First of all let me say that the Paul Whitehead post of 07Feb96 is full of
ideas, concepts and starting points for productive discourse. I will
likely refer to it several times in my subsequent posts.
You say,
"In a sense we assess toxicity in small groups of
humans and extrapolate to populations. In this sense a human can be
regarded as a model for the whole population. Alternatively, the
animal is the model for humans."
and
"I think at this stage we should agree a definition of the word
'model'. The Oxford Concise does not appear to have one relevant to
this thread."
Let us make the distinction between a "model" as a surrogate as opposed to
a selected segment of a population. Let me propose that a "model" would
be used to move from one population to another e.g., an animal species to
represent another animal species (humans). Whereas, within a species, a
"segment" of the population would represent rather that stand as a
surrogate. If, for the purposes of our discussions, we can agree that a
"model" is trans-species and a "segment" is intra-species, then we should
have a clearer dialog; it may not be correct but we stand a better chance
of understanding the issues and each other, as well.
Any comments from observers????
