In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Szasz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This thread Mr. Neal is objecting to began when Mr. Sandle disputed >the results of the so-called "crack baby literature" as summarized by >resident talk.politics.drugs toxicologist Dr. Peter Proctor, >apparently because they disagree with his preconceived notions >regarding the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on subsequent human >development. The completely bizarre and illogical bases for Sandle's >challenges have already been noted. My guess is that both sides in this "debate" are "arguing" for pre-conceived notions. However, Mr. Sandle's contributions do not appear to me to be "bizarre", nor any more illogical than those of his opponents. For example, his hypothesis that having a "crack baby (or 4 year old)" causes socioeconomic stresses, so that controlling for socioeconomic status is not a correct procedure, appears to me to be rather dubious (in that the effect seems unlikely to be large enough to be a problem), but it certainly isn't illogical. In an actual debate, his oppenents would offer counter-arguments, or even decide to control for socioeconomic status BEFORE the child's birth. However, it seems that that's not the way things work in talk.politics.drugs, at least with respect to one poster. Radford Neal ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Radford M. Neal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
