Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 11


     
     1   MS. STEEL: My question is: "So, is that what you are saying?"
     2        A.  No.  What I am actually saying is that as soon as
     3        people try to embark on experiments, which were in the
     4        1970s, to confirm whether there was this relationship which
     5        appeared to be so strong from the population studies which
     6        had been carried out with the international studies, that
     7        inconsistencies appeared then.
     8
     9        Now, initially of course, there were still the enthusiasm
    10        for the results which appeared to be the case from the
    11        international studies, and the first studies which showed
    12        inconsistency, people said, "Well, maybe it is just the
    13        study itself of which there was some methodological problem
    14        concern" and so on, but it was only later on when more and
    15        more studies were carried out that the body of evidence
    16        grew that there was not just such a straightforward
    17        relationship.
    18
    19   Q.   When is "later on"?
    20        A.  This is a spectrum.  It is something that begins and
    21        then carries on.  It is not something which suddenly on
    22        Monday, 21st May one suddenly knows that this is the
    23        situation.  It as growing body of evidence.  It is not
    24        something which suddenly appears, that people began to
    25        re-evaluate, look more carefully at the scientific evidence
    26        that has been carried out, and then the studies where
    27        people get together, lots of different studies, and some of
    28        these statistical techniques which we call "net analysis",
    29        or they have called it "pooled analysis" where the
    30        statistics are able to gather together information from
    31        lots of different trials.
    32
    33        These sort of methods have only appeared in the last 5 to 7
    34        years where statisticians have felt happy about
    35        amalgamating results from different trials, so that it is a
    36        growing phenomenon, it is not something which suddenly
    37        appears on one day.  I appreciate it may be difficult but
    38        that is just the way things work in the scientific
    39        community, it does not just suddenly appear.
    40
    41   Q.   I am not talking about asking you for a specific date, I am
    42        asking for a specific or period of maybe a couple of years
    43        when the tide began to turn in your view?
    44        A.  Well, I think ----
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can you limit it to 2 years?  That is the
    47        first question?
    48        A.  I do not think I can limit it to 2 years, my Lord.
    49
    50   MS. STEEL:   Can you give us some kind of idea about what time 
    51        period you are talking about? 
    52        A.  Well, I am afraid I am going back to the time when the 
    53        original hypothesis was produced, because when a hypothesis
    54        is produced, and that is what it was at that stage, one
    55        then sets about trying to evaluate whether the hypothesis
    56        are genuine or not, and whether the results can be
    57        consistently shown to be reproducible and that is when the
    58        difficulties began, that what appeared to be a clear cut
    59        relationship has since become more and more confused as
    60        time has gone on, and it has been a changing pattern.  It

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