Re: In Flight Radiation / Analytical thinking about risks

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

>The tradeoff was: you are at greater risk of lung cancer in the smoking
section (rear) but at greater risk of death in a crash in the front part of 
the plane (non-smoking).  So what is the probability of a plane crash v. 
getting lung cancer?  As we got more and more into this, we noticed people 
edging away from us and frowning, probably thinking "What kind of nut cases 
are on this plane?"
---
We are probably many here on Radsafers who run into these types of tradeoff 
discussions professionally (and we do find them intellectually challenging 
and interesting). Many among the broader general public OTOH don't 
understand this level of discussion which obviously is about smart decision 
making. Often we can't answer these questions but as a first step we at 
least recognize them as issues for consideration.

A lot of people just think that consideration of "A risks vs. B risks" is 
all silly and continue to drive without safety belts, smoking etc - they 
never got used to thinking in terms of statistics, facts etc. They have a 
balance between the emotional and brain cortex (maybe less developed 
analytical thinking - the fact storage function may still be there with lots 
of facts about supermodels, ice hockey results and other data of low 
importance for public health) sides of their minds that often is skewed 
towards the emotional and which blocks the cortex function ("we shall have 
no uncontrolled atoms flying around - period").

A strange side is that some people may be very rational at work but still 
seem isolated from certain kinds of logic or analysis. I know a lady who is 
very organized in the kitchen and easily can handle alone a lunches and 
dinners day after day for 60 people - doing everything efficiently - knows 
exactly where things are and has a built in timer about everything - but she 
also smokes heavily (hypothesis: "Smoking makes you organized...").

One day while taking a cigarette she looks at me and says "smoking can't be 
dangerous - what do you think?" (she had heard that I am involved in cancer 
research - she is out in the countryside far away from any academic 
institutions). I don't remember the details of the lecture I gave but it was 
probably a brief comment like "try to cut down on the smoking - it is good 
for you" but I asked myself: "What is the problem here? How can anyone avoid 
all the information about smoking and health hazards?". Part of the answer 
is of course that we have different sources of information - another part is 
probably about selective intake & perception of information. I have met 
people who say that they never read any newspaper article that contains 
numbers (I doubt that this is true for certain sports), "strange units" or 
graphs & diagrams.

My personal ideas and reflections only,

Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cdervall/

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