Re: Love Canal: Understanding nonscience

["jjcohen" <jjcohen@PRODIGY.NET>]

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

  From: <RuthWeiner@AOL.COM>

  To: "Carl Speer" <rtrs@cox.net>; "'Mercado, Don'" <don.mercado@lmco.com>; <NiagaraNet@AOL.COM>; <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

  Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 11:51 AM

  Subject: RE: Outdated Love Canal reference from Weiner - Dapra is..



  Ruth,

      Because you are a scientist, and apparently a pretty good one, I can see why you may have trouble understanding the problems in accepting the Love Canal study published in Science, the Carey report, and other studies indicating no significant health consequences. From the perspective of the  concerned and passionate nonscientist, it is easy to dismiss the assessment and "scientific" mumbo-jumbo in these reports simply because they reach the wrong answer.

      To understand why the answer in wrong, just look at the events of the time when the news media abounded with horror stories predicting dire consequences and hoards of government officials and bureaucrats spend enormous funds "investigating" the situation and concluding that evacuation of the area was necessary. Surely such measures would not have been "necessary" if the situation were not extremely serious. I'm afraid that convincing the public that the whole thing was just one big mistake is no longer possible, particularly in light of the commonly held belief that is was all caused by greedy corporations seeking to increase their profits. In such a mileau, science, as we know it has little chance to prevail.    Jerry Cohen







  > One of the points made in the article was that the study was done 10 and 20 years after exposure, precisely in order to encompass a latency period.

  > 

  > In my extreme scientific naivete, I was assuming that peer review was still the "gold standard" for science, and that the peer-reviewed portion of SCIENCE magazine -- the Reports section -- was still considered a first-class scientific journal (I am sure AAAS wuld be surprised to hear otherwise).  

  > 

  > I might point out that, in 1981, I, too, was surprised by the articles findings, but I accepted it as as a solid, well-documented study.  But then, I didn't have an agenda.  And actually, I don't now. I haven't seen anything in SCIENCE (or any other peer-reviewed journal that I read) that contradict's the study's findings. Can someone point me to a PEER-REVIEWED study in a reputable scientific journal that refutes the 1981 study I cited?

  > 

  > Ruth Weiner