Gofman and Tamplin

[Jacques.Read@eh.doe.gov]

 An earlier comment, oft quoted:

>Furthermore I cannot believe that the AEC asked somebody like Gofman to
>study levels of safe doses - would you please provide us with his findings?
>It is the privilege of scientists to research and to adjust their opinions
>according to the findings of research results. Since 1963 a lot has changed
>and so has the knowledge about the effects of low-level radiation.
>
In the late 1960s I was on the faculty of the Department of Applied Sciences, UC
Livermore/Davis, and Gofman and Tamplin were with the medical department at what
later became the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.  They were tasked with
collecting, reviewing and analyzing all available information on low-dose
radiation effects by the AEC, which funded the lab at that time.  At a faculty
seminar, Tamplin gave a presentation of their work to date -- which essentially
found no effects of very low doses -- and a critique of Sternglass's paper
alleging that weapons fallout was responsible for increased infant mortality in
the UK. Sternglass had actually taken a graph from a British Health Service
white paper that showed that as women who had been malnourished as little girls
during the 1930's depression came of child-bearing age, the infant mortality
peaked.  The graph showed infant mortality start rising in 1946, and then
dropping several years later.  The white paper was commissioned because Britain
had installed socialized medicine in 1946, and Parliament was rather surprised
when the first results of universal prenatal medical care were in the wrong
direction.  Sternglass had just cut the graph at the peak, not showing the
return to lower mortality, and presenting this as proof that fallout was the
epidemiological cause.

At that time, Gofman and Tamplin wore three-piece suits and appeared as sober
scientists and physicians.  When I next met Tamplin a few years later, he was
wearing beads and sandals, and was appearing as a witness for the intervenors at
a nuclear power plant licensing hearing where I was a witness for the NRC.  In
between, they had found that Sternglass had won.  The media believed Sternglass
and ignored Gofman and Tamplin, and I think that between those two meetings,
they found out that it was a lot easier to be heard if you cried "wolf" than if
you tried to explain how low the wolf-risk really was. Rather than being fired
for intelectual fraud Sternglass had risen to tenure, while Gofman and Tamlin
received no thanks for supporting negative conclusions. I saw a lot of this as
an expert witness for the NRC -- at public hearings some idiot would spout
nonsense as a witness for the intervenors, and the local press would mob him
after the hearing was over, ignoring the PhDs that had testified for the
applicant and the government.  I don't think Tamplin could stand being ignored.
Just a theory -- I could be wrong.



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