Have you noticed the great numbers of people who cannot wipe their own behinds without first consulting some "study"? A recent study shows that ... people who eat eggs have higher levels of phlogiston in their warts. A recent study shows that ... people with lint in their navels are more susceptible to UFO rays. A recent study shows that ... people who eat large amounts of fruit become more fruity. What ever happened to thinking?

It took the U.S. Army 17 years to discover that the best emergency burn treatment was the application of ice or very cold water. Singe the rear on your neighbor's cat during the winter and you'll find the critter burying its tail in the nearest snow bank. Humans never seem to learn from experience or even attack a problem logically and cannot act as intelligently as that neighbor's cat without seeking counsel.

A well known radio doctor mentioned recently that people who eat raw carrots and prune cake don't seem to have as high a rate of colon cancer as do people who still have their third molars and wet the bed. How did he know that? A study! That's how. But what is a study anyway?

First, they grab a batch of people who are "representative" of the population. In America, this means one gay, one married man, one Mexican, one cross-eyed virgin, one Torah reader, three juvenile delinquents, Whoppie Goldbug, a senile priest, an AIDS carrier, and so on. Biologically, this hodge podge represents nothing in the real world yet the "tests", or whatever, draw conclusions about some "average man" which belongs in a comic book. Rat experimentation might tell us something about rats but unless your ex-wife is one, you'll learn absolutely nothing. Besides, the rats which are used for laboratory examination are as IDENTICAL GENETICALLY as Science can cultivate them. The human "samples" are as far from this as a garbage dump is from a surgeon's autoclave. Yet -- IMPORTANTLY --, the inbred white rats still interject a variable which would not be tolerated in any hard science. One example provides an illustration.

Years ago, Carbide and Carbon Chemical Company marketed a non-ionic detergent under the tradename Pluronic L42. As is done, it was tested upon laboratory rats for safety -- not the rat's safety for most of them died during the wondrous data collection. L42 was introduced into their diet until some of them started dying. When 10 percent of the rats died, the amount of L42 given was divided by the body weight of the rats to give an "LD ratio". In this case that number was labeled the LD10 ratio which means that the LETHAL DOSE which killed 10 percent of the rats was something or other. This was continued all the way up to 100 percent yielding a sort of function. Thus, the Nobel Prize winning discovery was this: What percentage of the rats do you wish to kill? Once a loving number was chosen, the chart would indicate the extent that their food was to be laced with L42. Since these rats were "scientifically equal", then why didn't ALL of them die? Moreover, those "scientists" simply CANNOT PREDICT which rats would die and which would not. Their advice, relative to a particular rat is thereby useless beyond the mention of a probability. "If you choose to flavor your tea with a teaspoon of L42, then you have a 20/80 chance of dying." Will it be the 20, or the 80? NO ONE KNOWS, yet this sort of "advice" is taken on a personal level by batches of trusting people as a CONCRETE FACT for their PARTICULAR SITUATION. More sickening yet, is that this nearly useless information is then transferred to a human population with a genetic variation as broad in scope as Harold Stern's degeneracy. This is a pure, unadulterated, and asinine, faith in a "study" which is as valuable as a box of old bus tokens.

To continue with this exercise in "science", suppose that "x" milligrams of L42 per gram of body weight would kill 20 percent of the rats during the first trial. The data I have shows that ALL subsequent trials varied by no less than 28 percent from each other. The conclusion I draw is that no one could tell for sure how much L42 was needed to kill 1 out of 5 rats.

Perhaps you'll recall those long ago blasts of DDT -- the wonderful breakthrough which would rid us of pesky insects -- used on the flies of the island of Mindanao during WW II. The first application killed 99 percent of those genetically identical flies. That left 1 percent which survived to breed. (If some survived then they couldn't have been 'equal'.) Soon, there were as many flies as before. DDT was used again but it only affected 89 percent of the flies. Today, the flies of Mindanao use DDT as chip dip.

Studies are to the medical profession as documents are to historians. When to comes to "studies", caveat emptor. A little common sense goes a long way.