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> Thanks for the responses to my post. Please keep 'em coming. > I don't like > article titles like, "Well Water and Rural Living Tied to PD," > because that's > very misleading. It's like saying, "Urban Living and Tap Water > Prevent PD." > As someone who loves healthy rural living, and would just as > soon live as far > away from cities as practically possible (not practical at the > moment), I > resent misleading or sensationalized article titles. Now, if > the titles were > something like, "Manganese and Agricultural Pesticides Linked > to PD," then > going on to explain that some rural people could be at risk > through well > water, that would be an honest way of presenting the > information. Scott What about "smoking and alcohol prevent PD"? This is much more strongly established than any of what we're discussing here. The point is that we do not know what it is about rural living, well water, agriculture, pesticides, etc. that is related to PD. In statistics, whenever a large number of variables occur in the same population groups with a large amount of overlap, you can't tell which of them (if any) have a causal connection with some outcome. There is no strong evidence that it's pesticides, say, rather than "loving healthy rural living", because both of them occur in the same population groups or with enough overlap that you can't tell them apart. As for the "honest way of presenting the information", I would suggest that you are imposing a predetermined hierarchy of causal relationships not based on the data: "I don't like pesticides and I do like rural living, so therefore..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn