I first met Gofman and Tamplin about 35 years ago, at a faculty seminar at the University of California, Livermore extention, where I was teaching at the time at what was informally referred to as "Teller Tech" (the Department of Applied Sciences, E. J. Teller, founder and chairman). I was in my early thirties, it was the sixties, so I had a full-length beard. Gofman and Tamplin wore three-piece suits. They gave a seminar on their work on the health effects of low-level radiation, with a large fraction of the presentation spent destroying Sternglass's distortions of the British study of child-birth statistics in the late forties. At that time, they (G & T) held that below a Rad or so a year, there was no evidence that any health effects existed, and to prove any would require an entire planet-full of people not subject to cosmic or natural radiation for use as a control. The next time I met them was ten years later, while I was an expert witness for the NRC, and they were with the intervener. Our manner of dress had completed reversed - I was clean-shaven and in business suit, they tended to ornamental beads. In between, they had undoubtedly had some change of heart.
One of the most remarkable aspects of being an expert witness for the NRC was the difference with which the media treated the witnesses. I would explain the basis for the NRC's position on some safety issue, complete with facts and figures, having established my bona fides during voir dire (a little legalese there). The interveners would have a witness that would appear to be an embarassment, who would have a virtually unsupported opinion. When the hearing recessed, I would always be ignored, and the press and TV cameras would descend upon the interveners' people. From my impression of Gofman and Tamplin, they probably couldn't take being ignored. Why be ignored, when with their inteligence they could easily out-Sternglass Sternglass.
Just a casual observation.
Jacques