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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: Tylenol
Message-ID: <270@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Mar-86 15:44:49 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.270
Posted: Sun Mar 16 15:44:49 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Mar-86 02:29:34 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 25


>> they're *all* made at the same factory (in Puerto Rico) where
>> it would be a lot easier for some paranoid malcontent to modify
>> the contents before they're sealed.  Why couldn't this have
>> happened?  The reported line is simply that it didn't, or it
>> was ruled out.  Anyone know why?
>
>  Simple probability. Since they ARE all made at the same factory, the
>odds on two bottles tainted at the factory  showing up a few blocks away from
>each other, and so far nowhere else, are astronomical.

I'm not sure I buy this reasoning. In other words they make two cartons of
bottles and route one to (say) North Carolina and the next one on the line
to Hawaii?

It would seem to me very probable that if someone tampered with
bottles from two different cartons in a row (say during a few minutes
no one was watching) they would both end up in the same area (if not
the same store.) Not a proof of anything, but I don't buy the opposite
judgement on the probabilities as proving anything either here. (of
course you probably need some facts to break this argument, but for
now it seems to me one guess is as good as the other, and I doubt
anyone is about to hand us any facts.)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University