[ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 1436, Issue 1

[Harrison - CDPHE, Tony]

>
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 18:15:28 +0000
> From: "Miller, Mark L" <mmiller at sandia.gov>
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Helen Caldicott letter in NY Times
> To: "The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing
>         List"   <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
> Message-ID:
>         <E549ABD603F24F4182F68C22F381869C32876DCE at EXMB03.srn.sandia.gov>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> How DID NYAS ever get duped into having their name linked to the "report"
> in the first place?
> Mark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: KARAM, PHILIP [mailto:PHILIP.KARAM at nypd.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 12:33 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Helen Caldicott letter in NY Times
>
> Also, it seems that the NY Academy of Science publication cited by
> Caldicott was not authored by NYAS - it was a translation of some Russian
> papers that was published by NYAS. So it does not reflect NYAS conclusions.
>
> Andy
>
> The NY Times had a nice summary of the whole chain of letters a couple of
days ago that included this comment from the NYAS website:

   1. "*In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or the
   New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its publication
   does the Academy validate the claims made in the original Slavic language
   publications cited in the translated papers. Importantly, the translated
   volume has not been formally peer‐reviewed by the New York Academy of
   Sciences or by anyone else...."*

*Postscript, 10:30 a.m.: Douglas Braaten, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of Annals
   of the New York Academy of Sciences, sent this noted addressing concerns of
   anyone who might wonder how the translation got published by the Academy in
   the first place:  "Under the editorial practices of Annals at that time,
   some projects, such as the Chernobyl translation, were developed and
   accepted solely to fulfill the Academy’s broad mandate of providing an open
   forum for discussion of scientific questions, rather than to present
   original scientific studies or Academy positions. The content of these
   projects, conceived as one-off book projects, were not vetted by standard
   peer review."*

The whole thing can be read here:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/helen-caldicott-chernobyl-and-the-new-york-academy-of-sciences/

including some interesting reader comments.

Tony Harrison, MSPH

Inorganic & Radiochemistry Supervisor

Laboratory Services Division

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

8100 Lowry Blvd.

Denver, CO  80230

303-692-3046 | tony.harrison at state.co.us