When analyzing a newspaper research article, the reader must be very careful what conclusions are drawn from the study. Bennett, Briggs, and Triola (2009) urge caution about drawing conclusions of causality when evaluating any research, given that studies are typically designed to look for causes. The article by Montgomery (2012) looks at nonsmoking women who have been diagnosed with lung cancer and the available research to examine potential trends and causes. This article uses statistical procedures and draws some causal conclusions, but statistical significance is either lacking or not stated. The statistical procedures that are used within this article are very basic using population parameters and sample proportions. The sample size is cited as 200,000 Americans being diagnosed yearly with lung cancer, of which 15% or 30,000 are nonsmokers. Two-thirds of the 30,000 nonsmokers are women. An additional study done by Wakelee, Chang, Gomez (2007) was also cited to further validate this statement. Cancer rates ranged from 4.8 to 13.7 per 100,000 men in one year, versus 14.4 to 20.8 per 100,000 women in the same time period. These results are cited as a potential function of statistical probability, due to women being noted in general to smoke less than men. This probability statement is flawed as the smaller sample size may in fact inappropriately skew the final findings. The relative frequency method according to Bennett, et al. (2009), is determined by counting the number of times an event occurs. Since this sample proportion is the only data available in this article, the author is also using it to parallel the results to the entire population, which may be an incorrect assumption. In addition, this article attempts to validate the hypothesis that cancer rates in nonsmoking women are higher than
