[ RadSafe ] Is there a way to quantify the effect of the fear and stress caused by the fear mongering

[Franz Schönhofer]

Clayton,

 

Thank you so much for your mail. This is one of the most valuable and
thoughtful ones I received on RADSAFE. I believe you can live with it, that
I (or others) do not support your ideas in all details – but for me, the
objections are really tiny!

 

I am happy anyway that during the discussion about Chris Busby the “good old
RADSAFE” has been revived, with clear discussions, statements, answers and
replies to them and nobody seems to be insulted because of a different view!

 

In the case of abortion I agree with you. One of your underlying facts seems
to be that probably the number of women being in such a situation is much
lower than the number of people exposed to poverty, alcoholism,
malnutrition, hopeless living circumstances in the closely affected areas.
Western Europe (including the former the Eastern block) cannot be compared
to the area of Ukraine or Bjelorussia. I would understand abortions in those
Eastern parts much better than in Western Europe. I do not know of any data,
and I would not be surprised if they were not available. Do not forget the
factor of education!!! 

 

There are so many other factors underlying the decision for abortion –
especially fear for social degradation, rising living costs and as mentioned
irrational fears distributed by mass media.

 

Thanks again!

 

Franz

 

Franz Schoenhofer, PhD

MinRat i.R.

Habicherg. 31/7

A-1160 Wien/Vienna

AUSTRIA

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Clayton J Bradt [mailto:CJB01 at health.state.ny.us] 
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. April 2011 21:01
An: rich at tgainc.com; llowe at senes.ca; franz.schoenhofer at chello.at
Cc: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Betreff: Is there a way to quantify the effect of the fear and stress caused
by the fear mongering

 

I would like to respond to three related posts:

Rich Gallego: "Is there a way to quantify the effect of the fear and stress
caused by the
fear mongering of articles like these? The Los Angeles Times had an article
this past Sunday on Chernobyl and it appeared that suicide and depression
were not insignificant effects of the accident. One has to wonder what
effect these exaggerated and erroneous proclamations have on the people
living close to the damaged reactors."




Franz Schoenhofer: "So my question to RADSAFE is, whether there are any
investigations known
about the psychological effects of the sensational exaggerations of the
massmedia and the constant absurd indoctrination with fear for life and
health. I cannot find anything like that in the two US papers I read daily
on the internet (Washington Post and USA Today), neither on Swedish
newspapers." 



Leo M. Lowe: "... one measure of the real impacts of the fear and stress
caused 
by Chernobyl is the number of 
induced abortions brought about by perceived potential birth 
defects.  The number of excess induced abortions in Europe due to 
this fear has been estimated in the tens of thousands, and even 
higher."  


Rich, Franz, and Leo,

I did my undergraduate work and a year of grad school in psychology - before
I wised up and eventually switched to physics - so I feel somewhat qualified
to opine a little on the subject of psychological "measurement". The
quotation marks are significant here because any measurement of
psychological data, that is behavior, can never claim more than nominal
scale status. Psychologists often attempt to measure behavior by counting
events, such as the number of abortions in a given population over a defined
time frame, and by doing so claim to have achieved ordinal scale data thus
allowing comparisons between populations and time frames. The more abortions
under conditions x,y,z, the greater the effect, etc. But this is an act of
self-deception on the psychologists' part because, continuing with our
example, each abortion is a unique event resulting ultimately from a
singular set of circumstances, motivations, stresses, etc. In order to count
events, objects, apples or oranges they must belong within a category of
identicals. Human behaviors (at least) are each a singular event because
behavior is determined by perception and perception is ultimately context
dependent. No two events occur in exactly the same context and therefore
cannot be counted as repetitions from the same class of object. 

In short, there is no legitimate way to quantify the psychological effects
of scare mongering or of any other behavior. Scare mongering, and the
spreading of dis-information are best handled with the tools of moral
philosophy, not science.

Clayton J. Bradt
Principal Radiophysicist
NYS Dept. of Health
Biggs Laboratory, Room D486A
Empire State Plaza
Albany, NY 12201-0509

518-474-1993

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