RE: Cannot have it both ways

["Fritz A. Seiler" <faseiler@NMIA.COM>]

Dear Jerry,



I agree that the public is not completely irrational.  The enormous cleanup

cost are probably

unavoidable.  What bothers me every once in a while, and here I am in the

good company of

others like Ted Rockwell, is that we are not all as lily white as we would

like to be where the

misconceptions of the public are concerned.  ALARA itself is not a bad

concept, but once it

is pursued down to ridiculous levels of accuracy, i.e., below the minimum

significant risk, it

then becomes a practice of bad science. Remember that Joe Alvarez and I have

shown ten

years ago that the statistically minimal significant risk lies just above a

risk of a few percent,

and that using even a radiation cancer risk as low as 1% makes the risk

value much smaller

than its error!  I think that our professional community needs to be

reminded every once in a

while of the memorable quote of Carl Friedrich Gauss:   "Nichts beweist

wissenschaftliche

Ignoranz besser als übertriebene Genauigkeit im Zahlenrechnen!"  or

translated into English:

"Nothing proves scientific ignorance more conclusively than excessive

precision in numerical

calculations!"



Have a nice rest of the weekend,



Fritz

  *****************************************************

  Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.

  Sigma Five Consulting:       Private:

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  Los Lunas, NM 87031         Tome', NM 87060

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  "This is the hour when democracy must justify

  itself by capacity  for effective decision, or risk

  destruction or desintegration. Europe is dotted

  with the ruins of right decisions taken too late."



  "America's Responsibility in the Current Crisis"

  Manifesto of the Christian Realists. May, 1940.

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

  From: jjcohen [mailto:jjcohen@prodigy.net]

  Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 11:35 AM

  To: Fritz A. Seiler; LNMolino@AOL.COM; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

  Subject: Re: Cannot have it both ways





        The public is not completely irrational. Given that the government

requires massive expenditures to clean up trivial quantities of residual

radioactive contamination, how can we suggest that consequences of any

"dirty bomb" events would be no big deal?