RE: This has gotten out of hand

["Grant Wilton" <gwilton@chem.swri.edu>]

Dear Neal,

You're absolutely right, we all need to step back and decompress from this
adolescent name calling.  It is easy to get drawn into a "debate" with
someone who comes to the table with a limited kmowledge base.
Unfortunately, the nature of the media beast is to report pop and sizzle and
not hard data.  The public's eye and ear are caught by titillation i.e
"meltdown", "mushroom cloud", "radiation sickness" and not by terms such as:
"linear no-threshold", "hormetic", "stochastic/non stochastic".  I myself am
not a Health Physicist but a radiochemist who in the course of my work has
taught basic radiation safety to environmental laboratory technicians.  A
majority of the people whom I have taught have been college educated and yet
they maintain an unwillingness to open their minds to Health Physics.  The
mindset is: "I don't care what you say or what research has been done, "all
radiaition exposure is bad".  Then they go back to their lab and breathe
Methylene chloride for 8 hours a day.  In a nutshell, people will believe
what they want to believe about radiation and no amount of education will
reverse this.  For some ignorance certainly is bliss.

The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone.

Grant Wilton
Senior Research Scientist
Southwest Research Institute
gwilton@chem.swri.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
[mailto:radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu]On Behalf Of ZAPP, NEAL (JSC-SD)
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 9:14 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: This has gotten out of hand


Hey gang,
	I've really enjoyed reading much of what has come across from this
list, but I've really had enough.  As a relative youngster in this field,
it's been fun to have a forum I could share with some of the authors of my
old classroom texts, as well as a place where I thought I had a chance to
see some ideas 'tossed around' by some really extraordinary people.  I just
don't feel that way anymore.  I've seen more time wasted (who's paying you
people to write to RADSAFE three, four or five times everyday, anyhow?)
arguing obvious points than I would have thought mathematically possible.
Now we're all practicing law.  I think the antidote to these very long,
drawn out, over analyzed discussions is two-fold:  1) return to first
principles (seems like I've heard a scientist or two say that from time to
time) ; and 2)  quit this list before it causes my eyeballs to actually rot
out of my head from frustration watching this monumental waste of
intelligence and talent, and the abasement of a profession that I (and I
know now that I don't speak for some of you here) actually enjoy being
involved in.  I'm attaching a short list of principles that I think
represent something like a common sense approach:

	1)  Don't argue with a lawyer.  Would you have a bite-fight with a
cobra?
	2)  Don't expect that a lawyer has to know anything about what he's
working on.  Lawyers care about what they're paid to care about.  That's the
job.  He knows it.  You know it.  I know it.  Doesn't make him a bad person.
Just makes him have opinions on things he may or may not have the technical
merit to comment on, because again, that's his job.  If you don't expect
differently, you won't be disappointed.  Recognize that you're (at least in
the case of Mr. Slavin) talking about a member of the bar that has told at
least the people on this meaningless email list server that you no longer
should have to prove something harmed you in order to collect damages from
that entity, because the research didn't show what his clients would need to
show in order to collect.  So obviously the research was flawed.  I too know
some of these researchers personally (and I'm lucky to be able to say that),
and while that wouldn't make me lie on their behalf (go ahead, now attack my
character, why stop now?), the fact that they wouldn't ever want anyone to
lie makes me say that their data was beyond reproach.  Group, you wouldn't
get upset if your young child came in and told you an eight-foot Martian was
at the front door, so don't let this guy upset you.  This should be beneath
us.  At least in my young naivete, I would hope so.  If his point of view
was based on proven fact, rather than innuendo and suspicion, he wouldn't
argue at all, he'd smack down his proof and end the discussion.  Period.
	3)  Respect your colleagues.  Not because it benefits you at all
right now.  Because you should.
	4)  Try and answer a question with
(drumroll...........................) an answer.  It really doesn't have to
be this hard.
	5)  There's a balance to be struck between dose-response and margin
for safety.  Not everyone will lie on the same side of the fence here.
That's good, compromise is usually better than what I would have done on my
own.  Stop saying that people who don't think what you think are stupid.
Doesn't say much for you when you do that.
	6)  If groups like ours argued less amongst themselves, people in
the public probably wouldn't come away with the impression that as a
discipline we haven't put a dent in this problem, and they probably wouldn't
be so afraid of the word (ready?) "nuclear" that they're willing to spend so
much money being "reasonable" about minimizing whatever physical quantity is
parading as exposure this week.  If they got the message that we know as
much as we do, rather than constantly hearing us argue over the things that
we don't, they might decide on a different definition for "reasonable".
Again, I admit this is a naive point of view.  But I like my optimism a lot
more than the alternative.  Like I said, I like coming to work.

I don't expect anyone to care what I think.  I'm young, relatively
inexperienced, and I've got basically a big mouth.  But I care about what I
do, I work hard, and I'm absolutely fed up with listening to people (whether
they know what they're talking about or not) argue that their point of view
is the only point of view on a subject that cannot yet be proven to any
confidence.  There's a big difference between a technical discussion and a
character debate.

Nice job.  The tough part is that I can't be only person getting off this
list right now, and like I've said, I used to get some useful information
from here.  Don't worry, though, I'll hang around long enough to see who
wants to try and whack the young guy.

Neal Zapp
NASA/JSC, Radiation Biology

Anything I may have posted here has not come from anyone other than me,
and so is not anyone's problem but mine.  Any opinions of mine are only
mine.

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