A Useful Job For Epidemiologists

Since the number of useful applications of epidemiology are growing smaller, we need to find useful employment for them before they milk our governments dry with possible claims of potential health problems. As readers of Junkscience and Numberwatch well know, the number of health concerns that we should actually be concerned about is tiny. Each day another data dredge is published by publicity impoverished pseudo scientists picked up by gullible media managers and fed to an equally pliable public.

Let's find them real jobs. Instead of allowing them to suck up public funds creating scare after scare, let hand them over to the advertising industry. The desire to purchase goods can easily be seen as a disease. The factors that define the group that will buy a particular item can be seen as causes. They can do all the data dredging they want and present it to their new masters for testing. They will face a little problem though. The advertising industry will test their hypotheses almost immediately. "More study needed" won't work for very long, because if their infinitesimal relative risk factors (identifying good advertising risks) don't pan out properly, they will be told to hit the road.

Chances are that some aspiring Epidemiologist did try this and may have realized the spurious nature of small relative risk factors and run quickly back to the warm embrace of of public scare compaigns.

Silly me.

*** It should be noted that epidemiology is a tool that is quite useful in the proper circumstance. An epidemic is something larger than 5 cases of any disease. It is another example of sorites paradox as so aptly explained by John. This is good for epidemiologists, because they can define an epidemic as 1 or even 0. ***

Homeopathic Dilutions:

A simple calculation to find out how much of a 30c solution I must ingest in order to get 1 molecule of the substance into my system.
30c means that a solution has been diluted 1 part per hundred 30 times.
This can be represented by (1/100)^30 or (1/10)^60.
If I assume that the 1 molecule is elemental Hydrogen which has a molecular mass of 1 grams/mole.
Avagadros number (the number of atoms/molecules in a mole of a substance) is 6.022 X 10^23, we will make it 10^24.
To get 1 Kg of Hydrogen I need 1000 moles -> 10^3.
The mass of the earth is 6 X 10^24 kg -> 10^25 kg
So 10^24 molecules/mole *1 mole/1 g H * 10^3 g/kg * 10 ^25 kg/earth =10^52 molecules/earth.
I need 10^60 molecules to reach the point that I can start to think that I might actually ingest a little hydrogen.
This means that we need 10^8 earths (100,000,000) in order to ingest 1 molecule of hydrogen. Keep in mind that I was extra generous to the homeopaths. The molecules they use don't weigh 1 g/mole.

Considering that 30c is not as efficacious (according to the fanciful practictioners of Homeopathy) as a 200c dilution (10^400 and a good bit more than the mass of the universe), one wonders why any one of us is every sick. We must be ingesting all the antidotes to all the maladies all the time just by breathing.
Of course I don't have faith (being an atheist), which may explain my lack of belief in nonsensical concepts.