Idiots
Don Surber points to this example of the government spending money for the chil-dern:
AUSTIN — Only two athletes tested positive for steroid use among some 10,000 Texas high school students tested this spring, raising doubts about whether state lawmakers will renew the $3 million-a-year project at current levels.
The testing company’s preliminary results are based on an estimated 10,407 students who were tested since February, when state officials launched the random steroid-testing program mandated by state lawmakers. National Center for Drug Free Sport is expected to release a formal report later this summer.
Let’s extract the crucial data, shall we?
- The State of Texas spent three million dollars on a steroid-testing program.
- The State of Texas tested 10,407 students in this program.
- Two students out of those 10,407 total students tested positive.
Don calls it steroid hysteria. I call it do-gooder idiocy. And the biggest idiot?
I pushed this important legislation through the Legislature because I knew it would deter our young people from wrecking their bodies and putting their lives at risk by using illegal steroids. And these test results clearly show the deterrent is working because young people know they can’t use illegal steroids without getting caught.
Breathtaking.
rightwingprof :: Jul.02.2008 :: Idjits :: 2 Comments »
I wonder what the false-positive rate on those tests are. If you test “all’ the kids (actually, just the ones in sports), surely even a false-positive of .05% is going to brand someone a steroid user who actually is not.
Good luck to them and their family at getting their name cleared.
That sort of this is also why I am against mass testing for AIDS, like they are proposing in New York City. Too many false positives and if you use (I think it’s called…) Bates’ procedure, you find that it’s really not that great an idea.
D’oh. “Bayes” theorem, ricki, not “Bates.”
Been too long since I taught stats…