RE: 700 cancer cases caused by X-rays

["Stabin, Michael" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

As with the AJR article "reporting" excess cancers in pediatric patients

who may have received higher than necessary CT exposures, or other

publications that use LNT to hypothesize excess cancers from low level

radiation exposures, shouldn't such submissions be rejected during peer

review for violating the basic principle, taught in every sophomore

engineering class, of not extrapolating beyond the bounds of the

observed data? If I submitted an article to a journal saying I had

tested some detector over a given range, and then claimed that the

detector would surely work perfectly at a range two or three orders of

magnitude below my measurements, it would be rejected (at least that

claim would have to be removed). The use of LNT to set *policy* outside

of the range in which excess cancers can clearly be demonstrated is

necessary at present and reasonable. But its use to define *science*, in

peer-reviewed literature, seems much less defensible.



Mike





Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP

Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Vanderbilt University 

1161 21st Avenue South

Nashville, TN 37232-2675 

Phone (615) 343-0068

Fax   (615) 322-3764

Pager (615) 835-5153

e-mail     michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu 

internet   www.doseinfo-radar.com



 



-----Original Message-----

From: Fred Dawson [mailto:fd003f0606@blueyonder.co.uk] 

Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 2:07 AM

To: radsafe

Subject: 700 cancer cases caused by X-rays





     The Times reports



                  January 30, 2004



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-982118,00.html

                  700 cancer cases caused by X-rays

                  By Sam Lister



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