Re: Breast Cancer Increases: sign of increasing testosterone

Phillip Bigelow (bh162@scn.org)
Wed, 20 Nov 1996 19:08:26 -0800

James Howard wrote:

> I sent my hypothesis of high testosterone and low DHEA in breast cancer to the
> Journal of the American Medical Association, Feb 4, €94. It was rejected.

A sincere suggestion:
Post a copy of your submitted AMA research paper draft on a website
(NOT a modified draft sanitized for the web, but the *exact* draft
that you sent the AMA journal). That way, we can all see exactly
what you wrote, and compare it to the later published work by others.
You do have a copy of your old submitted draft,...... don't you?.......

> Later, in 1994, two reports connected high testosterone and low DHEA
> in breast cancer in women: "Abnormal Production of Androgens in Women with
> Breast Cancer," Anticancer Res. 1994, 14: 2113 and "Hormonal Profiles in Women
> with Breast Cancer," Obstet. Gynecol. Clin. North Am. 1994; 21: 751.

Wait...are these your papers or someone else's? Oh well, it doesn't
really matter.

And then we can compare your rejected draft with the content of
these later published papers, and see if your science was
rigorous enough.

I am getting the feeling that you are running that time-honored
(but lax) proceedure known as the "Spagetti Strategy"
(also known as the "Shotgun Strategy").
You throw a bunch of wet spagetti against a wall, and see what sticks.
Or, you pepper your target with shotgun pellets and hope at least
one pellet hits. In other words, if you put forth enough different
testosterone-"X" correlations, statistics will eventually give you
a hit. So far, I have counted at least 5 different testosterone-"X"
correlations that you have submitted here. It may be that the other(?)
authors you mentioned (above) simply did better science than you did.
After all, rigorousness in methodology counts as much as does the
idea itself (and, often, methodology counts for much more).
<pb>
p.s. I hope you are not going to turn into another of those disgruntled
Elaine Morgan/Ed Conrad types, who claim that there is a
campaign by the professional community to systematically ignore their
work?
If so, then please resume taking your Thorazine and lithium and go on
a vacation.