Question

Joletta thinks she knows how to cure cancer. A family member of hers had cancer, but he did not die. Joletta noticed that he ate a lot of peanuts, so she concluded that peanuts must be the cure for cancer. She writes a paper outlining her discovery, only to find that no one in the scientific community will publish her work. 

Why did the scientific community reject Joletta's "theory?"



A) Joletta was not recognized as a famous scientist.
B) Joletta neglected to mention how many peanuts he ate.
C) Joletta did not have enough data to validate her theory.
D) Joletta did not know how to write a correct scientific paper.

Answer 1

Definitely C) she did not have enough information to prove her theory to be right.

Answer 2

The right answer is C.

It would be necessary to increase the size of the population as well as to vary it (to take a population of diffiffent families). To avoid skew errors as well as random errors.

Increasing the size of the study sample (without affecting the precision and validity of the measurements made on the subjects) makes it possible to limit the sampling fluctuations and therefore the random error.

The fact of not varying the population exposes us to a false estimate of the association between exposure and disease taking into account a possible intervention of a factor outside the causal chain .