IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v7y1987i1p71-80.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Statistical Issues in the Estimation of Assigned Shares for Carcinogenesis Liability

Author

Listed:
  • Louis Anthony Cox

Abstract

Congress is currently considering adopting a mathematical formula to assign shares in cancer causation to specific doses of radiation, for use in establishing liability and compensation awards. The proposed formula, if it were sound, would allow difficult problems in tort law and public policy to be resolved by reference to tabulated “probabilities of causation.” This article examines the statistical and conceptual bases for the proposed methodology. We find that the proposed formula is incorrect as an expression for “probability and causation,” that it implies hidden, debatable policy judgments in its treatment of factor interactions and uncertainties, and that it can not in general be quantified with sufficient precision to be useful. Three generic sources of statistical uncertainty are identified—sampling variability, population heterogeneity, and error propagation—that prevent accurate quantification of “assigned shares.” These uncertainties arise whenever aggregate epidemiological or risk data are used to draw causal inferences about individual cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis Anthony Cox, 1987. "Statistical Issues in the Estimation of Assigned Shares for Carcinogenesis Liability," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 71-80, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:7:y:1987:i:1:p:71-80
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1987.tb00970.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1987.tb00970.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1987.tb00970.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Louis Anthony Cox, 1984. "Probability of Causation and the Attributable Proportion Risk," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(3), pages 221-230, September.
    2. Louis A. Cox, Jr., 1985. "A New Measure of Attributable Risk for Public Health Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(7), pages 800-813, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bertram Price & Michael MacNicoll, 2015. "Multiple Interacting Risk Factors: On Methods for Allocating Risk Factor Interactions," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(5), pages 931-940, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan B. Wiener, 2020. "Learning to Manage the Multirisk World," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2137-2143, November.
    2. Fritz A. Seiler, 1986. "Assigned Shares and Combined Insults," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(3), pages 371-372, September.
    3. Bertram Price & Michael MacNicoll, 2015. "Multiple Interacting Risk Factors: On Methods for Allocating Risk Factor Interactions," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(5), pages 931-940, May.
    4. Louis Anthony (Tony) Cox & Edward Sanders, 2006. "Estimating Preventable Fractions of Disease Caused by a Specified Biological Mechanism: PAHs in Smoking Lung Cancers as an Example," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 881-892, August.
    5. Vincent M. Brannigan & Vicki M. Bier & Christine Berg, 1992. "Risk, Statistical Inference, and the Law of Evidence: The Use of Epidemiological Data in Toxic Tort Cases," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 343-351, September.
    6. Oskar Skibski & Tomasz Michalak, 2020. "Fair division in the presence of externalities," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(1), pages 147-172, March.
    7. Louis Anthony Cox & Paolo F. Ricci, 1992. "Reassessing Benzene Cancer Risks Using Internal Doses," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 401-410, September.
    8. Retzer, J.J. & Soofi, E.S. & Soyer, R., 2009. "Information importance of predictors: Concept, measures, Bayesian inference, and applications," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 2363-2377, April.
    9. Ricardo Martínez & Joaquín Sánchez-Soriano, 2021. "Mathematical indices for the influence of risk factors on the lethality of a disease," ThE Papers 21/02, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    10. Louis Anthony Cox, 1986. "Technical and Policy Issues in Assigned Share Calculations: A Comment on Lagakos and Mosteller," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(3), pages 373-375, September.
    11. Stephen W. Lagakos & Frederick Mosteller, 1986. "Assigned Shares in Compensation for Radiation‐Related Cancers," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(3), pages 345-357, September.
    12. Razia Azen & Nicole Traxel, 2009. "Using Dominance Analysis to Determine Predictor Importance in Logistic Regression," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 34(3), pages 319-347, September.
    13. Zhihong Cai & Manabu Kuroki, 2005. "Variance Estimators for Three “Probabilities of Causation”," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(6), pages 1611-1620, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:7:y:1987:i:1:p:71-80. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.