Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Some useful statistics
From: garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 17:18:37 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Keywords: From: decay@

In article <BrsKID.85w@news.cso.uiuc.edu> slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer) writes:
#garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:
#
#
#
##I don't claim omniscience, Kellmeyer.  
#
##I have discussed the Reardon "study" here many time before.  I
##really hope that you are not challenging my claim that his
##sample was hopelessly biased.  
#
#Well, if you'd bother to read his book, you'd find that he points out
#when he's using WEBA as the basis for data and when he's quoting 
#published reports that did NOT use WEBA members.  No one, including
#Reardon himself, claims that the WEBA sample is other than self-selected.

I have read Reardon's book.  Have you?

I have also seen people claim, in this forum and elsewhere, that
the WEBA sample is not biased.

#Note, however, that Reardon did a LOT more than just survey WEBA members.
#He does an overview of the literature, showing where and how literature 
#sources back up the experience of WEBA members, and how they sometimes
#mysteriously "miss" the members of this half-million member organization.

I will have to wait until I can get to the library to check these
claims.  

#You, however, focus only on the WEBA data, and claim that Reardon said
#things he did not say, so that you can knock the straw-man down.

I will also have to wait to have a copy of the book in my hand
to refute this.  
##I will, in time, research the morbidity/mortality claims by
##Hilgers and post the results.  (I can't promise instant results,
##but I will do the research.)  
#
#For someone who does not claim omniscience, you sure act like you have it. 
#I have a post in which you
#specifically say that Hilgers studies have been refuted.  NOW you say
#you haven't even done the research which backs up your claim!!!!!!!

I have done the research before.  I have read the CDC paper which
challenged Hilger's statistical methods.  Unlike some here, I
wish to have citations to back up my claims.  If I had not
already read them, I wouldn't know that they existed.

#You claimed to know how Operation Rescue training sessions
#worked (though you never attended one) while you were unwilling to
#make any assumptions about why an abortion counsellor would passively
#lie to a customer about her baby's heartbeat.  I'm trying to be nice
#and assume you have some sort of omniscience that applies only to
#facts presented by pro-lifers. The alternative is that you are a liar.

I have been to an O.R. training session, Kellmeyer.

Your little terrorist group has been infiltrated to such an
extent that you have no secrets.  I would hazard a guess that
I am not the only reader of talk.abortion who has attended
such a session.  (I know how to don a dowdy dress, pretend
to be subservient to men, sing endless hymns, and shout
"Yes!" at Randall Terry.)

#I might also note that the article I posted with statistics about 
#abortion contained exactly ONE (1) reference from David Reardon's
#book.  That reference was a footnote whose calculations were based 
#on a half-dozen studies published in medical journals and by state
#medical agencies.  Those journals and articles were included in the
#reference. My post contained quite a lot more references besides. 
#So again, you construct a straw-man (implying that the
#bulk of my article was based on Reardon's WEBA research) and try 
#to knock it down.  

No, I was just challenging the portion of your article that
I knew to be based on poor scientific methods.  You've decided
that this translates into a challenge to your entire article.

##Just out of curiosity, do you read articles and books which
##challenge the validity of anti-abortion studies?
#
#More to the point, do you?

Is that a yes or a no?

I have read Hilgers, I have read Reardon, I have read the Willkes'
pathetic attempts, and I have read Terry's rantings.  I've read
Grant as well.  I've read a book by the FFLA, and I've read
countless contradictory pamphlets.  I keep reading pro-force
literature, both to spot obvious attempts to twist facts and
to gain insight into a point of view which is foreign to me.

Susan


Newsgroups: talk.abortion