He first redirects the viewers' attention to another study that MIT is engaged in regarding nuclear communication. That's like a magician wiggling the fingers on one hand to distract your attention, while he performs "magic" with the other.
He tells us that MIT is swayed by the fact that they have a Nuke Engineering Dept. He asks, in contrast, how many universities have solar or wind engineering dept's.? Well, very few. Because solar and wind engineering usually fall within existing dept's. At MIT much of it falls within their ME dept.:
"Energy science and engineering - Fundamental and applied research in thermodynamics; reactive flows and combustion; heat and mass transport; micro and nanotechnologies; batteries, fuel cells and electrochemistry; photovoltaics; off-shore wind energy; engines and transportation; cryogenics; and efficient buildings. Focus on high efficiency low emission systems, CO2 capture and renewable energy. "
So, no, there is no pro-nuclear bias in academia, except, perhaps, within the nuclear engineering department.
As he gets into the study, he highlights the 5 week time frame, as if it wasn't in some sense sufficient. Sufficient for what? The paper tells us:
"An exposure period of five weeks was chosen to reach a cumulative dose of 10.5 cGy, because ~10 cGy of ionizing radiation delivered acutely has been shown to affect DNA damage endpoints."
So 5 weeks was sufficient to reach the cumulative dose endpoint.
The MIT study was conducted at 3 mGy/dy to reach the 10.5 cGy target.
The Tanaka study was conducted at 1 mGy/dy but reached the lowest total dose of 125 mGy (12.5 cGy), which didn't take two years, obviously. Longer irradiations, leading to higher doses, took up to two years, but those aren't relevant in a comparison with the MIT study. The goal of the Tanaka study was to derive a Dose & Dose Rate Effectiveness Factor, which was a different goal than the MIT study. This study used spleen cells, which the MIT study used (but they used other biomarkers and detection methods as well).
And when Goddard plots the unexposed mice with the exposed mice, there isn't much difference, at the 125 mGy mark which is about where the MIT group was at. And like I wrote in my original post, he concludes there weren't enough numbers of mice in the MIT study (after talking to his scientist friend - why not just tell us that in the first 10 seconds!).
The fact that Englewood misspoke in a related press release is unfortunate, but not a part of the MIT study.
He then misdirects again by looking up Chernobyl chromosomal damage. The point of the MIT study was to look for damage at a very low, very continuous dose rate up to a certain endpoint. The Chernobyl studies aren't likely a match for comparison, so he never pulls one up. He pulls up the Fucic paper, which includes other contributors besides Chernobyl, but due to the nature of the data it's hard to compare to the MIT study, though Goddard attempts to. Internal contamination will behave differently than external gamma radiation, and it's hard to know the uniformity in time and space of those doses.
I'm NOT saying that radiation doesn't cause chromosomal damage, it does. In fact it causes sub-chromosomal damage. I'm just saying MIT tried to detect the damage under very unique conditions, and they didn't, but it's not surprising. Chernobyl environmental conditions were not similar to MIT's engineered environment. The researchers should also understand that cancer can result from sub-chromosomal damage, and that to find any damage may be below statistical DETECTION thresholds. But they're researchers, they may be lacking an awareness of the political implications of their statements.
And to close Goddard scares us with the ominous sounding Geiger counter....a welcome relief after his droning.
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