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Friday, July 6, 2012

A Nuclear Engineer Who Doesn't Understand Health Physics

Jim Muckerheide's name came up recently and I tried to find something recent from him, but I failed.  I did find this old (2000) video of him.  It's posted by LibertyInOurTime who is an anti-government extremist (comments disabled on YouTube).  We've encountered him and the organization in his video, Doctors For Disaster Preparedness (an anti-government group) before, when I pointed out the fallacies of Bernard Cohen.  Apparently this group loves to hear from anti-scientists in order to promote anti-government regulation propaganda.

The video is here.

Of course, Muckerheide gives us conspiracy theories, gotta have those.  But it's a whopper...the ICRP/NCRP/BEIR/UNSCEAR are all in on it!  HA! HA!  And makes claims of scientific misconduct, which is hard to prove.  (Towards the end even the nuclear power industry is in on the game, because they profit from "rad protection"!)


He says research refuting LNT has been terminated....no, there are some studies (like those he listed) which are over because they accomplished what they set out to do.  But the U.S. DoE is still studying low dose radiation effects, you know...that DoE that has helped fund new nuclear power plants!  Conspiracy I tell you!  And of course, lots of other studies have been done in the last 12 years by many independent researchers as well as his imagined co-conspirators (note that the people in these groups change over time, so it really is a whopper).


He gives some examples of radiation stimulating the immune system...ok, if I cut you I will stimulate your immune system.  Do you want to be cut?  


He mentions some study about cancer and county-level radiation levels, which I'm not familiar with, but based on his description it is likely to suffer from the ecological fallacy.  And then he mentions the Cohen study!  HA! HA!  (P.S. Soon after my post about Cohen the National Academy of Science put out their report about analyzing cancer risks around nuke plants.  Cohen gets "honorable" mention for employing the ecological fallacy).


He mentions "Don" a couple of times...that's someone else who has deserved a post.


Many of the studies he is referring to suffer from the healthy worker effect, and usually small numbers (see Chapter 4  in the NAS link especially the discussion on statistical power, page 165) making them statistically non-meaningful.

He claims there was a study in which K-40 was removed from natural potassium and cells didn't function.  I find that a very dubious claim.  K-40 comprises only 0.012% of natural potassium. Cell function is a result of chemistry, and K-40 is chemically the same as the other isotopes (chemistry is based on electron interactions, the potassium isotopes are based on neutron number).  But even if true, that wouldn't mean that K-40 doesn't contribute to cancer while also being necessary for cell function.  These are two different biological endpoints. He makes similar errors with other studies...confusing carcinogenesis (which is what LNT addresses) with other biological endpoints.

He plays the creationist tactic of playing the victim of the establishment and "not being heard".  No, you've been heard, your ideas are faulty, and you can't psychologically incorporate the criticism.  So now you are ignored.

Right at the end, he talks about the need to synthesize what we know about LNT, but when we do that, and get results that don't agree with his preconceived conclusions, all he does is group those people into his vast conspiracy.

Oh, and he's looking for donations!  (The website doesn't look too active!)

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