[annelizly]

probably???

come on! I'm sure they didn't spend one second looking at any other reason.

[CAWats]

I'll drink to that.

[Kirkwood]

"come on! I'm sure they didn't spend one second looking at any other reason."

And what other reasons could there be?

[SAJ]

Importantly, nearly all of the fall was probably due to reductions in exposure to passive smoking, the researchers, from the University of Turin, concluded.

To any legitimate statistician, ''probably'' is no valid conclusion at all, under any set of conditions. Either one can establish a correlation between event X and event Y, with other variables controlled within reasonable limits, or one cannot. If neither of these conditions obtain, and one still wants to pronounce some sort of ''conclusion'', then ...

...one is full of shjt, and is nothing other than a bogosopher passing oneself off as a statistician.

The fact that this ersatz ''study'' was published in Austin is, frankly, also a tipoff to its incompetent execution and ''conclusion''.

Don't flame me here, Texas FReepers. There's been more ''statistical'' BS emanating from UT @Austin in my adult life than from any other institution west of the Hudson and east of San Bernadino.