User talk:CraigHughes

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Flu
Please read wikipedia policy on no original research and verify-ability (WP:NOR and WP:V). This is a perfect example of a case where Wikipedia policy prefers a secondary source over a primary source. You say "(The peer-reviewed pubmed citation discusses influenza-related mortality only; no hospitalizations, and mean, not median deaths. Median is far lower if you look at the underlying data.)" It may well be that the Office of the President and CDC and NIH all made a mistake that you caught. Or there may be reasons not in the single source you are using for their use of terminology that Wikipedia is quoting. WAS 4.250 23:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not clear to me why political agents and agencies are preferred over scientific research; and not my research, but every paper I've seen ever on this subject -- I have seen numerous papers and statistics over the years from sources including the CDC and NIH, published widely, which show again and again that the 30k to 36k per year number is a mean and not a median; I have not seen one source other than secondary sources which misquote the primary sources because they don't know the difference between an "average", a "median" and a "mean" claim that 30,000 people are dying *every* year in the US from influenza. If I cared at all about Wikipedia's accuracy, I would think it'd be important to have the article state what the actual facts are, rather than parroting the same mis-statements about the research which occur again and again from the halls of the White House to the non-scientist ranks of the CDC to the press and other media outlets thanks to the lack of mathematical understanding of 99% of humanities majors who tend to write things like press releases.  I frankly don't have the time or inclination to pull together a long list of papers which confirm the "mean = 30k" thesis, and if I did, I'm sure that'd just be "original research" again and not deemed worthy of invalidating some dumbfuck in the white house website staff who doesn't know that "mean" and "annual minimum" are not the same thing.  But I don't really care; I just thought someone else might. - unsigned


 * Please read WP:NOR; or else understand without reading it that since anyone can edit Wikipedia our credibility rests om sources and saying "cause Craig Hughes says so" provides less credibility than what we are looking for. Further, the numbers involved change based on numerous factors such that "average", "median" and "mean" misinform more than inform. Surely you are aware of the concept that one can "lie" with statistics. WAS 4.250 07:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Portola Valley seal.png
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