Response to Cohen's $2500 offer

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Ron Kathren wrote:

> Bernie --
> 
> You've probably thought of this, but it occurred to me that many of the
> counties with high radon levels are located in areas which have high
> percentages of individuals who lead so-called 'clean' life styles (such as
> LDS and SDA), and who spend more time outdoors than indoors.   The latter
> could actually result in reduction of exposure. Could this be a factor?
> Also, were such factors as snow cover and soil moisture, which inhibit the
> emanation of radon from the soil, considered?
> 
> Ron Kathren
> 
> PS  Forget about the $2500; if what I suggested has any merit whatsoever, I
> will be pleased to have made a contribution.  As for the bucks, they could
> better be kept by you or given to some deserving charity.

This fails. Reading Bernie's article shows that such presumed correlations
don't exist. (Although such "presuming" is the sole basis for the LNT.  :-) 
This implies that Pittsburg and the Monongahela Valley, etc, etc. are now
"clean"?  And the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are "dirty?  :-)  Bernie tested
correlations that could show such relationships; and his data is available for 
you to test any others you think better. But note the extremely strong
correlations from this massive database, and the limited effect of actual
significant changes (like the limited effect of eliminating all of CA, FL, and 
AZ for the effect of retirement migration). He has so much well-defined data
that he does, and you can, perform credible subset comparisons as "separate
studies" to test such comparisons (download the data! do it yourself!? don't
just accept the disinformation of the committed linear model interests!) 

How do indoor radon measurements/correlations get affected by snow cover/soil
moisture? :-)   This kind of unscientific rationalization pervades the
questions and questioners of Bernie's (and others') rigorously,
scientifically-developed, results. Others pick up such pejorative "questions"
and treat them as serious scientific questions and even uncertainties,
supporting the linear model campaign to raid the public purse.  :-)  

Did everyone see John Stossel's 1-hour "Junk Science" program on Jan 9?
showing, among many others, EPA's Times Beach dioxin scam, spending $100s
millions buying the town and still burning dirt (as a worker said, "pissing it 
away"), while he visited a healthy Seveso Italy 20 years after one of the most 
massive human and environmentally devastating chemical accidents in history
with dioxin contamination 10,000 times higher than Times Beach, where they put 
down a foot of dirt (and buried the whole plant) and live life as usual
(including food and water from the ground) with no adverse health effects, as
all of the knowledgeable scientific community know (starting with Bruce Ames,
etc etc). 

EPA runs the same deal with radiation and radon, with DOE, NRC, etc. They know 
there are no health effects, but the budgets, authority, and political
advantages are great!  And they have $ millions to spend on "scientists" and
"research" to support the program. 

The total non-science response to Bernie's work, only reinforced by his offer
of money awards, combined with back-stabbing by the gov't agencies and their
ICRP, NCRP and BEIR troops, and similar non-science response and treatment of
dozens of others, all while promulgating disinformation, like the junk science 
responses to Bernie's work, (and quickly buying - yet another - linear math
projection "study", by a mathematician, from the uranium miner data, or Wing's 
junk science, quickly published in JAMA or JCNI, to mount a national political 
campaign to foster public fear and defeat consideration of Bernie's work; and
other similar campaigns (like the IARC "study" disinformation and the
international PR campaign to report "linear effects" long, long, before the
study is published); reflect the nature of the problem science, and the
public, faces. 

Recall, that scientists/biologists of the stature of Zbigniew Jaworowski and
Gunnar Walinder, from UNSCEAR and ICRP experience, indict these organizations, 
including Walinder, describing the "deliberative process", not just the false
science, driven to state: 

"I do not hesitate to say that this is the scientific scandal of the century." 
 

(Which is going some considering Lysenko, others?; who never came close to
fostering the extreme of scientific misinformation nor public cost that
"radiation protection" has spawned. Consider that Lysenko simply ran a program 
that he favored, cutting out those who didn't agree with him. That's like most 
Fed bureaucrats or research program managers.  :-)  

Note also, that few have had the tenacity of Bernie Cohen in trying to have
the scientific community honestly address the scientific evidence. Most go on
to other things, leaving the self-interests to ignore the data and maintain
the fiction. Here, Bernie not only personally performed a study that the US
gov't rad protection interests explicitly suppressed, he has had to sacrifice
a vast personal energy and commitment to attempt to get an honest review, even 
while the nuclear science and technology interests sit on their hands in even
supporting the conduct of such reviews. The world will owe Bernie greatly as
this singular effort, along with Walinder and Jaworowski, and Bond and
Feinendegen, and Alvarez and Seiler, and Pollycove and Luckey, and dozens of
others who value credible science and independence, keep the lamp of Robley
Evans and Norm Frigerio and Austin Brues lit, while others uncritically adopt
"linear hypotheses" and its personal rewards along with the world-wide
sacrifice of the role nuclear technology must play in achieving a prosperous
and secure future without conflicts over oil and food and environmental
degradation for our children. 

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com

>      >  My offer of $1000 awards for help on the following matter did not
> >prove fruitful, so I am raising the award to $2500 and will try to explain
> >in more detail what I am seeking .
> >       In the February 1995 issue of HEALTH PHYSICS (vol.69, pp157-174),
> >I published a paper entitled Test of the Linear - No Threshold (LNT)
> >Theory of Radiation Carcinogenesis.....    in which I reported that lung
> >cancer mortality rates for U.S. Counties, with or without correction for
> >smoking prevalence, decreases rapidly (about -8% per pCi/L) as average
> >radon exposure increases. This represents a very large discrepancy (20
> >standard deviations!!) with the prediction of LNT theory that lung cancer
> >rates should increase rapidly (about +7% per pCi/L) with increasing
> >average radon exposure . My problem is in understanding this discrepancy.
> >       I have examined the effects of over 60 confounding factors, and
> >have done many other tests, but this work has done little to explain our
> >discrepancy. I have gone through the literature on Recological studiesS
> >and can easily show how the results of any other published ecological
> >study can be erroneous, but I cannot figure out how one can avoid
> >concluding from our data that LNT theory fails in this low dose region
> >where it has never been tested.
> >       What I need very badly is suggestions for not implausible specific
> >potential explanations for our discrepancy, in at least semi-quantitative
> >numerical terms, on which I can carry out calculations to determine if
> >they can resolve it, or can be modified to resolve it. As a possible
> >example, one might suggest that urban people smoke more frequently and for
> >unrelated reasons have lower radon exposures than rural people, both of
> >which are true. What I need is data for each of our 1601 counties on which
> >to do calculations to see if they resolve our discrepancy. You can make-up
> >the data, as long as you consider them to be not implausible. Since I need
> >these made-up data for each of the 1601 counties, it might be most
> >practical to give me a prescription for deriving these data. For example
> >you might say that the radon exposure for a rural person is x% higher than
> >for an urban person and an urban person is y% more likely to smoke than a
> >rural person. Since I know the average radon level in each county, the
> >fraction of people in each county who are urban and rural and the fraction
> >that smoke, I can then determine the predicted lung cancer rate in each
> >county from BEIR-IV for various values of x and y, and make comparisons
> >with the data.  
> >       The only problem with this example is that I reported calculations
> >based on it in Section L of my paper and it did very little to reduce our
> >discrepancy. But you might not agree on how I did the calculation and
> >suggest an alternative method, or you can suggest some alternative
> >prescription for making up the data, perhaps utilizing random numbers or
> >anything else you can think of that will allow me to do calculations. Or
> >you can just present me with tables of numbers that you consider to be not
> >implausible. 
> >       I offer a $2500 award to anyone who submits a suggestion that,
> >after a detailed evaluation, leads to a not-implausible explanation of our
> >discrepancy. I can give up to three such awards. If the submitter and I do
> >not agree on plausibility, I would be happy to accept the public judgement
> >of any prominent radiation health scientist suggested by the submitter
> >(letUs define prominent as 10 papers in HEALTH PHYSICS or equivalent
> >journals over the past 10 years). I would hope to publish a paper on this
> >with the submitter and judge as coauthors, but in any case, the $2500
> >award will be paid promptly.
> >       Of course the urban-rural effect discussed above was meant only as
> >an example; any other ideas would be equally acceptable. Alternative
> >suggestions for implementing my offer would be most welcome. I really need
> >help on this problem.
> >       If anyone would like a copy of our data file, I would be happy to
> >provide it.
> >
> >Bernard L. Cohen