative speculation that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to individuals or to populations. And that’s with more than seventy years of research and data available from the real world among which you would surely be able to find evidence to support your speculation.
If CWF doesn’t cause harm, then I would not expect you to be able to cite any evidence of harm.
Interestingly, your lack of citations thus tends to support the scientific consensus that CWF does not cause harm.
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Stuartg: “Microgram is usually abbreviated to µg, or ug if your keyboard can’t manage the mu. That’s the SI standard. Handwritten medical notes are recommended to use mcg to reduce risk of error (handwritten µg often misinterpreted as mg).”
If ug, the u being the second letter of mu, the english for the Greek µ, why not go more English and use the second letter of micro? Both are using the second letter to avoid the common confusion between micro and milli. Though I suppose it is the second letter of milli also.
People familiar with nutrition should know by the figures.
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Stuartg we had a good go at this 6 months ago:
“soundhill, I’m not going to do your library searches for you. I’m just not interested enough to follow it further. I’ll trust the scientific consensus rather than rely on the three papers you think contradict the scientific consensus.”
So I give 3 papers then you talk about a contrary consensus and tell me to look up the data for your consensus?
People won’t be trusting you to be other than trying to create a perception unless you give some studies to back up your claim for consensus of no effect involving people subjected to fluoride levels relevant to fluoridation when they are low or high on iodine intake.
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soundhill,
“If ug, the u being the second letter of mu, the english for the Greek µ, why not go more English and use the second letter of micro?”
As you never learned science at school, you obviously never learned about how and why SI standards were developed and why they are standards.
Is your comment derived from the Dunning-Kruger effect, or is it just your automatic “my fantasies have to be right, so all those thousands of experts have to be wrong in spite of their evidence and many years of learning” approach?
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soundhill,
You want me to give you evidence about the scientific consensus? Again? As though I hadn’t done it several times before?
Yawn.
Take a modern textbook on dentistry. It doesn’t matter which. Or perhaps a modern textbook on epidemiology. Or both. Or more than one of each. In any language. Or take all of them.
Turn to the chapters on community water fluoridation.
Read them.
Read the references.
Read their references.
That’s the scientific consensus on community water fluoridation.
Against that consensus you have a fantasy that CWF causes harm.
In your opposition to the scientific consensus, the sum total of your citable evidence is… nothing.
That’s in spite of more than seventy years of research and data into the millions of people who have benefited from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies over the decades.
Surely there’s something in all that evidence to support your fantasy? Well, since you haven’t found anything, maybe not.
You are denying the science and the scientific consensus because you have a fantasy.
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Stuartg the SI system of units is not about the symbols used to represent those units.
It just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?
And now when I try to find the original occurrence of ig/L in Lin FF Google brings up the Greek mu but when I copy and paste it here the result is /ig/L.
And viewing the version of Lin FF that Ken linked uses the Greek.
So you are looking silly making so much out of it, And you are weakening your case as you try to create a perception that Lin FF carries no weight.
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I may be a bit wrong about there. But “mcg” is not part of SI.
Wiki:
“When the Greek lowercase “μ” (Mu) in the symbol μg is typographically unavailable, it is logically replaced by the Latin lowercase “u”.
The United States-based Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend that the symbol μg should not be used when communicating medical information due to the risk that the prefix μ (micro-) might be misread as the prefix m (milli-), resulting in a thousandfold overdose. The non-SI symbol mcg is recommended instead.[1][2] However, the abbreviation mcg is also the symbol for an obsolete CGS unit of measure known as millicentigram, which is equal to 10 μg.”
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soundhill,
“But “mcg” is not part of SI.”
Who said it was?
Perhaps you could actually read what I said, rather than relying on your imagination?
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soundhill,
Both Ken (“Extremely rare? First time I have seen that abbreviation â after a long career in chemistry research”) and myself (“Incredibly rare – first time I’ve ever seen that use as well!”) merely commented about your defence of Lin Fa Fu et al using the term “ig” – ” it is not a typesetting error. ig means micrograms”
If you read back you will see my comment that I hadn’t even noticed their use of “ig”,
So, by bringing it up, who is making “so much out of” the use of “ig”?
And how much do you think it diverts away from your inability to cite evidence to support your fantasy about CWF causing harm?
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soundhill,
“It (the SI system) just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?”
No.
You really should take those high school science classes.
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Stuartg which text book gives the consensus on any interaction between moderate fluoride and low or high iodine?
Unfortunately the way medical scientific research goes there are things like liability that doctors have to cope with. If they give two new drugs together and the patient suffers a reaction how do they know which one it was to apportion liability? Liability is a very heavy weight on doctors. So taking account of things working together is often off the radar. You may not find it in the text books as much as it should be for positive actions, but often it is cited for bad drug interactions that have been obvious. But who takes liability for nutrient deficiency? Then next who takes liability for interaction of deficiencies? Will I find that written in the ethics texts?
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soundhill.
If you read back you will see my comment that I hadn’t even noticed their use of “ig”
…because on checking it, my copy didn’t have that usage.
So why are you making yourself look silly by making so much fuss about it?
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soundhill,
…and why can’t you find any citable evidence supporting your fantasy that drinking CWF causes harm?
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soundhill,
“Will I find that written in the ethics texts?”
You will find that discussed in ethics textbooks. As you would know if you had read them.
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Here is another example of dealing with a moderate supplement of something (folic acid) and the problem effect if something is low (vitamin B12), and the mess that people are being subjected to:
http://anhinternational.org/2013/09/04/fighting-forest-fires-with-teaspoons-folic-acid-fortification-and-vitamin-b12-deficiency/
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soundhill,
Where can I find citable evidence to support your “I am not making claims” insistence that drinking CWF causes harm?
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soundhill,
Keep on trying to divert if you like.
It makes it really obvious how much you are denying the science, denying the evidence of multiple decades of research and data into the lack of harmful effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the millions of people who have benefited from it.
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soundhill,
“Here is another example” …of attempting diversion using irrelevancies unrelated to CWF.
(FYI, I first diagnosed SCD over thirty years ago – it’s not as uncommon as you appear to think, as most NZ third year medical students could tell you)
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Stuartg: “If you read back you will see my comment that I hadn’t even noticed their use of “ig”
…because on checking it, my copy didn’t have that usage”
You talked about typographical errors and I suppose it will be your strategy to leave us guessing over and over and take a laugh each time we get it wrong. You are lacking.
Here it is:
https://consultations.health.gov.au/chronic-disease-and-food-policy-branch/review-of-the-2006-nutrient-reference-values-for-a/supporting_documents/AustraliaandNewZealandNutrientReferenceValuesforIodine.pdf go to the Pettigrew Porter ref which I pasted/
You had said “What is the measurement “Ig/L” you are using in your cut & paste?
I cannot find any reference to it in the official SI units.”
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Stuartg: “(FYI, I first diagnosed SCD over thirty years ago – it’s not as uncommon as you appear to think, as most NZ third year medical students could tell you)”
Sickle Cell Disease is a genetic affliction. Sufferers may actually have better survival than normal in malaria prone areas.
If you prescribed folic acid or folate did you also prescribe Vitamin B12 to try to avoid the nerve damage that folic acid may mask?
You do not have to have sickle cell disease to be short of vitamin B12 and be at risk of getting only folic acid supplementation as in our breads.
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“Where can I find citable evidence to support your “I am not making claims” insistence that drinking CWF causes harm?”
Silly who will be writing a citable paper on my claims or lack of them?
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Sruartg: “It makes it really obvious how much you are denying the science, denying the evidence of multiple decades of research and data into the lack of harmful effects of drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies in the millions of people who have benefited from it.”
Science does reviews. Ken brought up a review of Lin FF last November whcih I challenged parts of. But no review of Fugui Hong or Dali Ren et al..
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Soundhill1: “Sickle Cell Disease is a genetic affliction. Sufferers may actually have better survival than normal in malaria prone areas.”
Sorry it may be just those with one copy of the gene, I am not sure.
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Stuartg: ““It (the SI system) just replaced the foot pound second system and the centimeter gram second system with the metre kilogram second system, didn’t it?”
No.
You really should take those high school science classes”.
To my knowledge the units kept the same names it was just decided to adopt different ones from amongst them.
In the MKS system one newton acceleartes a mass of 1 kg at 1 metre per second per second
In the FPS system one poundal accelerates a mass of one pound at a rate of one foot per second per second.
In the CGS system a force of one dyne accelerates a mass of one gram at a rate of one centimeter per second per second.
The MKS system was adopted and school children no longer had to work in poundals and dynes.
Feet as a measurement of length was replaced by metres. Pounds were replaced by kilograms. But I don’t think the decimal multipliers of metres and kilograms &c changed for SI.
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Though the kilogtam became the accepted unit of mass they did not call a gram a millikilogram
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soundhill,
SCD – subacute combined degeneration of the cord. Caused by B12 deficiency and can be contributed to by folate deficiency.
Or had you no idea what you were talking about and just cited something that you thought was near enough?
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soundhill,
“To my knowledge…”
It’s obvious that your knowledge doesn’t include why the Système International was introduced, or why it is in use today.
You really should attend some lessons in basic science, rather than assuming that you have a good teacher whilst being self taught.
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soundhill,
You still keep attempting to divert from your inability to cite evidence that can support your assertions that CWF can cause harm to the people that drink it.
Would you explain to us why you are completely incapable of citing such evidence?
After all, you’ve got more than seventy years of research and data, involving millions of people, from which to provide such evidence.
If it exists.
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soundhill,
Perhaps you should read this: http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/05/alternative-health-dunning-kruger-and-the-tuteur-corollary.html
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before and can’t be bothered looking back on a Saturday night when I’m trying to recover from a series of night shifts.
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Stuartg: “SCD – subacute combined degeneration of the cord” It’s not in this list of acronyms:
https://www.allacronyms.com/_medical/SCD
But those don’t leave off essential parts of the concept such as “cord” in your definition.
It has to be worse than the old Latin prescriptions and doctors’ bad handwriting which must have caused much confusion before computers.
How about standardising the medical acronyms into a Systeme Internationale (SI) like the physical and chemical units?
So I didn’t get it correct but I did get something related to a vitamin B12 connected disease,
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“It’s obvious that your knowledge doesn’t include why the Système International was introduced, or why it is in use today.”
It avoids a lot of conversion to be required going from one system to another. The Anericans tend not to use it so much.
There is some standardisation of powers of 10. Like for Americans a billion is 1,000,000,000 but the English used to call 1,000,000,000,000 a billion and 1.000.000.000.000.000.000 a trillion. so giga, tera, exa and zeta have been substituted to reduce confusion.
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What is the SI for billionaire?
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Tuteur: Who is doing this to me?
Why is the doctor sticking to a failing protocol if I have terminal cancer?
Why is a clinical trial aimed at advancing science, not doing the best for an individual patient? Why is it aimed at one key when the door to cancer may have several requited?
Who are these monsters putting me down with names like Tuteur and Dunning Kruger when my life is ebbing?
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Stuartg: “CWF can cause harm to the people that drink it.”
You don’t listen, Some people that drink it.
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soundhill,
“Some people that drink it.”
So give us some citeable evidence that “some” people get harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Or citable evidence that even one person has been harmed by CWF.
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Definitely there has been death with CWF accident at only 150 times the recommended optimum level.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199401133300203
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Brian, can you not realise that providing a single example of an accident in response to Stuart’s question:
“So give us some citeable evidence that “some” people get harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Or citable evidence that even one person has been harmed by CWF.”
is extremely damning for your case?
You are admitting that you cannot find a single example of harm to individuals from CWF.
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No Ken, one person died and a lot were made sick who would not have been if CWF were not taking place.
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It wasn’t at the LD50 level where half die. More like LD0.3.
The point is that responses to fluoride vary. At what level can no risk be associated? What do all the studies which Stuartg goes on about say about the tails of their distributions? Low or high iodine segment? COMT variant?
Where are the papers that look at EQ on top of IQ yet?
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soundhill,
The paper you cite documents harm from water with a fluoride concentration of 150mg/L. That’s 150 parts per million when NZ has recommended the optimum fluoride concentration in water to be 0.7 to 1.0 ppm.
Could you please justify your selection of 150 ppm as the optimum fluoride concentration in drinking water supplies. After all, if you didn’t select that as optimum, the paper has zero relevance to your claims.
We’re still waiting for you to provide citable evidence demonstrating harm to even a single individual, let alone “some” people, from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
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soundhill,
“Where are the papers that look at EQ on top of IQ yet?”
Haven’t you produced them yet?
After all, we still haven’t seen citations from you to support your assertion that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies affects IQ.
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soundhill,
“The point is that responses to fluoride (at optimal water fluoridation concentrations) vary.”
You’re making an assumption there. You need to back that supposition with citations justifying your use of such speculation.
No problems if you are talking about fluoride concentrations well above those optimal for reticulated water supplies, but then your statement would be completely irrelevant to discussion of CWF.
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soundhill,
“At what level can no risk be associated?”
Well, unless you can provide citations that harm has been caused to any individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, we can be pretty certain it includes the level recommended for reticulated water supplies.
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Stusrtg: “Could you please justify your selection of 150 ppm as the optimum fluoride concentration in drinking water supplies. After all, if you didn’t select that as optimum, the paper has zero relevance to your claims.”
They were intending/attempting to do 1ppm or so as you say they should. NO escaping.
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Stuartg: “The point is that responses to fluoride (at optimal water fluoridation concentrations) vary.”
You’re making an assumption there. You need to back that supposition with citations justifying your use of such speculation”
Of course they vary. Some get dental fluorosis more than others.
Even cats learn to avoid other cars when one hits them. Unless they are trained not to as you seem to try to be doing to people who see dental fluorosis and wonder what else may be happening.
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soundhill,
So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?
Hardly surprising. Most things can cause harm when one hundred and fifty times the recommended amount is ingested – try eating one hundred and fifty scones for morning tea.
In NZ optimal fluoridation is currently set at 0.7 to 1.0 ppm. The recommendations will never include the 150 ppm that caused the only harm you have been able to cite.
Where are your citations showing harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies? More than seven decades of CWF. Millions of people benefiting. Yet you can’t show harm in even one person from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
If you had bothered to acquaint yourself with the scientific consensus on CWF you would know why you can’t cite evidence of harm from CWF. It’s all there in the textbooks and their references.
Threshold concentrations for harm from fluoridated water supplies were known from observations of people drinking naturally fluoridated water worldwide well before CWF was introduced. In other words, they’ve been known for over seventy years. There have been, and always will be, minor jiggles in the evaluation of that threshold – but that’s just how the scientific method works.
The recommended concentration for optimally fluoridated water supplies always has been, and always will be, much less than the threshold known to cause harm.
Epidemiologists have been studying those populations with CWF for over seventy years, specifically looking for evidence of harm from CWF. They haven’t found any.
Amateurs (probably the kindest way of describing anti-fluoridationists) have also been looking for evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies for over seventy years as well. They haven’t found any evidence, either.
Let’s repeat that. No-one, not scientists, not epidemiologists, not anti-fluoridationists, has ever found evidence of anybody being harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water.
The simple reason that you can’t cite evidence of even a single person being harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, soundhill, is that no-one has actually been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
I’d have thought you would have figured it out by now.
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soundhill,
I know that you won’t believe my comment above – simply because you think that everyone who doesn’t believe your fantasies are shills – but the comment is there for others to see why your belief/fantasy/faith that CWF causes harm means that you are denying the reality demonstrated by the scientific method.
As I see it, you’ve got a couple of options to choose from:
1. Ask an anti-fluoridationist cobber to cite evidence of harm to persons drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. (I doubt you’ll manage to find any yourself)
2. Go to high school classes, learn about science, statistics, logic and philosophy. Then maybe some advanced work at university. Then read the textbooks on Community Water Fluoridation, the references and their references. In other words, you can read and understand the scientific consensus on CWF.
If you attempt the first, you’ll find even Connett is unable to cite harm caused to an individual from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. And, believe me on this, he’ll have been looking longer and harder than you have.
If you manage the second, including the all important understand, it will take many years of your time and at the end of it all I suspect that you will find that you support CWF. Because by then you’ll have learned and understand the scientific method, what the evidence is, and why your current beliefs have no supporting evidence.
Or you can go to option 3:
Keep on attempting diversion to irrelevant topics in your endeavours to conceal your basic lack of knowledge of science, statistics, medicine and logic.
I wonder which it will be?
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Stuartg: “So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?”
Accepts there is harm when there has been a death.
“Threshold concentrations for harm from fluoridated water supplies were known from observations of people drinking naturally fluoridated water worldwide well before CWF was introduced.”
Define “harm.”
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soundhill,
Please cite evidence in support of your claim that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies has caused harm to individuals or to populations in the more than seventy years it has been available.
I will repeat myself: you are able to define both “harm” and “optimally fluoridated” provided you are able to justify those definitions. Do you want to re-define “drinking”, “water” and “seventy years” as well?
So far you appear to have defined “optimally fluoridated” at one hundred and fifty times the NZ recommended level, but you have neglected to justify that definition.
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soundhill,
“Accepts there is harm (from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies) when there has been a death”.
Only if soundhill is able to justify resetting the definition of optimally fluoridated water supplies to 150 ppm fluoride.
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Stuartg: “So you can only find evidence of harm from drinking fluoride in water when the concentration of fluoride is one hundred and fifty times that recommended?”
Accepts there has been harm when fluoride level has got to 150mg/l and there has been a death.
But does not accept damage to the ameloblasts as harm, or it seems anything until the level gets up to 150mg per liter and there is a death.
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soundhill,
I’ll repeat what I said earlier:
You can define “harm” to a human being in any way you like, providing you can justify that definition.
Personally though, If I were you, I would use one of the already accepted expert definitions of harm.
Following that, you can continue to demonstrate to us that there is no citable evidence of harm, to individuals or to populations, that is caused by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
And if you continue to insist that 150ppm fluoride causing harm is “optimally fluoridated”, then: {citation required}
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Stuartg: ““Where are the papers that look at EQ on top of IQ yet?”
Haven’t you produced them yet?”
If EQ is to have anything to do with suicide I have to note suicide seems to have a small negative correlation of -0.26 to proportion of state fluoridated in USA. p value about 0.065 two-valued.
Could be that there may be more suicide in rural regions which may have less fluoridation. In NZ correlation of suicide to population of DHB gives about 0.4 p=about 0.06 two-tailed.
Taking a wild guess at fluoridation of NZ DHBs usng only 1 for more fluoridated , 0 for less fluoridated and 0.5 for Hastins/Napier sort of area I get a rank correlation about -0.3 but the p value is too large at two-tailed 0.18. But taken together with USA there may be an effect.
The partial correlation holding population constant is -0.29. Used Vassarstats.
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Brian, you are implying there is ” damage to the ameloblasts” from CWF.
Could you please provide a citation and/or link?
Thanks.
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Soundhill1: “In NZ correlation of suicide to population of DHB gives about 0.4 p=about 0.06 two-tailed.”
sorry should be -0.4 with the smaller DHBs having more suicide.
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soudhill,
“does not accept damage to the ameloblasts as harm (to a human being)”
Exactly what damage is caused to ameloblasts by exposure to optimal fluoride concentrations?
Before you start a rant, yes, I know that excess fluoride makes ameloblasts incorporate more fluoride into the enamel matrix and results in dental fluorosis, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells. And, yes, I know that zero fluoride means the enamel matrix ameloblasts produce is more porous and so more prone to dental caries, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells. And yes, I know that ameloblasts with optimal fluoride levels are also healthy, undamaged cells.
So can you cite anyone with evidence that the same optimal fluoride levels are causing damage to ameloblasts? And if you can, exactly what sort of harm does that cause to the human organism? After all, you are the one with the “I am not making claims” insistence of human harm from CWF.
And, once you’ve done that, you can continue to demonstrate the lack of citable evidence you have that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to individuals or to populations, even though some have drunk it for a lifetime.
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Stuartg: “Before you start a rant, yes, I know that excess fluoride makes ameloblasts incorporate more fluoride into the enamel matrix and results in dental fluorosis, but they’re still healthy, undamaged cells.”
Cite please.I don’t think you will find a cite and you still have the misconception I have spoken of several times.
What I have read is that fluorotic white marks are “hypomineralisation.” Hypo meaning less than should be.
The ameloblasts no longer form proper transparent hydroxyapatite.
In severe cases protein is left where enamel should be causing brown marks.
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Stuartg: “I am not making claims” insistence of human harm from CWF.”
No just caution. Even if fluoridation were to be reducing suicide would it be doing it by some mechansim such as that other very light and reactive element lithium which though may dampen the affect may damage the liver?
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StuartgL “And, yes, I know that zero fluoride means the enamel matrix ameloblasts produce is more porous”
No on the contrary. More porous with fluoride. It is just that jydroxyapatite is less resistant to acid attack than fluorapatite.
If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.
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soundhill,
Citation? Certainly.
http://m.jbc.org/content/280/24/23194.full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19783795
Or you could try the relevant dental textbooks.
Now why can’t you provide the citations to support your claims?
Probably because evidence for your claims exists only in your imagination.
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soundhill,
Suicide: another diversion attempting redirection from your inability to cite evidence to support your “I am not making claims” insistence that CWF causes harm.
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soundhill,
“No on the contrary. More porous with fluoride. It is just that jydroxyapatite (sic) is less resistant to acid attack than fluorapatite.
If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.”
Your imagination is running away again. Read the scientific consensus. Or, failing that, the citations I provided.
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soundhill,
Perhaps you can tell us why you are unable to cite harm to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
After all, with more than seventy years of data and research into the effects of CWF, your lack of citations makes it highly unlikely that CWF causes any harm to humans from drinking it.
If your “I am not making claims” insistence is indeed “just caution” then the absolute lack of evidence available in its support (millions of people, multiple decades…) would be indicative that the “just caution” is no longer warranted.
Initial opposition to the railways were concerned that humans would not survive speeds over 30 mph. In spite of the lack of evidence to support that concern, are you still exhibiting “just caution” and sticking to walking and horse riding like those people?
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“For the first 10 kg of weight, a child needs 100 mL per kg of weight.”
“Children who are vomiting, have diarrhea, are sweating excessively, or who are exposed
to extremely high temperatures, require even more fluids than listed above.”
Click to access 00037.pdf
Now Stuartg from your second ref
“Enamel fluorosis is observed in young children at fluoride intakes as low as 0.03 mg F/kg body weight,”
That would be 0.3mg for a 10 kg child, and at a fluoridation rate of 0.7mg/l its fluid requirement of 1 litre would inflict over double that.
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Stuartg: “If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.”
Your imagination is running away again. Read the scientific consensus. Or, failing that, the citations I provided.”
Thanks for reminding me about those citations.
Non-porous hydroxyapatite is not as resistant to acid as fluorapatite.
Due to the scattering of light at the interface between the apatite and any pores in it, porous hydroxyapatite would be translucent but not transparent.
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Stuartg’s second ref: “the effects of fluoride on ER stress require further study at lower doses.”
The endoplasmic reticulum is involved in many body processes.
As a doctor do you know how a person’s kidneys have to have their function considerably reduced before they present with symptoms? The kidneys have quite an amount of spare capacity. What percent would you say would be gone before a patient presents? Would a hard working sports person, like Jonah Lomu, notice the impairment earlier?
Would the number of hard working sports people in the Dunedin Study be sufficient for them to statistically significantly sway the population picture about any bodily development aspects where the ER may have affected reserves?
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Soundhill1: “Even if fluoridation were to be reducing suicide would it be doing it by some mechansim such as that other very light and reactive element lithium which though may dampen the affect may damage the liver?”
“The affect” there related to affection, and being sort of the set of emotions.
Lithium is used to treat manic depression but can result in death from failed liver.
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soundhill,
So, still no citations to support your evidence-free fantasies that CWF causes harm?
After all, more than seven decades of research, seven decades of data accumulation, multiple countries, millions of people benefiting, yet you’re still not able to find evidence that even one person in the real world has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
You can fantasise and speculate for as long as you like, but your inability to provide supporting evidence from the real world exposes those fantasies for exactly what they are: make-believe from your world of pure imagination.
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soundhill,
“Stuartg: “If tooth enamel without fluoride were more porous it also would not be transparent the way it is.””
I suggest that you read back. The reason I placed that phrase in quotation marks is because it originated with you. Don’t try attributing it to me. It has nothing to do with my opinions and everything to do with yours.
We note, yet again, your attempt at diversion from your inability to provide evidence supporting your claims. It still doesn’t work. It still makes you look foolish – your insistence that others produce evidence whilst you convincingly demonstrate that you are incapable of doing so yourself is somewhat injudicious of you.
You haven’t even acknowledged that your completely inaccurate evidence-free belief that fluoride damages ameloblasts has been shown to be wrong – by evidence available from the real world.
So, yet again, where are your citations from the real world that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to humans? Surely somewhere amongst those millions of people, decades of data, you can find evidence that even one person has been harmed by CWF? Or do we conclude that your “I am not making claims” assertations and speculations are the products of pure fantasy?
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Stuartg: “So, yet again, where are your citations from the real world that drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies causes harm to humans? ”
You are talking legal proof. Knowledge that the speed of train travel shouldn’t be feared indeed took a while to develop and legal proof of asbestos and lead injury took a while to develop.
Just because there may be no legal proof of fluoridation injury in NZ does not have to mean there to be no impairment.
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I think Stuart was actually talking about scientific proof â not âlegal proof.â One does not rely on lawyers when considering safety issues.
But you have certainly exposed your desperation n with this comment that absence of âproof of fluoridation injury in NZ does not have to mean there to be no impairment.
There is no proof there are fairies at the bottom of your garden â are you then going to use this absence to argue that they are really there?
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soundhill,
“Knowledge that the speed of train travel shouldn’t be feared indeed took a while to develop”
Certainly. It took one short trip lasting less than an hour.
Confirming Ken’s comment: I don’t have the knowledge of law or the legal system to make comments about legal proof. Unless otherwise stated, all my comments are, and have been, about scientific proof. (FYI, in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s why I keep mentioning science, the scientific method and the scientific consensus)
So how long do you think we have to wait for (scientific) proof that CWF does not cause harm?
Many countries (not just your insistence of NZ). Millions of people. More than seven decades. Even entire lifetimes. There’s lots of proof of the health benefits of CWF. There’s lots of proof showing how CWF works. There’s lots of proof showing that CWF does work. There’s even lots of proof of the financial benefits of CWF (But here I’ll take the word of others because I’m not an economist)
And yet you still have no citable evidence, despite those millions of people and those multiple decades, that even a single person worldwide has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Probably because CWF does not actually cause harm?
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Ken: “There is no proof there are fairies at the bottom of your garden â are you then going to use this absence to argue that they are really there?”
We tend to attribute things to fairies when we do not understand them such as the rate of infant language acquisition about which there has been much debate.
I think you left out “not.”
Just because Marie Curie did not scientifically know she was being damaged by nuclear radiation doesn’t mean she wasn’t being damaged.
Just because my observations are not as yet accepted in a scientific journal does not mean there is nothing in them. And Stuartg seems to want a much higher level of testing than is normally required for a pilot study. And what he is asking like for all sports to be tested does not work unless all those sports are played in as wide areas and for a similar long duration spanning years before fluoridation as rugby in NZ.
So my caution still remains.
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“Just because my observations are not as yet accepted in a scientific journal does not mean there is nothing in them.”
And it does not mean there is anything in them.
It is up to you to provide evidence – and arguing along those line is not evidence. It is simply an admission of lack of evidence and pleading for a free pass – the right to claim something as a fact when you have no evidence.
That is religion, not science.
You are demanding a free pass to scaremonger. You don’t get it here. You only get laughed at.
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Ken: “You are demanding a free pass to scaremonger. You don’t get it here. You only get laughed at.”
No I am just responding to Stuartg who is keeping on suggesting many times that because I have not provided peer-reviewed published evidence that there must be no effect.
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soundhill,
“Stuartg seems to want a much higher level of testing than is normally required for a pilot study.”
No. Just any testing at all.
Perhaps attending high school lessons in statistics, where you would learn what is actually required of a pilot study, would be of help?
Hint: a pilot study needs a larger, entirely new set of related data to test for non-coincidence. Looking at scanty numbers and saying “that’s odd” does not consist a pilot study.
But epidemiologists looking at multiple countries, over multiple decades, with millions of people involved, and finding absolutely no citable evidence of harm from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies, well that does provide some pretty compelling evidence that Community Water Fluoridation does not harm the populations that benefit from it. And the level of evidence from that science is much, much greater than that of a pilot study.
So can tell us why you are denying the science of thousands of experts? Why do you fantasise that the scanty numbers of your make-believe “studies” are so much more definitive than those thousands of experts?
Perhaps, not having learned the basics of science, statistics, logic and philosophy, you have succumbed to the Dunning-Kruger effect and your knowledge is insufficient to know that you lack knowledge?
Or maybe you’re just a science denier?
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soundhill,
You maintain “I am not making claims” protestations that Community Water Fluoridation causes harm – by impairing sporting performance in rugby, football, Olympic and probably other sports. To everyone but yourself, those are claims. You even provided a couple of dozen observations and called them “studies”, imagining they supported your claims.
Those are extraordinary claims, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So where is your extraordinary evidence? Where is even a single citation that just one person has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies?
All you have given us is make-believe fantasies based on some observations that would be consistent with the coincidences that occur in all sporting endeavours from time to time.
You need scientific evidence to support your claims, not fantasies from your imagination.
As I said before: “put up, or shut up”.
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soundhill,
Put another way:
I ask for the scientific evidence to support your claims that CWF causes harm.
You repeatedly demonstrate that you are unable to supply any scientific evidence in support of those claims.
As Ken says, the obvious conclusion is that you have a religious fantasy belief that CWF causes harm. You certainly don’t have any evidence from the real world.
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Brian – again you are demanding a free pass to scaremonger.. You say:
“because I have not provided peer-reviewed published evidence that there must be no effect.”
Your statement means either that you are completely inept at searching the literature or that there is no credible published evidence. If the latter is the case then according to logic and the normal process of human progress the best conclusion is that there is no effect.
We are theretofore justified in proceeding with CWF, always keeping in mind that new evidence may appear to cause us to review our consensus. And, no, you are not advancing any credible new evidence despite your hubris.
We do that with lost of things – if we didn’t we would have long ago expired as a species.
Your demand for a free pass is again rejected and I repeat – such demands just get you laughed at around here.
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Ken I am gradually extending back my list of All Black captains to compare who were born in Auckland before fluoridation started to after it started. You are keen for me to do multiple regression. What variables do you suggest?
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soundhill,
“I am gradually extending back my list of All Black captains…”
If the effect you postulate actually exists, then the effect would be seen among the full backs of the All Blacks, among the hookers of the All Blacks, the five-eighths of the All Blacks, indeed in every position of the All Blacks.
It would also be found among the captains of the All Whites, Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, Silver Ferns, Black Caps… And in every position of the All Whites, Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, Silver Ferns, Black Caps…
It would be found among the captains of all international rugby teams, netball teams, football teams, cricket teams, hockey teams… No matter from which country they originated. And found in every position of all international rugby teams, netball teams, football teams, cricket teams, hockey teams… No matter from which country they originated.
Actually, it would be found in every level of competitive sport in every country in the world and there would be no need for you to cherry pick your teams and players. It would be obvious in any team, any sport, no matter which level of competition.
Your inability to cite any evidence that even a single person has been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies is extremely good evidence that you will never be able to scientifically demonstrate the validity of your claims that CWF impairs sporting performance.
All your cherry picking does is to remind us that runs of coincidences are a feature of competitive sports, because of the vagaries of chance, and that we need to test any unusual run of results for non-coincidence before we can reach any conclusions.
You have approached from the opposite direction: you have reached the conclusion, as a religious belief, and are now obviously cherry-picking in the entirely erroneous belief that you are emulating the scientific process. You really need to go to those high school classes to learn exactly what the scientific process involves. It would help if you attended classes in statistics at the same time.
I’ve repeatedly informed you how you can get new information to test for non-coincidence, in the quantities that are needed for statistical significance. It would be extremely easy for you to gather the required information and then test for non-coincidence, but you haven’t bothered to do so. You actually have no idea why the scientific process requires you to do the testing.
Instead, your words tell us that you are examining each sportsperson as a single entity before deciding whether to include them in your make-believe “studies” or not.
It’s self-confessed cherry-picking.
But I guess that you are unaware of that because you haven’t even been taught high school statistics or science. The Dunning-Kruger effect means that you don’t even know what is wrong with your approach.
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Stuartg Ken asked for multiple regression. Are you going to deny their possibility in Auckland by not commenting?
I presume he would want them in every region/team if you require every team to be calculated for.
But you do know vaccines do not have to be proved in every person in every country before they are declared sufficiently safe. What proportion of the world was tested for Gardasil?
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Sruartg: “are now obviously cherry-picking”
No I am not cherry picking. You say “obviously” because your “religious” belief (if you are wanting to down grade religion) is that fluoridation could not be causing harm and when you see my figures you flail around looking to how to discredit them.
I am just reporting as I go along. As I said women’s rugby may not fit the pattern. It may not be so widely played. Ahead of my study I mentioned EQ and had the notion to look at suicide as one indicator of poor EQ, But I found it to be negatively correlated to fluoridation in US and NZ. Now because I suggest fluoridation may blunt emotions therefore it may reduce suicide, like the other compound of a very reactive very light substance, lithium, do you say I am cherry picking about that?
In most research the notion is about a positive result. Choosing what you are going to statistically check when it looks like it might be positive is not cherry picking. It happens to be the normal way of science.
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I forgot I had a bit of a look at Te Matatini which had a good representation from a fluoridated part of Auckland but a lot from unfluoridated areas.
May take a look at the Michael HIll International Violin Competition, live at the moment
http://www.violincompetition.co.nz/2017-competition/quarter-finalists/
It looks there to be not a good representation from countries largely fluoridated.
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Stuartg: “You really need to go to those high school classes to learn exactly what the scientific process involves.”
What text book do you recommend now?
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soundhill,
Bluster again? Is that why you’re attempting diversion to vaccines? It hasn’t worked.
All I did was suggest, long ago, that you test your observations for non-coincidence.
You didn’t test them.
So, I suggested ways that you could get larger amounts of new data that would be needed to test for non-coincidence.
You didn’t get that new data to test.
“when you see my figures you flail around looking to how to discredit them”. Actually, soundhill, I ignore them:
A couple of dozen rugby players from tens of thousands worldwide? That’s either cherry picked or coincidence unless further testing for non-coincidence is done.
Two football teams out of thousands in the UK? Out of tens of thousands worldwide? Again, either cherry picked or coincidental unless further testing for non-coincidence is done.
One rugby team out of a local league? Out of 18,000 teams worldwide? Yet again, it’s either cherry picked or coincidental unless further testing for non-coincidence is done
And now “I am just reporting as I go along” and “women’s rugby may not fit the pattern” – in other words, you’re examining each result and then deciding whether it fits your fantasy “pattern” or not. You are telling us that you are picking results and fitting them to a pattern!
If, as is likely in the real world, women’s rugby results don’t fit your fantasy “pattern”, it provides evidence to scientists and statisticians that your “pattern” does not exist. But that won’t matter to you; you will just ignore and disregard the contrary data.
As everyone but yourself seems to understand, first you get the data, in sufficient numbers (at least hundreds of data points for significance, out of the many thousands available, rather than the few non-random points that you think is sufficient), and once you have obtained the data, only then do you analyse it. You do not perform statistical analysis by “just reporting as I go along” …well, obviously you do, and that’s a marvelous way for you to introduce bias when statistics is supposed to be about elimination of bias.
If we step back and look objectively at the way you are approaching your “observations”, we see a few options:
You don’t understand about coincidence and why you need to test for non-coincidence (lack of basic knowledge about science)
You don’t understand how to test for non-coincidence (lack of basic knowledge about statistics)
You don’t understand why we have to use statistics in analysis (lack of basic knowledge about statistics)
You have a belief that CWF causes harm so there’s no way you are going to test your ideas for non-coincidence, and you will ignore anything that does not “fit the pattern” (your fantasy means that no amount of scientific evidence is going to influence your religious beliefs)
It’s obvious that your “self-taught” methods have sent you down multiple dead end byways that have many times been shown to be detrimental and useless in both science and statistics. Not having a teacher able to point out your most basic of errors has been a complete waste of your time. The textbooks you “self-taught” from were not rudimentary enough and you missed out on many of the basics.
So, soundhill, that’s why I recommend that you attend your local high school classes in science and statistics.
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Stuartg: “If, as is likely in the real world, women’s rugby results don’t fit your fantasy “pattern”, it provides evidence to scientists and statisticians that your “pattern” does not exist. But that won’t matter to you; you will just ignore and disregard the contrary data.
No just that women rugby players may not be selected from a wide enough geographical area. I have lived by a rugby club for many years and women do not play here except for touch in the summer.
Here is the proportion of Black Ferns to All Blacks that the provinces have produced. Mid Canterbury proportion looks high but it is only total 1 Black Fern 3 All Blacks to make the 33%
0.00% BULLER
0.00% EAST COAST
0.00% HOROWHENUA-KAPITI
0.00% KING COUNTRY
0.00% NORTH HARBOUR
0.00% NORTH OTAGO
0.00% POVERTY BAY
0.00% SOUTH CANTERBURY
0.00% TASMAN
0.00% THAMES VALLEY
0.00% WAIRARAPA BUSH
0.00% WEST COAST
1.35% TARANAKI
2.00% SOUTHLAND
5.88% WANGANUI
9.30% HAWKE’S BAY
10.00% NORTHLAND
10.53% COUNTIES MANUKAU
13.51% OTAGO
14.71% MANAWATU
17.57% WELLINGTON
19.25% CANTERBURY
24.19% WAIKATO
27.27% BAY OF PLENTY
30.27% AUCKLAND
33.33% MID-CANTERBURY
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The data came from this:
http://nzrugby.co.nz/about-us/our-members/provincial-unions
Stuartg: “So, soundhill, that’s why I recommend that you attend your local high school classes in science and statistics.”
But you are not offering the name of a text book. How do you know what is being taught?
Look back quite a few years when you may have taken UE physics. It could have been the PSSC course which attempted to introduce the scientific process Newton &c.
But a lot of kids found it too boring or hard and I think school physics went back to explaining principles and problem-solving didn’t it?
Mostly now when I look up about the normal distribution and physics all I get is about scaling up marks to get more kids to pass.
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Stuartg since you bring fear of train rides into the discussion I do not think it to be fair to stop me from bringing in vaccination statistics.
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Stuartg: “And now “I am just reporting as I go along” and “women’s rugby may not fit the pattern” – in other words, you’re examining each result and then deciding whether it fits your fantasy “pattern” or not. You are telling us that you are picking results and fitting them to a pattern!”
Yes or matching them up against a pattern to see if more fit or not.
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Stuartg: “Two football teams out of thousands in the UK?”
Stuartg you are forgetful.
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How about this for a null hypothesis?: “There is no difference between the fraction of All Black captains born in the area of Auckland which was fluoridated, before and after fluoridation.”
Or: “There is no difference between the number of Black Caps matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
But we already know there is difference.
Fluoride is said to have a different effect on female hormones compared to male.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-016-0726-z
It may decrease testosterone in men and increase it in women. Though the high level in this paper is higher than fluoridation level by a factor of 3 or a bit more:
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/20364589
Let’s take a null hypothesis that fluoridation has no effect on Silver Ferns captains.
Looking at the Sliver Fern captains and how many caps since about the time of fluoridation.
https://www.mynetball.co.nz/silver-ferns/history/captains.html
I am not right up with this but I’ll get some thought going:
—————————-born——————Fluor–caps
Katrina Grant 1987 Papakura 1 94
Laura Langman 1986 Hamilton 1 141
Casey Kopua 1985 Hamilton 1 101
Adine Wilson 1979 Hawera 1 79
Anna Stanley 1976 Christchurch 0 92
Julie Seymour 1971 Wigan 0 90
Belinda Colling 1975 Cromwell 0 92
Bernice Mene 1975 Christchurch 0 76
Lesley Rumball 1975 Invercargill 1 110
Sandra Edge 1962 Gisborne 0 94
Julie Carter 1975
Julie Townsend 1960 Waipawa 0
It looks like the null hypothesis might be destroyed with more caps to captains from fluoridated areas.
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soundhill,
That all sounds like special pleading to me – if you can’t make the data fit your “pattern” then you decide to ignore the data.
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No Stuartg, I said a while back that males and females might be affected differently.
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soundhill,
Let’s imagine for a few minutes that CWF does have an effect on sporting performance, and then contemplate what effects we would expect to see.
(Sorry about the length of this comment, Ken)
You’ve previously suggested a 10% deterioration in sports performance, but such an effect would be immediately obvious, being similar to the difference between high school sports performance and international representative sports performance. So exactly how much sporting performance deterioration do we expect from CWF?
If we look at the peak of performance, say your favourite of the All Blacks, then a change in individual performance of a mere 1% would be sufficient to drop a player out of the squad. It could be argued that so would a change of 0.1%; after all much less than 0.1% of NZ rugby players are in the All Black squad.
So, since you can name at least some All Blacks from CWF areas, that implies the change in sporting performance between CWF and non-CWF players has to be less than 1%, and probably less than 0.1%.
That tiny signal, if it existed, would be very difficult to pick out from random background noise. No scientist or statistician would expect to be able to pick it out from a random list of a couple of dozen players; it would need several hundred players chosen at random in order to have a chance to detect the signal. But then we all noted that your list is not a random list of players, but is actually a carefully chosen list.
So, your tiny list of All Black captains does not have the numbers to detect such small changes in performance, unless it has been cherry-picked precisely for that reason. Such a tiny list, if randomly selected, would only be able to detect massive changes of performance that were immediately obvious to coaches, spectators, journalists, etc.
That’s why I suggest that you need to test your idea on a much larger and random list. But if you knew the basics of statistics then you would already know that to detect such small changes in performance a random list needs to be much larger than a couple of dozen.
So, let’s get a larger list of randomised players, one that has a chance of picking out a signal from random noise. Or, more accurately, a chance of determining that there is no weak signal present among the noise. How large a list do we need? Well, you claim to be the expert at statistics so I’ll let you decide. But it’s going to be several hundred. At least. Not just your cherry-picked couple of dozen.
So you’ll need to look at all other positions in the All Blacks. After all, if that tiny difference in sports performance is really there from CWF, we can expect to see it in all positions in the team, not just the captain. Or are you arguing that the rest of the All Blacks are not at the peak of their sport? (And anyway, you claim the effect is present at much lower levels of sports, otherwise why did you mention Petone, Timaru, Birmingham City?)
If we look at the entire All Black squads since the start of fluoridation in NZ, will we have sufficient numbers to rule out the presence of a weak signal among the noise? Possibly, but I doubt it. I suspect that you are going to have to include other international squads to get sufficient numbers, which is why I previously suggested that you will need to look at the squads from England, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, etc.
But then again, if there really was a diminution from sporting performance from CWF, would we have to go that far? Is there another way? Wouldn’t we expect to see the same result in all All Black positions as you cherry-picked with the captains? Because even a slight diminution of performance would mean that almost no players from CWF areas would be in the All Black squad, wouldn’t it?
So, soundhill, what percentage of All Blacks would be expected to be from non-CWF areas if CWF impaired sports performance? 90%? 95%? 98%? Higher? I’ll leave it to you, as the self-taught expert in statistics, to work out which of those you would expect.
I’m not going to do the research for you, but a brief look at the All Black squad shows many members from Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin – all areas with CWF. The percentage appears to be nearer to 50%.
If there were any difference in sporting performance attributable to optimally fluoridated water supplies then it would be overwhelmingly obvious. To everybody. Not just to one electronic technician self-taught in science and statistics. More than 90% of the All Blacks would be from non-fluoridated areas. So would the Black Sticks. And the Silver Ferns. And the Black Ferns. And the All Whites. And the Black Caps… And the members of any international squad from any sport, from any country you care to name.
(Just a random thought – would anyone with dental fluorosis (meaning they’re drinking water with a higher than optimum fluoride level) be capable of playing any sport at international level? Wouldn’t that be in accordance with your ideas? Or do you go to special pleading again?)
So, we can reach some conclusions. The cherry-picked list(s) that you supply do not have the numbers required to demonstrate a non-coincidental correlation between CWF and impaired sporting performance. Findings that we would expect if CWF actually did impair sporting performance are not present. Findings from the real world are highly suggestive of no effect on sporting performance from CWF.
But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? You have been unable to produce any citable evidence that anyone has ever been harmed by drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies. Not from among millions of people. Not from multiple countries. Not from over seventy decades of research and data. Not even from your anti-fluoridationist cronies.
The lack of effect on sporting performance from CWF is just extending the evidence you are unable to provide in trying to bolster your “I am not making claims” assertions that CWF causes harm.
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soundhill,
“Fluoride is said to have a different effect on female hormones compared to male.”
Said? An opinion?
How about citing evidence showing harm from optimally fluoridated water supplies, rather than evidence of fluoride poisoning from water with toxic levels of fluoride?
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soundhill,
Netball captains:
Exactly how valid is a statistical analysis performed on just twelve people?
I’ll bear in mind that I’m asking the question of a self-taught, self-proclaimed, “expert” in statistics, so I don’t exactly expect an intelligible answer.
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soundhill,
“There is no difference between the fraction of All Black captains born in the area of Auckland which was fluoridated, before and after fluoridation.”
Or: “There is no difference between the number of Black Caps matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
“that fluoridation has no effect on Silver Ferns captains.”
All three different. And different, yet again, from your initial All Black “study”.
Why not use the same “hypothesis” for all three? Or four? Are the differences the only way you can fit the answers into your non-existant “pattern”?
Lots of little “observations”. None of them with numbers capable of reaching statistical significance. None of them able to be combined with another.
Yet all are labelled as “studies” by someone who demonstrably doesn’t understand the first principles of statistics.
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soundhill,
“But you are not offering the name of a text book.”
Because the textbooks you “self-taught” from previously were obviously not rudimentary enough and you manifestly missed out on many of the basics.
You need a teacher who can correlate your lack of learning with the level of textbook required. Then they would have to point out where you are fantasising that you have read something different to what was actually in the book.
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Stuartg: “Exactly how valid is a statistical analysis performed on just twelve people?”
A couple of those were born before fluoridation started in most places. So it’s really would be just 10 in any analysis. Same as with the Black Caps captains are holding on for quite a while. In both cases it is possible to think of the games as the variable. Then the statistics is a bit like tossing a coin for each game of which there are quite a number.
In the case of males the ones in non-fluoridated areas show up in many more games, while for females the converse.
Besides the restricted geographical areas the Black Ferns are arising from this sex-fluoride effect might be showing up for Black Ferns, too.
Why wouldn’t there be any sex difference? Sex differences can be obvious as for premature menopause after Gardasil. But sex differences don’t only show in obvious ways.
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soundhill,
“Look back quite a few years when you may have taken UE physics. It could have been the PSSC course which attempted to introduce the scientific process Newton &c.”
You’re making assumptions again.
At the age of 11, well before UE, I knew about and was using the scientific process. And Newton. At the age most sit UE, I was playing with the physics of fission and fusion. I’m still interested in physics today, it’s just not my job.
How do I know what is being taught in high schools? Because I work with high school children and help them at times when they have difficulties.
Not all education is capable of being taught from books, as you so obviously demonstrate, so the ideal way of acquiring knowledge requires human interactions as well as book learning.
Your local high school science teacher will advise you on the best textbook for your level of education, and they will expect to have to assist you with the parts you don’t realise you aren’t understanding.
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soundhill,
“Exactly how valid is a statistical analysis performed on just twelve people?”
I guessed wrong. It’s not an unintelligible answer. It’s not an answer.
Just what question do you think I asked? (Hint: it was about statistics).
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Stuartg: “Why not use the same “hypothesis” for all three?”
“There is no difference between the number of (a) All Black (b) Black Caps (c) Silver Ferns, matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
However it loses the possibility that Auckland’s climate may have an effect and controlling for that.
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soundhill,
“There is no difference between the number of (a) All Black (b) Black Caps (c) Silver Ferns, matches captained by captains from fluoridated areas to non-fluoridated areas.”
“But we already know there is a difference.”
Yeah, right.
“However it loses the possibility that Auckland’s climate may have an effect and controlling for that.”
No, it doesn’t.
For you it’s got to be fluoride. Nothing but fluoride. No matter that you have exactly zero citable scientific evidence in support of your idea, it just has to be fluoride. It can’t be any other reason, can it?
The captains of international teams come from non-fluoridated areas! All of them! Well, except for all rugby teams that aren’t the All Blacks. Or women’s teams. And maybe a lot of other teams as well. It looks a lot like cherry-picking, soundhill.
Fluoridated football teams don’t win as many games as non-fluoridated and they get demoted! Except for the ones that win more games and get promoted. And I’ll just ignore the non-fluoridated teams that lost games and got demoted. Looks like cherry-picking again, soundhill.
Non-fluoridated Petone wins more games after the rest of the league they play in gets CWF! Let’s not mention Onehunga and Mosgiel which didn’t start winning after the rest of their leagues got CWF. Yet again we see you cherry-picking, soundhill.
So. More than seventy years of data and research. Millions of people involved. Multiple countries involved. Thousands of researchers. Even multiple languages. And not a single citation demonstrating harm to an individual or to a population.
It’s exactly as if drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies doesn’t actually cause harm in the real world.
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Sruartg: “…Mosgiel which didn’t start winning after the rest of their leagues got CWF. ”
Taieri is the Mosgiel Club. I can’t find many results but Taieri seem to several times be the top team holding the Speights Challenge Shield for the Metro rugby. I would like to see history.
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Stuartg: “Fluoridated football teams don’t win as many games as non-fluoridated and they get demoted! Except for the ones that win more games and get promoted.”
Do you know of some teams from fluoridated areas which got promoted when in a league playing against teams from non-fluoridated areas? Please tell me which ones then I can calculate what happens on average.
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I wonder if Stuartg is able to avoid, when coaching school pupils, getting them to think it all has to be one way or one other way, and nothing in between.
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soundhill,
“I would like to see history.”
So would we all. In this case it’s called evidence.
You haven’t yet managed to produce any scientific evidence from the real world that supports your fantasies about CWF.
Tiny numbers from the sportsfield, incapable of producing valid statistical results – interesting, and short runs of coincidence can be expected, especially in sports, so why don’t you test them to see if they are coincidence or not?
More than seventy years of data and research from multiple countries, involving many millions of people, and absolutely no citable evidence showing harm to individuals or to populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Haven’t you noticed the cognitive dissonance that you hold? You consider a couple of dozen sports players to be absolute proof that CWF causes harm. Yet you also consider that the evidence from millions of people over multiple decades is insufficient to demonstrate lack of harm from CWF.
Clear demonstration that you don’t understand the first principles of statistics. Also highly suggestive that you are a science denier.
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soundhill,
“I wonder if Stuartg is able to avoid, when coaching school pupils, getting them to think it all has to be one way or one other way, and nothing in between ”
Like your fantasy that CWF causes harm? In spite of absolutely no citable evidence?
I’m prepared to accept that it is possible for CWF to cause harm. I just need to see some evidence of the harm.
In contrast, you say CWF HAS to cause harm, even though you have zero citable evidence of such harm. And remember – thousands of researchers, many countries, millions of people, and more than seventy years of data and research suggesting (not proving) no harm.
You definitely demonstrate a binary outlook on life.
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“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
https://todayinsci.com/S/Schopenhauer_Arthur/SchopenhauerArthur-Quotations.htm
Stuartg please keep that in mind.
You quoted me and replied:
““I would like to see history.”
So would we all. In this case it’s called evidence.”
You have made your pronouncement about Onehunga without evidence, then.
I shall try to get more Taieri results. Last year they lost the Speights Challenge Shield to Harbour, another region apparently without fluoridation.
http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/services/water-supply/metro-water-system/treatment-plants
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Ken: “Your statement means either that you are completely inept at searching the literature or that there is no credible published evidence. If the latter is the case then according to logic and the normal process of human progress the best conclusion is that there is no effect.”
“according to logic and the normal process of human progress” – an assertion of faith?
Discussion of peer review failure:
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Brian, you dihoestly deleted important aspects of what I wrote.
“We are theretofore justified in proceeding with CWF, always keeping in mind that new evidence may appear to cause us to review our consensus. And, no, you are not advancing any credible new evidence despite your hubris.
We do that with lots of things – if we didn’t we would have long ago expired as a species.
Your demand for a free pass is again rejected and I repeat – such demands just get you laughed at around here.”
You are demanding a free pass – arguing that absence of evidence supports your position because evidence may well turn yup in the future. Ignoring all the evidence against your position we currently have and may well get in future.
Now that does require faith – and if humanity had operated that way we would have become extinct long ago.
And as an argument it is completely dishonest.
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soundhill,
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” – Carl Sagan.
And, just like Carl Sagan, I rely on scientific evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
On one hand there is an electronic technician with no training in logic, philosophy, science or statistics who asserts that CWF causes harm in everyone who drinks it, yet is unable to supply any citable scientific evidence at all to support his protestations.
On the other hand there is the scientific consensus, reached by thousands of epidemiologists, dentists, and other researchers, that Community Water Fluoridation is cheap, effective and safe. And backing that consensus there is more than seventy years of experience, research and data, sourced from millions of people in multiple countries, which has failed to find scientific evidence of harm in either individuals or populations from drinking optimally fluoridated water supplies.
Which of the two is most likely to be correct? soundhill or the scientific consensus?
I would submit that with the current state of evidence it is self-evident that the scientific consensus is correct. It is likely to remain so, no matter how much soundhill tries to oppose and ridicule it.
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