Re: Response to Cohen's $2500 offer

[muckerheide@highway1.com (James Muckerheide)]

Ron L. Kathren wrote:
> 
> Re Mr. Muckerheide's staunch defense of Bernie Cohen:
> 
> 1.  You totally missed the point, Jim (but Bernie did not); that is perhaps
> excusable.
> 
> 2.  What may well be inexcusable is that you are guilty of the very thing
> you accuse others of, as exemplified by this extract from your response:
> 
> "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."
> 
> It is well known that snow cover and soil moisture affect outdoor airborne
> radon concentrations; I daresay the effect on indoor levels has not been
> well studied.  The question is legitimate; it is unquestionably not
> "unscientific rationalization".  To reject this question out of hand, and
> especially with the subsequent editorializing and totally unsubstantiated
> statement is not at all in keeping with the spirit of free and open inquiry,
> which we as scientists should never lose, nor should we chastised for
> demonstrating.

Missed the point: Bernie's uses data from *measured indoor radon*!! Of
course snow cover and moisture on OUTDOOR (and indoor!) radon, but it is
after-the-fact. The effect is irrelevant to the actual measured values
of indoor radon vs lung cancer correlations (whether it affects those
values or not). Unless you postulate that there's a systematic bias in
the the time of data measurment vs the time of snow/moisture effects
(that then correlates also with the radon value trend!?)  I do "reject
the question out of hand" as having no potential relevance to affect
Bernie's correlations. I apologise for presuming that you understood the
lack of relevance when you made the statement. I should not so presume.
I've certainly made more than my share of mental lapses in making
informal comments and conclusions (like calculating in uCi and
"thinking" in pCi recently here).

But, my "editorializing" about the nature of the problem is
"substantiated" by the actions and statements of Lubin, Samet, and other
NCRP supporters that have taken personal and backstabbing attack on
Bernie and his work, but make no scientific case, propound that Bernie's
work is junk repeatedly in the "marble halls", but will not even say so
directly. I must make clear here that I do not associate you with that
despicable NCRP/BEIR campaign, nor to my knowledge with recent similar
activities about our work critical of the NCRP/ICRP/BEIR non-science
support of the LNT (with Meinhold having just characterized Cohen,
Feinendegen, and Pollycove as equivalent to Gofman, Radford, and
Caldicott! and NCRP/BEIR as "the scientific middle"!?  -  while there's
not a dime's worth of difference between NCRP and Gofman.) 

But as I've commented before, NCRP 121 is a qualified case of NCRP
promugating disinformation that isn't science. The NCRP can be seen as
subservient Inquisition priests wrapping itself in the robes of the
"church of science" while meeting out salvation and retribution. At
least I'll comment directly. Considering your own substantial discomfort
with the religion, perhaps you also will be more comfortable as a
"Protest-ant" :-)

> Ron Kathren, CHP
> kathren@tricity.WSU.edu

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com