Comment on Cowlings "Spatial Methods for Line Transect Surveys"

Conjugate priors for Bayesian analyses of relative risks can be quite restrictive, because their shape depends on their location. By introducing a separate location parameter, however, these priors generalize to allow modeling of a broad range of prior opinions, while still preserving the computational simplicity of conjugate analyses. The present article illustrates the resulting generalized conjugate analyses using examples from case-control studies of the association of residential wire codes and magnetic fields with childhood leukemia.