Sternglass and Gofman References

[Andy Hull <hull@mail.sep.bnl.gov>]

Although Mike Bohan has presumably testified by now at today's hearing on a
permit from the Conn. DEP to incinerate sewage sludge that he wrote of
earlier this week, this belated addition to the several responses others
have already made may be useful to others.  In my editorial in the July
1995 HPS Newsletter, I wrote "With apologies to Yogi Bera, I have a sense
of deja vu. On my shelves I have a two-foot high stack of Sternglass
allegations and rebuttals, dating back as far as the mid-1960s. Over time,
there have been changes in agent (first fallout and the releases from
nuclear facilities) and in outcomes (firs infant mortality and then
leukemia, cancer, respiratory disease, and now breast cancer)". 

None of it to the best of my recollection, without going through it
systematically, was published in the peer-reviewed literature, which is not
his (Sternglass) chosen venue.  However, as I said in my editorial, his
evidence has been to show a time series association of an apparent increase
fallout or radioactive emissions and an apparent increase in the disease of
the moment.
To the best of my knowledge, an examination of this evidence has consisted
of selected evidence and that a full examination of it has indicated no
effect or even a contrary effect.  One would have thought that after the
tenth such rebuttal, or the twentieth one, or the thirtieth one, etc., the
media would recognize his modus operandi and would no longer take his
allegations at face value.  While the responsible media seem to have wised
up,  there seem to many that have not done so yet.  

While I do not have a comparable Gofman collection, he does not seem to
have been active of late.  However, my Sternglass stack includes a July 16,
1985 report: Some Claims of Unusually Large Effects of Radiation, by Ernest
Klema, Adnan Shihabv-Eldin and Richard Wilson of the Energy and
Environmental Policy Center and Department of Physics, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-495-3387. 

ABSTRACT: A number of situations where it has been claimed that radiation
causes leukemia or other cancers are carefully reviewed. (including those
by Sternglass and Gofman). In several cases the results are represented
graphically to illustrate the issues clearly. In each case it is shown that
there is an alternative, more probable, explanation for the effect seen. In
several cases how the authors of the papers have fallen into statistical
"traps". The most frequent is a posteriori selection of cohort boundaries
in both space and time.
A trap illustrated dramatically by Feynman.  The next most common is to
arbitrarily select one out of many ways of looking at the data, against
which we were warned by Tippett.

Sternglass and his recent colleague Gould, have tried to connect BNL's past
emissions and the incidence of breast cancer on Long Island.  Again, their
depiction appears to rest on selected information.

In the mid-1970s, I assisted in putting together a review of some fifty
responses to Sternglass's allegations, which was sponsored by the then
Atomic Industrial Forum and which some of you who have been arond for a
while may have seen.  While I'm not looking for employment,  given his
persistence, maybe an update would be useful. 

Andy Hull
SEP-BNL
Upton, N.Y. 11973
Ph.  516-344-4210
Fax  516-344-3105
e-mail: hull@mail.sep.bnl.gov