Deadly radon in Montana? a rebuttal to dr. larsson

摘要

I would like to thank Dr. Larsson for her thoughtful reply. Dr. Larsson raises the issue of possible confounders, which of course is a legitimate concern. However, I was questioning the claim that radon is deadly in Montana, rather than a claim of radon + confounders. Consequently, I looked only at radon. Still, as Cohen notes, large data inputs from ecological study designs help to reduce the effect of confounders to the case-control level (Cohen, 1990). Dr. Larsson correctly notes that my (one-time) use of the term “low radon” in my original reply is not accurate, and that Montana has only the high and medium radon categories. In the remaining instances in my original reply, I did however use the term “lower” radon counties, that is, lower radon than the high radon counties.