Rod Adams - Convenient Censoring

Rod Adams commented in the recent Conca blog which blamed Fukushima's evacuations on health physics.

Adams wrote his own blog criticizing me, but when I last commented there, he wouldn't post my comments.

That's convenient.  That's how cults work.  I could go back to Conca's blog, since he posted this there too.  But it's like arguing with Creationists.  Adams has essentially deified nuclear power and can't handle the science which contradicts his deification.  Give him too many facts and he'll censor you, which is exactly what Creationists do:

So, I'll just address his nonsense here:

(My comments in red, some funny paragraphing alignment happens on this blog)

"I find it interesting that you both date the LNT hypothesis to the work of a man who lived more than 100 years ago, and then claim that it is the central theory of low dose radiation health effects because of its statistical effect on DNA.  I'm glad you find it interesting.

You are aware, I hope, that scientists did not even know that DNA existed 100 years ago. People like Hermann Muller and Hugo DeVries had no way to study how DNA repair mechanisms work for complex, multicell creatures like human beings. True, I never said they did.  Darwin didn't either, yet we trace evolutionary biology back to him.

There was no way for them to begin to understand WHY Caspari’s (working in Muller’s own lab) experiments showed such dramatically contrary results that invalidated the LNT assumption. No, they did understand, you don't, but please continue....

Here is a brief history. Caspari was interested in determining if mutation rates really were related to radiation doses in a linear fashion all the way down to zero. He had studied Muller’s results and was aware of his linear, no threshold hypothesis. Like a good scientist with a questioning attitude, he wanted to validate – or invalidate – that hypothesis through a well-designed experiment.  Hey, wait a minute,  Caspari had no way to study how DNA repair mechanisms work...didn't you just try that silly argument against me?  

He used radium as the source of what was then considered to be low doses. He exposed large samples of fruit flies to doses of about 50 Rad (50 rem or 500 mSv) given at a lower rate (2.5 r/day) than the 100 R/min x-rays that Muller used in his own mutation experiments. Caspari’s experimental results showed that mutation rates for the exposed fruit flies were indistinguishable from the mutation rates in a similarly large control population that was NOT exposed.  True, all exposures suffer from an ability to discern the manifestation of the exposures as compared to an unexposed group which has the same manifestations.  This depends on the exposures, exposure rates, population sizes, and the biological endpoint being studied.  I discuss further below.

Muller was aware of Caspari’s results BEFORE he gave his Nobel Prize speech, but he ignored them because those results did not support Muller’s political desire to stoke radiation fear as a means of encouraging people to actively resist the atomic bomb testing program.  You don't know if he was aware or not, or whether he ignored them or not. Nobel Prize speeches are not very effective tools to broadcast a political message to the public.   They are given in Stockholm, Sweden and this was before the internet and cell phones. Even in the age of internet and cell phones, go query 100 random people about last year's Nobel Prize speeches.  I predict a majority don't know who the winners were, let alone what they said.  You know about that speech, because of Calabrese's propaganda campaign, which you also participated in.  Search this blog for more on him or read this.

In recent years, scientists like Feinendegen, Pollycove, Callabrese, and Neumann have learned how low doses of radiation stimulate (up-regulate) metabolic defenses and molecular repair mechanisms and how those defenses stop working only when doses exceed a reasonably high threshold.  No, their ideas have not gained the scientific consensus, but you cherry-picked them because they are making claims which support a pro-nuclear power agenda.  Cherry-picking is logically fallacious, but Creationists do it all the time, so you have company.

Obviously, the body up-regulates when it is endangered (radiation is perceived as a danger), and it only takes 1 photon to damage lots of DNA.  And most of the DNA is repaired or the cells die.  But in some instances the DNA is not repaired or mis-repaired, and it doesn't matter what the total dose is.  The bigger the dose, the more instances of non-repaired or mis-repaired DNA. The more non-repaired or mis-repaired DNA in your body, the greater your cancer risk.

Unlike Muller and DeVries, today’s genetic researchers can study DNA and detect the way that redundant repair mechanisms succeed. They can also study DNA in living organisms to find out that spontaneous DNA damage rates from many other influences exceed those caused by low dose radiation by 3 to 6 orders of magnitude. Oh good, I look forward to the scientific consensus changing!  But it hasn't for over 100 years!  It's like a Creationist stating that evolution is about to go by the wayside even though it's over 100 years old.  

 Now let's look at what Pollycove said more than 15 years ago....see Pollycove here from 1997, stating that LNT is dead (at 6:00 minute mark).

          Review photo above.

Adaptive response works. Doses below a single whole body dose of 100-150 mSv (10-15 rem) and below a chronic dose rate of about 700 mSv/y (70 rem/year) are safe and even somewhat beneficial to human health. Unlike the situation of 50 to 100 years ago, we now have the tools available to test and validate those numbers.  Yes, there is a phenomena called adaptive response which we find in certain narrow situations.  "Safe" is a subjective term.  We can quantify the cancer incidence risk from radiation, and the low dose radiation  risks are low compared to most other risks encountered in life.  No, radiation is not beneficial.  At 70 rem per year, over 50 years, that's (7 x 50 x 1% risk increase per 10 rem) = 350% increased risk of cancer.  Most intelligent people would consider that risk too great, but you may not.

        High doses of radiation are dangerous and must be avoided. Fortunately, we can detect radiation at                 levels far below the harmful level with a high degree of confidence. Yes, in fact we can see it damage DNA and we can see the cell either die, repair itself, not repair itself or misrepair itself.  The latter two categories are harmful, because in our current theories of carcinogenesis, it's genetic mutations which lead to cancer. 

We do not need to tremble in fear of ionizing radiation as a silent killer; by conducting simple measurements we can learn when levels are safe and when they are high enough to cause concern. We can go about our lives in confidence and make good use of Nature’s gift of exceedingly energy dense fuels that do not destroy our shared atmosphere. I never promoted trembling in fear.  I promoted the science which gives us the risk estimates.  It doesn't make pronouncements on what is safe or not.

Of course, people whose wealth and power are based using any energy source other than nuclear energy or those whose prosperity is based on getting paid large sums of money to PROTECT people from the imaginary danger of low doses of radiation (I’m looking at you, Bob) will continue to spread FUD and hope that no one notices. I'm not making any money protecting anyone from the imaginary danger of low doses of radiation. I have no problem getting paid to perform health physics work to protect people against the scientifically based risks associated with radiation.  I want doctors, industrial hygienists, nurses, etc. doing the same for other risks. You probably don't have much of a problem with other risks, just that associated with your deity.  It's like a religious person who doesn't accept the thousands of gods invented by man, but he can't accept an attack on his particular god, and he can't see the irony.  I am pro-science across the board, you are a health physics denier because you have deified nuclear power.

People who understand the science of radiation health effects and its potential economic impacts must effectively resist the fossil fuel, “renewable energy”, “smart grid”, conservation and radiation protection sales efforts with facts and science.  In other words, we need to listen just to you?  Right?  Look up "narcissistic".

Many powerful people have a lot to lose when the rest of us figure out that we have been duped into believing a failed hypothesis that produces INCORRECT results when applied to radiation doses in the range of possible variations in normal background.  LNT in its simplest statement is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a narrow idea that must be testable.  So if I hypothesize that more and more radiation lends to more and more cancer, I can do an epidemiological study on a-bomb survivors and see whether or not it supports the hypothesis.  It does.  

          But we know we can't epidemiologically discern exposed and unexposed cohorts at SOME low dose level.  In the 1960's we could only discern increased cancer incidence between the two groups at a dose of 100 rem (and people like Pollycove were making claims of a threshold then).  Today it's down to about 20 rem (review the photo above again).  No matter how low the dose is, where we can say with 90+% confidence, that any cancer incidence increase is due to the radiation dose, some idiot will say that's an effect threshold. 

 I can't measure the global temperature increase from one pound of CO2, does that mean that one pound doesn't trap infrared radiation?   Of course each pound does.  Every molecule of CO2 traps a tiny amount of infrared radiation.  We just can't MEASURE the global temperature increase against the temperature variations caused by water vapor, solar output, planet's orbit, etc. unless we have lots of CO2.

          Since we know that a direct epidemiological statistical threshold will ALWAYS exist (though the value may change), we need an explanation (a theory) of what is going on below that threshold.  A scientific theory depends on many hypotheses (narrower ideas proven to be true or false, we learn from both).  A scientific theory cannot be proven true, it can only be and must be capable of falsification.
    
          LNT theory, is the compilation of all those hypotheses and is described here for free (but we know you won't read it, it's blasphemous to your ideology).

          The DoE spent over a decade and $100M trying to falsify LNT theory with the Low Dose Radiation Effects Research Program.  They failed to do so.  (I would give you a link, but the webpage isn't there, they may have lost funding).

  It is incredibly empowering for human society to recognize that we already know how to design resilient power plants where three large reactors can melt at the same time without exposing anyone to harmful levels of radiation. We’ve had that knowledge for nearly 50 years; we just did not conduct the validating experiment until March 11, 2011.  "harmful" is another subjective phrase.  How about "radiation at levels of low relative risk"?"
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I'll post a link to this blog on his, and we'll see if it gets published.  Since I don't censor, any followup commenting will only be done by me at this blog.