| Paul, The study focuses on mental alertness measured by performance on a complex word puzzle. The hypertension finding was a side finding that they went ahead and reported because it might be important. By using the controlled experiment, they were controlling for the other factors. The Harvard Physician's Heath Study was designed to look for all kinds of factors that impacted health. They measured hundreds of variables several times over more than two decades. The aspirin study was done when someone wanted to look at the effect of aspirin and discovered that the Harvard Physician's Health Study already had data that would let them look at the question. They used the available data to produce immediate results economically rather than doing an entirely new study that would be expensive and take a long time. Given the strength of the aspirin effect, it would not have required anywhere near 20,000 cases to show that the effect was significant. They chose to look at 20,000 cases because they wanted to be able to detect very small effects on health when they started the study. Given that they were looking for things that might cause people to die early, they decided that it was important enough to not have small differences statistically insignificant. pecan jim On Aug 27, 2008, at 11:54 AM, Paul Helbert wrote: <Snip> Homeroast mailing list Homeroasthttp://www.sweetmariascoffee.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemIdx20">http://lists.sweetmariascoffee.com/listinfo.cgi/homeroast-sweetmariascoffee.comHomeroast community pictures -upload yours!) :http://www.sweetmariascoffee.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemIdx20 |