In <36364d09.86105438 at netnews.worldnet.att.net>
johnburgin at worldnet.att.net writes:
- - - - - - - -(snip) - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>Oh, so now if we, HEAL can produce 1000 healthy HIV+
>individuals(assuming they meet your definition of healthy, which
>obviously they won't) that STILL wouldn't be statistically
>significant?
> No test in sight. Try and stay awake, dear.
Maybe it would be, maybe it would not be. I tried to explain the
difference between "significant" in the sense of "significant of a
result unlikely to have been achieved by chance" and "significant" in
the sense of "important to many people, etc., etc." in a previous
response, and you jumped all over me in the belief that I am part of
the AIDS "cabal". I am not. As a neuropsychologist, I am interested
in AIDS dementia, and in the neuroimmune reactions which have an impact
on cognitive functioning in HIV+ individuals before the advent of AIDS
dementia, or even before a diagnosis of AIDS (they are relevant to my
chief interest, which is mild traumatic brain injury).
I am not involved in AIDS treatment and have no opinion on any
particular course of treatment, but I (like most people with some
scientific education) think that the claim that HIV does not cause AIDS
is just bizarre. If you want to say it does not "ALONE" cause AIDS, I
think you are stating a commonplace: for example of the 80% or so of us
infected with herpes simplex, only a very few are symptomatic, so there
are obviously additional factors of individual genetic variation or
life history involved. So what else is new?
We are not likely to be persuaded to another point of view by someone
so lacking in the most elementary understanding of science or of
scientific discourse as you seem to be. For starters: if HIV doesn't
do it, what does? Evidence??
MEANWHILE: The standard error of measurement (standard deviation of the
sampling distribution) lets us judge the STATISTICAL significance
(which you still don't grasp, despite your use of the term) between
this group and another group sampled from the same population but
treated differently.
F. Frank LeFever, Ph.D.
New York Neuropsychology Group
