[ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 764, Issue 2

[Steven Dapra]

Oct. 5

         On Oct. 4 in the "Rational Thought" thread you (Busby) 
wrote, "Do you have a referenced study?"  Do you have a referenced 
study for your claims below?  And I don't mean something you conjured 
up.  All you have is some anecdotal evidence and a report on Al 
Jazeera.  The latter is not exactly a referenced study.

         Sternglass did cherry pick the data.  See Samuel McCracken's 
analysis of his claims in "The War Against the Atom," pp. 122-133.

Steven Dapra


At 02:26 PM 10/5/2011, you wrote:
>The heart attack point was predicated on the work of Yuri 
>Bandashevsky who carried out work in the Belarus areas where 
>children were contaminated by the Chernobyl fallout. This was 
>epidemiology. I dont know how many children are suffering in Japan, 
>just that some mothers have contacted me with description of 
>symptoms: there was a item on Al Jazeera. But thats not 
>epidemiology. What I did do was some calculations about Cs137 
>content of heart muscle and the number of heart muscle cells. I dont 
>think you know about what Sternglass did. There was no cherry 
>picking of data, and his work was published in peer review, as much 
>of mine is. If you want to knock it, you should also publish in peer 
>review. What Sterngalss did ( and Robin Whyte in the BMJ in 1990 who 
>followed it up) was to look at a graph of infant mortality in UK and 
>USA and notice that after the weapons fallout the infant mortality 
>suddenly increased. I fail to see how that is cherry picking. It 
>conforms to the causalit
>  y requirements of Sir Austen Bradford Hill (Principles of Medical 
> Statistics 1961)  who is generally recognised as being the gold 
> standard in these affairs. Please explain.
>Sincerely
>Chris
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu on behalf of Harrison, Tony
>Sent: Wed 05/10/2011 19:32
>To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
>Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 764, Issue 2
>
>Sternglass got his results by cherry-picking data, as do most of the 
>other researchers you cite.  It's impossible to tell if his work is 
>correct or not, but the odds are against it.  Like your claims of 
>heart attacks in Japanese children, it's not science, it's pushing 
>an agenda through pseudo-scientific obfuscation, designed to impress 
>the scientifically ignorant.
>
>
>Tony Harrison, MSPH
>Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
>Laboratory Services Division
>303-692-3046

[edit]