Cranial Size and Intelligence Link

[humanino]

Your answer is apparently a resounding YES.

Nope. Never said that. I said, with regards to lethality, a widespread product cannot take such a high risk. 1% of consumer dying would be far above acceptable level for instance. However, 1% of likelihood for a scientific result, does that look acceptable to you ?

 

[Moonbear]

If you can produce a scatter diagram with the data, you can determine a correlation coefficient. I am not claiming anything about the licensing prodedures of the FDA. The simple question is whether a drug would be licensed if it had that kind of correlation. I asked a similar question with respect to whether or not readers here would undergo elective surgery, if they believed that the correlation between that operation and severe impairment could be represented by a correlation coefficient of .2.

My point is you can't produce a scatter diagram with the type of data you suggested. Instead, you'd have something along the lines of drug vs placebo or new drug vs currently approved drug, and for each, you'd have incidence of reported side effect as your dependent variable. So you're just creating an argument with no validity because it doesn't fit with the way real data are collected or analyzed. If you're thinking of this differently than that, please demonstrate the type of data you're envisioning would be collected for such an analysis...feel free to make up a fictitious data set if it helps illustrate the point.

 

[Mandrake]

My point is you can't produce a scatter diagram with the type of data you suggested.

Yes, I agree. I understand your point. Correlations relate variables. I picked poor examples, since I was suggesting a binary outcome, such as survival or death. In order for a correlation to be used with respect to a drug or a medical procedure, there must be two variables. In the context of my comments, one of the variables would have to be an outcome. When the outcome is a parameter that is measured over a range, it is unlikely that a life and death situation exists. I presume outcomes that would apply to these categories may be things such as vision acuity, lung capacity, blood pressure, IQ, hearing acuity, physical strength, etc. All of these are measurable over a range.