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From: adp@hp-sdd.UUCP (Tony Parkhurst)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: Tylenol
Message-ID: <135@hp-sdd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 12:49:18 EST
Article-I.D.: hp-sdd.135
Posted: Mon Mar 17 12:49:18 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:26:06 EST
References: <270@bu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: adp@hp-sdd.UUCP (Tony Parkhurst)
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego
Lines: 30

In article <270@bu-cs.UUCP> bzs@bu-cs.UUCP writes:
>
>>> 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.)

The impression I have is that the two different stores in question are supplied
by two  *DIFFERENT* warehouses.  This would give credence to the probabilities
argument.

			Sparky