Last updated on August 30, 2013
On several web sites there has recently been references to an article published on the web site Counterpunch with the title “Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout? – A 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown“.
The article, published on 10 June 2011, is authored by Janette D. Sherman and Joseph Mangano, both renowned persons in the anti-nuclear movement. In the text the authors claim a statistically significant increase of infant mortality deaths with 35% after the Fukushima accident in eight selected cities on the U.S. west coast.
They write
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:
4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 – 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 – 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster.
Furthermore, they try to link the releases of radioactivity from Fukushima and Chernobyl to the relatively high infant mortality rate in the U.S. A look at the data used by Sherman and Mangano does indeed seem to indicate an increase in the number of infant deaths in northwest U.S. after Fukushima, see the plot below:
The Fukushima events started on March 11, i.e. by the end of week 10. Then it took slightly more than a week for the first release of radioactivity to reach the nortwest part of the U.S. The data do show an increased infant mortality rate after Fukushima. The black line shows the average value for the 4 weeks before March 19, and the orange line shows the average value for the 10 weeks after that. The error bars on each data point indicate the statistical uncertainties.
But why are the 10 weeks after Fukushima compared with only 4 weeks before? There seems to be a reason for it, commonly referred to as cherry-picking, i.e. you select the data that supports your theory without showing the full picture. To show the full data set may falsify what you want to show. This is quite common in politics and by people who have an agenda that is more important than the truth. But here we have two persons in medicine, one Medical Doctor and one Master of Public Health, they should be trustworthy professionals who are keen on giving people honest information, right? Let’s check their deck of cards closer.
So, if we include data for, say, the first 7 weeks of 2011, we get a very different idea about the situation:
Very interesting, the first seven weeks of 2011 actually has higher infant mortality than the weeks after Fukushima, quite different from what Sherman and Mangano wants us to believe. There is no spike after Fukushima, instead there is a dip during the 4 weeks before! A more detailed report on the closer scrutiny of Sherman and Mangano’s article is found in our Deep Repository.
So, why does a Medical Doctor mistreat official data in this way? It is quite remarkable, and embarrasing, especially since Janette Sherman writes about herself on her web page (http://janettesherman.com/about/):
Dr. Sherman’s primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education and patient awareness.
She seems to have forgotten about her primary interest in this case, I fail to see how cherry-picking data can be part of public education and public awareness. And if anybody can see how you can prevent illness through scaring people with false statistics, then please explain it to me. Embarrasing, Janette Sherman…
Joseph Mangano already has a track record of handling data in not so honest ways, we may come back to that in other blog entries (a few links to examples, as requested by a commenter: http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2005/08/joseph-mangano-and-art-of-deception.html and http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/factsheet/scienceonradiationhealtheffectsdispelstoothfairyproject/).
What baffles me the most is that he and Sherman try to get away with this alarmistic claim by such a lousy handling of official data. Anybody can easily check it for themselves and see that Sherman and Mangano are wilfully interpreting data so that they agree with their already decided view on things. What is worse, they are scaring a lot of people with their claims, for no reason at all. Therefore: Shame on you!
/Mattias Lantz – member of the network Nuclear Power Yes Please
Follow-up blog entries on the same subject
19 June 2011: More bullshit from Joseph Mangano, take 2
21 June 2011: CounterPunch verifies infant mortality was alarmism but seems keen to create more of it
27 July 2011: Sherman & Mangano admits errors – or do they?
21 December 2011: 3 strikes and you’re out! Sherman & Mangano does it again…
29 August 2012: Joseph Mangano never stops, and he never gets it right
Update 24 June 2011
Several other people have scrutinized the Sherman-Mangano joke (by now I do not want to mis-use the word “study” in connection with these people), most notably in Scientific American. Here is a list:
- Scientific American, “Observations” blog, by Michael Moyer, 21 June 2011: “Are Babies Dying in the Pacific Northwest Due to Fukushima? A Look at the Numbers”
- The sei-uno-zero-nove (6109) blog, by Antonio Rinaldi, 21 June 2011: “e-nucleare disinformazione” (in Italian)
- The xkcd forum, user signatures ++$_ and endolith, 16 June, under the post “8.8 Earthquake hits 250 miles from Tokyo”
- The Cliff Mass Weather Blog, 17 June 2011: “Fukushima Radiation and Infant Mortality in the NW? No way” (borrowing our plots)
- Chris Mooney on the Discover Magazine blog, 17 June 2011: “Nuke Scaremongering and the Left”
- U.C. Berkeley, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Berkeley Radiological Air and Water Monitoring Forum (comments in all directions, but a couple of people are checking the data for themselves): “Fukushima fallout caused significant increase in baby deaths?” and “Post-Fukushima Infant Deaths in the Pacific Northwest Update.”
- My colleague Andrea Mattera have translated this post into Italian and it has been posted as a comment on the Come don Chisciotte web page, 18 June 2011: “PICCO DEL 35% DI MORTALITÀ INFANTILE DOPO L’INCIDENTE DI FUKUSHIMA” (in Italian)
- Mike, a physics student from Victoria (Canada?) have checked the data for himself, they are available here. (Mike linked to his data from the discussion on the Unsilent Generation blog post: “Infant Mortality on Pacific Coast Jumped after Fukushima”
- The Buzz Blog on Physics Central comments on the scrutiny done in Scientific American and asks the question why Sherman and Mangano is doing this nonsense: “Beware the Evil Scientists”
- The uvdiv blog has a guest post by Alexey Goldin that hopefully is enjoyable also for non-statistics nerds, and he shows data for several years back: A curious case of cherry-picking data for the greater good. I can only agree with his final statement: “At this point it is worthwhile to question either the scientific integrity or statistical competence of Sherman and Mangano. They might be decent people and believe in what they say, but allow themselves to say “small lies” in a service of “Greater Truth”. This never ends up well. Because they are likely to kill some unstable people with their small lies.“
- The newspaper Hawaii Reporter has an article about it by guest writer Michael R. Fox, 5 July 2011: Anti-Nuclear Fictions Continue
- British Columbia Centre for Disease Control have issued a comment both on the S&M joke, and the increase of infant mortality in British Columbia this spring. The latter effect is real, and was a great concern for the authorities (although media reported it in a bit scandalous manner by comparing only with last year when the infant mortality for the region was unusually low). It turns out that the unusually high level is the same for the time period before Fukushima as in the time period after, so any alarmist should better look for other things to scare with: http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/5B6E918D-F306-4842-8EC9-32EBD4149715/0/infant_mortality_response.pdf
- Hank Campbell writes on the Science 2.0 web site: Anti-Science Beliefs: Babies Dying in the Pacific Northwest Due to Fukushima
- …(to be updated)
Update 25 June 2011
Several persons have asked about how to get access to the raw data. I put a summary of the links I have used on the follow-up post regarding the strange results from the CounterPunch re-analysis of the data (here), but I will now put them here as well. The last link on the list is the one that is the easiest one to use. Some information will appear if you hold the pointer over each link:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwr_wk/wk_cvol.html
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6010md.htm?s_cid=mm6010md_w#tab3
http://wonder.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwrmort.asp
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Kudos Mattias! Good catch!
Wow! The work of these two could inspire a sequel to that classic book on identifying misinformation How to Lie with Statistics. This type of thing is typical of Mangano’s work. Of course, this is why this nonsense has been published on CounterPunch and not in the primary scientific literature.
Sherman is best known as the crackpot who edited that embarrassment for the New York Academy of Sciences, the “Yablokov Chernobyl book.” Compared to the nonsense in that book, the dubious statistics in the CounterPoint article could be considered to be downright honest. Perhaps she is mellowing with age.
By the way, I’m pretty sure that Mangano’s degree is a Master of Public Health. I should know, since my wife has the same degree; although unlike that pseudo-scientist Mangano, she went on to earn a PhD in a public-health-related field.
Kudos Mattias! Good catch!
Wow! The work of these two could inspire a sequel to that classic book on identifying misinformation How to Lie with Statistics. This type of thing is typical of Mangano’s work. Of course, this is why this nonsense has been published on CounterPunch and not in the primary scientific literature.
Sherman is best known as the crackpot who edited that embarrassment for the New York Academy of Sciences, the “Yablokov Chernobyl book.” Compared to the nonsense in that book, the dubious statistics in the CounterPoint article could be considered to be downright honest. Perhaps she is mellowing with age.
By the way, I’m pretty sure that Mangano’s degree is a Master of Public Health. I should know, since my wife has the same degree; although unlike that pseudo-scientist Mangano, she went on to earn a PhD in a public-health-related field.
Thanks Brian,
Yes, there is plenty to say about the Yablokov Chernobyl book and Mangano’s earlier work, we just need to find the time to go through it. Both issues have been scrutinized by others (if anybody have links of interest to the issues, please post them here).
I have corrected the academic title for Mangano, thank you for spotting my error (he also has an MBA, but that can hardly be of relevance for this subject, thought one could hope that he would have got a second chance to learn statistics that way). I have not heard of M.P.H. before, but if I get it right the Swedish equivalent title is “Master i Folkhälsovetenskap” (hm, actually more like Swenglish…).
They also don’t include all the cities on the west coast. Why include Boise but not Spokane? Why include Seattle but not Tacoma? Why not include Hawaii, which should be much worse?
http://batchgeo.com/map/47afa51f11d75282284a2c6c34893dc5
Here’s what you get if you plot the data for *all* the cities in the “Pacific” and “Mountain” sections (no trend):
http://i.imgur.com/jeNeM.png
Thanks! Good to get more data do blast this nonsense. 🙂
Even if there *were* a trend, it’s completely absurd to jump to the conclusion that it’s caused by Fukushima, 4500 miles away. What did they do to rule out local causes? Smog alerts? Temperature? Seasonal variation in birth rates?
Bill, I want to share that, but I want to credit you and verify data source. Can you share particulars?
from here http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69268&start=400 no credit for me
Nice plot and map display Billteud!I played with including Spokane and Tacoma but they do not make any real difference. In the forum post (http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=258) I give the population for each city, and it seems weird to omit them while including Santa Cruz, population-wise they are more important.
Sherman and Mangano can probably come up with a number of more or less (probably less…) credible reasons for why they selected the cities the way they did. Let us for the moment accept whatever excuse they would make. That still does not make up for how they selected the time ranges, that is more than an accident for sure. And even if it would be an accident, it shows that they are not serious for five cents. This is a far too serious issue to make such sloppy analysis and then write an essay about it with a lot of bold claims. But we have seen it before…
They also don’t include all the cities on the west coast. Why include Boise but not Spokane? Why include Seattle but not Tacoma? Why not include Hawaii, which should be much worse?
http://batchgeo.com/map/47afa51f11d75282284a2c6c34893dc5
Here’s what you get if you plot the data for *all* the cities in the “Pacific” and “Mountain” sections (no trend):
http://i.imgur.com/jeNeM.png
I was blasting this article the instant it popped up in Twitter. Thank you for shedding proper statistical light on it.
Good! We need to kill this spawn right away before it turns into another long-lived myth-beast.
[…] Zanim na durnej Gazecie pojawi się informacja: "W USA lekarka Janette Sherman i epidemiolog Joseph Mangano opublikowali pracę, gdzie pokazują że zanotowano 35-procentowy wzrost umieralności niemowląt w miastach USA leżących na północny-zachód, od elektrowni w Fukushimi" zaczerpnięta niby z pracy Sherman i Mangana tak jak to miało miejsce w artykule Najgorsza katastrofa w historii. Rząd Japonii ukrywał prawdę? na durnym Onecie, to wyjaśnię, że autorzy "publikacji" zwyczajnie nakłamali wybierając odpowiednio wąski przedział czasowy, by uzasadnić swą tezę. Omówienie manipulacji amerykańskich lekarzy znajduje się tutaj: Shame on you, Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano!. […]
Keep spreading enough doubt around for plausible deniability as in this particular example -dead babies- your a whore group of “yes please” parading your idiocy. 40 – 50 years of power gained by risking tens of thousands of years of barren lands? really.. whats it going to take to get you to accept that nuke power isnt worth it? hundreds of thousands of dead in a very short time frame with no margin of doubt that the source was nuke radiation? Its that you need more than Fukushima that is staggering. What else do you want? jhfc
William, that foaming rant does little other than to show that you anti-nukeheads have nothing but your opinion and your myths about nuclear power being Godzilla to go on.
The data here speaks for itself: Sherman and Mangano cherrypicked the weeks and cities they needed to make the claim, then shitcanned the rest, because that didn’t fit their agenda.
I am not an anti nuke head but I am anti nuclear energy because it simply doesnt stand up to the most basic principals of logic when any reasonable time frame is considered. My post was not in defense of the study in question but rather an observation of the collective madness this site represents. If you want a foaming rant talk to some farmers in north eastern Japan. In the meantime dont confuse absolute disbelief at the idiocy on display here as anything less than genuine. It also is noteworthy that not one of you folks answered the real question of what it will take to finally close the door on your own argument. How many have to die a slow death? How many square miles uninhabitable for unfathomable amount of time?
William, don’t claim “logic” when you are talking in terms like “many have to die a slow death” or “uninhabitable for unfathomable amount of time”, because there is no logic behind those claims.
The main errors in your logic is this: you assume that nuclear accidents have infinitely bad outcome, while no other human activity can be as bad. Your argument fails because your are wrong: nuclear accidents do not have infinite – or at least unacceptably bad – outcomes. And other activities, such as fossil fuel usage or dam collapses, have outcomes that are comparable, or worse.
Your “slow death” argument fails because air pollution kills millions every year, in slow agonizing deaths. Fossil fuels kill 25 to 35 persons prematurely per TWh prodiced.
Your “uninhabitable for unfathomable amount of time” argument fails because radioactive pollution can be removed. The Japanese are already in the planning-stages for decontamining Itate and other affected areas. The UN is working on rehabilitating the Chernobyl zone.
That same argument also fails because soil destruction and overexploitiation of land threatens over 30 million square kilometers. The Chernobyl zone in comparison is 0.003 million square kilometers.
Also you might want to look up the Banquiao dam disaster.
So there is no logic behind your argument because you are using all the wrong premises.
Actually if you think about it nothing we humans do would stand up to that kind of scrutiny. So what would be your alternative?
-“Why do you hate humans so much, are you god?”
Jokes aside, to close down our arguments about nuclear power is a simple feat, have the alternative power source up and running and we will happily dissmantle the nuclear power plants as we will not need them.
But that is the problem today, there is not an viable and/or better alternative, nuclear power will have to part of the energy mix or we will have to let more people starve to death than you could possibly imagine. But perhaps that is what you want?
William,
Please try the feat of keeping two thoughts in your mind at the same time. If you manage to do that, maybe you will realize that on your long list of valid arguments against nuclear power, the cooked up alarmism by Sherman and Mangano should not be on that list.
if you read carefully my focus is not on the veracity of the research behind the one study being critiqued here but rather the big picture of how arguing in support of nuke power is really a process of simply casting doubt on opposition to it. The big picture is that no matter the study it can always be questioned and doubt can be cast. In this way no proof is foolproof. Fools you are. The odds against nuke power OVER A REALISTIC TIME FRAME OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS would make a vegas casino cum in their pants.
William, you’re projectning exactly what anti nuclear people are doing all the time. Study after study after study has been done, showing that nuclear power does not – neither in normal operation, nor during major accidents – pose a significant danger to the public. Yet the anti-nukes are doing just exactly what you said: throwing doubt into the mix.
Also, in this specific case, we’re just dealing with outright fraud. Sherman and Mangano came up with a false conclusion that the data does not support in any way. We’re not just talking resonable doubt here but their claim is proven to be false
Pardon me for not reading carefully, being called whore, fool and idiot is not very encouraging when it comes to trying to find out if the person using these words really has anything sensible to say.
There are plenty of valid arguments against nuclear power (just as there are for a number of energy sources). We are fed up with all the nonsense floating around in the debate. How can we have a serious discussion about nuclear power when we all the time have to wade around in a sea of myths cooked up by self-appointed experts who are willing to cheat with data in order to scare people?
If you are sincere, why don’t you sign up in our forum and post your issues there on whatever specifics you would like to discuss. Who knows, if your arguments hold, and you manage to keep a more civil tone than here, maybe you will even convince some of us to change our opinions.
Have to agree with Lantzelot herw. Which part do you want me to read carefully? The “whore group” part? The “your idiocy” part?
Why should I read your foaming rant “caerfully” when you havn’t even read our article – the one you are replying to – with any care at all? You just ignore the arguments, scream out that we are idiots and whores… and then you whine about your post not getting read properly?!
You got some cheek…
Fukushima was no “accident” but rather the deep-end of the negative spectrum of possibilities that the use of nuclear power entails. So for all of you scientist and engineers running around with these pathetic little smiling atom buttons on your labcoats.. Here is my question as an artist, philosopher and father. You seem to project clearly and excitedly how the future engineering of nuclear power is so promising but can you also hypothesize WHAT THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS WILL BE?
Your ideas about who we are and how we think are… well… “colored by prejudice” would be a kind way of putting it. Had you said it to my face I would probably have spat back in yours, because that is what you are doing here.
Both me and Lantzelot are fathers as well… he is due to get another child as we speak. So before you think you have some unique, special view of the world that we don’t, bite your tongue and think again.
Yeah, we know there are risks with nuclear power… as there is with everything. Compared to other risk in our lives, nuclear power is a small one, even when a Big One like Fukushima happens.
I live 20 km down the coast from a nuclear power plant, and I am sad that is got closed down prematurely. Why? Because now I and my daughters have to breath filty air blowing in from our neighbours in the west – Denmark – who are spweing out millions of tonnes of CO2 and other pollutants from coal and gas every year. That is a much worse risk than nuclear power will ever be. Air pollution kills millions every year. 5 000 in little Sweden alone.
I read your about page. I have no illusions about where your perspective comes from. Your ilk embrace the notion of ” we know its bad but we dont have anything better yet” as if it were some reasoned defense which it is Definitely Not. You discuss that there is risk in nuke power in the same breath as risk “with everything” which is an extremely short-sighted understanding of the differences in impact between a nuclear “melt through” which is what Fukushima is and the ongoing nightmare of dirty coal and gas. Nuclear power when it goes wrong is orders of magnitude more perilous for all living organisms on the planet for a length of time so vast as to be unfathomable by the human mind. Yes CO2 is horrible but to posit nuclear power as some form of escape from the ravages of CO2 is jumping out of the frying pan of centuries of destruction and into the fires of suffering for eternity. Haven’t you heard that spitting in a mans face is the last refuge of the lost and the damned? I am not spitting in your face I am confronting you with an argument from a personal, philosophical and reasoned position that you cannot engage because your only honest choice is surrender. You must surrender your smiley faced “yes please” button to the altar of The Unknown Chaos Factor that this world can deliver upon the best laid of plans. I ask you again.. with spit on my face.. What is the future of nuclear accidents!!!!? What will it take for you people here in this refuge of apologists for nuclear power to stop attacking the paper tigers of questionable statistics and give up the truth of the answer which is ..- I have no idea as to the future of nuclear accidents and therefore I must concede my support of nuclear power as a clean fuel.- In the wake of Fukushima it is the right thing to do. Maybe you need an aftershock to create a plume of plutonium to change your buttons to frowny faces. Would that convince you???! Stop spreading this disinformation.. just stop. For the planet. For the creatures of the Sea and the Sky and the Earth. For your daughters great great great great grandaughters grandson. Just STOP.
William, fossil fuels is about alot more than CO2. I suggest you read up a bit, because nonsensical ranting isn’t going to sway anyone.
Fact remains: Fukushima has not killed or seriously injured anyone. And concidering that the authorities have managed to keep contamination away from the general public effectively, that’s most likely the way it will stay.
I’m not in the least sorry if youre’ disappointed that your nightmarish fantasy about nuclear power didn’t get fullfilled. You’ll just have to live with the fact that reality and your view of it are not in sync.
William’s rant speaks volumes about the poor state of mental health services in many countries. Here is a person who has expressed a clear cry for help.
Examples:
Delusions of inflated self-worth: “I am confronting you with an argument from a personal, philosophical and reasoned position that you cannot engage because your only honest choice is surrender.”
An unhealthy fixation on symbols and references to pseudo-religious imagery: “You must surrender your smiley faced ‘yes please’ button to the altar of The Unknown Chaos Factor that this world can deliver upon the best laid of plans.”
Childish demands substituted for rational arguments: “Stop spreading this disinformation.”
Incoherent rambling: “For the creatures of the Sea and the Sky and the Earth. For your daughters great great great great grandaughters grandson.”
Now where have I heard rambling like that? Oh yes, of course! It was only last year, except that last time the rambling ended with “and, of course, the squirrels.”
Let’s please hope that nobody gets killed this time around.
How about as a motorist?
In a typical year, there are over six million automobile accidents in the United States. The cost of these accidents is more than 230 billion dollars, nearly three million people injured, and about 40,000 people killed.
These statistics are not for an event that happens once in a 25-year time span; they are for every year. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States. That’s one death every 13 minutes.
What’s it going to take for you to accept that automobiles aren’t worth it? Hundreds of thousands of dead, tens of millions injured, and trillions of dollars lost every decade?
If you are willing to accept the risks, consequences, and costs of that technology, how can you complain about the substantially lower risks that nuclear technology presents?
I am not “complaining” about the risks of nuclear technology. I am condemning nuclear technology as profoundly perilous for all life on the planet. The motorists statistic of human deaths compared to nuclear power fails miserably. People may die everyday in vehicular accidents but people are not the only living things that matter on the planet. When the earth is rendered barren can it be measured against the loss of individual humans? Which is more valuable to the beings that inhabit the planet 1000 years from now, the car accident victims or the fertility of the earth? This comparison attempts to establish a relativity that is pure fantasy. Nuclear pollution is permanently radiantly terminal to all life on the planet and will remain so long after motorists accidents are a barbaric relic of the industrial age.
I am not “complaining” about the risks of nuclear technology. I am condemning nuclear technology as profoundly perilous for all life on the planet. The motorists statistic of human deaths compared to nuclear power fails miserably. People may die everyday in vehicular accidents but people are not the only living things that matter on the planet. When the earth is rendered barren can it be measured against the loss of individual humans? Which is more valuable to the beings that inhabit the planet 1000 years from now, the car accident victims or the fertility of the earth? This comparison attempts to establish a relativity that is pure fantasy. Nuclear pollution is permanently radiantly terminal to all life on the planet and will remain so long after motorists accidents are a barbaric relic of the industrial age.
Yes, I forgot … of course, the squirrels.
Now, please, seek professional help.
Yes, I forgot … of course, the squirrels.
Now, please, seek professional help.
I am not “complaining” about the risks of nuclear technology. I am condemning nuclear technology as profoundly perilous for all life on the planet. The motorists statistic of human deaths compared to nuclear power fails miserably. People may die everyday in vehicular accidents but people are not the only living things that matter on the planet. When the earth is rendered barren can it be measured against the loss of individual humans? Which is more valuable to the beings that inhabit the planet 1000 years from now, the car accident victims or the fertility of the earth? This comparison attempts to establish a relativity that is pure fantasy. Nuclear pollution is permanently radiantly terminal to all life on the planet and will remain so long after motorists accidents are a barbaric relic of the industrial age.
Brian Mays, Michael Karnefors, Lantzelot, You collectively continue to pick at the details of the framing of my question, “What is the future of nuclear accidents?” without ever attempting to answer it. I am belittled for being
passionate in my language and dismissed for not submitting a more comprehensive engagement of the problem of carbon emissions. My more colorful vocabulary is readily disposed of as unacceptable ( which i have forgone ) and I am confronted with counter arguments that attempt to engage me in a numbers comparison game.. Nowhere do any of you smiley faced yes please folk engage the original question. Why? Is it so hard to discuss a future of nuclear accidents that you would rather discuss motorists’ accidents in the past? Are you so arrogant to say that there will be no more nuclear accidents? If there is anyone here with mental problems it is those of you that support nuclear power after watching Fukushima unfold and keep unfolding to this day.
William, where do we say that there will never be any future nuclear accidents? You claim that the radiation from nuclear accidents will be the end to all life on earth, and you are upset that we don’t buy into your way of seeing it, with our without insults mixed into your litanias (I fail to see that you have forgone them…).
There will surely be new nasty surprises showing up from Fukushima, and we can probably all agree that we don’t like any of them. But it doesn’t mean the end of the world. Not even though we have this long list of self-appointed experts that say so. You seem to listen to their predictions. We try to look into their statements and what they base them on. Some of them are correct, but time and time again they turn out to be cooked up by these people, like in the present example. If these people want to be taken seriously (if they have any real message, except for not liking nuclear power for ideological reasons) then they need to stop that nonsense and stick to the facts. So far they seem unable to do this, and we have people like you who are terrified. We can not argue with fear, but we can scrutinize the statements of the fearmongers. If that makes us whores, fools, arrogant and idiots to you, then so be it. But it is not a way forward for a fruitful discussion.
By the way, the following sentence contains at least two self-contradictions…:
“Nuclear pollution is permanently radiantly terminal to all life on the planet and will remain so long after…”
William, the error in your statements – once the passion and insults have been cleared away – is that you assume nuclear accidents leave the planet “barren” for “unfathomable amount of time”.
In short: that is nonsense.
What a nuclear accident may do is make a finite area not economically usable for a finite amout of time. This is what happened at Chernobyl. They had to move the people out and they cannot use that area for human activites at the moment, apart from tourist trips from Kiev to the exclusion zone, the reactor complex and the abandoned worker town, Pripyat.
As far as nature is concerned… well… the permanent residents in the area – and of specifric interrest have been the small mammals like the vole – show no damage at all. 40-50 generations of voles and they show no lasting genetic damage. The large mammals, like wolves, bear and boar have not been inspected closer to my knowledge, but the number of animals there is astrounding. Even a flock of wild horses have established themselves there. Ever since the humans moved out, nature moved back in and reclaimed the place. It is anything but barren.
The one group where they have been able to see hints of damage is migratory birds. Not lasting genetic damage but individual damage. The hypothesis is that the migration makes them especially vulnerable to genetic damage since during the long migration, they deplete their reserves of thinsg such as anti-oxidants which are essential in the DNA repair mechanism.
Research continues of course, and we might se more damage in the future, but if anything, Cherobyl punches a bit hole in your claim that a nuclear accident leaves areas of land “barren”, much less then entire plant, and even less for “for unfathomable amounts of time”.
Actually, the horses, Przewalski horses, were introduced to the zone by man in 1998. These horses are extinct in the wild. The biggest danger that these horses face is being shot by poachers.
I’m a bit wary of the bird studies, based on the reputation of the researchers doing the work. There could be something there, but I would prefer to see some independent studies that corroborate the results. Currently, all of the studies that have reported such “damage” have been published by one pair of researchers and their close colleagues. Other researchers who have studied the effects on animals in the zone have stated that they are skeptical of the results.
Note that there was a paper published in 1996 that claimed to find large numbers of mutation rates in voles. However, the authors retracted the paper the very next year, stating that they had made a mistake. The temptation for the scientist is to find something, since null-results papers are not as interesting and not as easy to get published. Thus, it requires very careful, very diligent work to avoid fooling yourself into finding something that is not there. I’ve looked at a couple of the bird papers, and the evidence is not overwhelming.
How many kids do you have Brian? Do you have a wife? Is she wife pregnant? Would you risk hanging around to find out the consequences or would you move? Just in case the Doctors have it right. How often do we find out about health issues after the fact?
See Articles, Scientific Papers, Books, Letters, and Selected Testimony Relating to the Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation
Ernest J. Sternglass, Ph. D.
http://www.radiation.org/reading/ejsternglasspubs.html
Pretty much all this info found after it was too late.
The anti-nuclear power version of Pascal’s Wager. 🙂
I have two kids with my wife, we’ll probably have more. We live 20 km don the coast from a nuclear power plant that is decomissioned and will be torn down.
Will we move because of that? HELL NO!
Why? Because the infant death scare is nonsense.
It is interesting to note that you are referring to Sternglass, an old friend of Joseph Mangano. And the link goes to the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), founded by Sternglass and Jay Gould. Other notable members, lo and behold: Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano!
Their “About” page (http://www.radiation.org/about/index.html) speaks of their threefold mission Research, Education, and Public Awareness. I fail to see how the recent activities by Sherman and Mangano fulfills any of these three categories, they forgot to include “Alarmism” in their mission statement.
For your information, my wife is pregnant and we are four days overdue from the projected birth date. When I saw the article by Sherman and Mangano I wanted to find out for myself if there is any reason to be afraid of what they say (my nuclear physics education says “no”, but we learn new things all the time so I try to have an open mind even to controversial statements). I am asking you kindly: try to get into your mind that, whatever the mission statement of the RPHP, whatever proud moments Sternglass et al. have had in the past, this time around they are wasting all their past credibility (if any) with cheap and lousy alarmism, and they are scaring a lot of people around the world with it.
Since I started to write about this I have been called a number of things, and have been charged with being a denier, bought by the nuclear industry etc etc. A lot of people are keen on shooting at the messenger instead of trying to understand the message. As you see from what I write above I have a very personal interest in finding out the truth on this issue. I am very upset that Sherman and Mangano are acting this way, and that it was so embarrasingly easy to verify that they are cheating. Your family-related questions to Brian Mays are, to say the least, pissing me off. We are not learning anything from these charlatans, and your “what if it was your family?” rant is not getting us any nearer the truth. Please, try to learn anything instead of spreading fear.
The Doctors do not have it right this time. They are a disgrace to their profession.
Sternglass is a selfconfessed cheat and cherry picker of data. None of his work related to powerplants and cancer has been duplicated or will stand up to closer scrutiny.
But thanks for the list, I realise now that Mangano and Sherman is colaborating or colaborated with Sternglass and their work is therefore fatally tainted.
Sternglass was pretty much Mangano’s mentor in the junk science business.
Selfconfessed? Are you saying that he admitted to it?
Possibly according to:
Bo Lindell and Sven Löfveberg – “Kärnkraften, människan och säkerheten”
FYI, for years, I had an office in a building that housed an operating nuclear reactor. This building also contained substantial amounts of radioactive material, scattered throughout various labs. I’m quite familiar with radioactive materials and radioactivity.
My wife studies causes of cancer for a living. I have already mentioned here that her qualifications are superior to those of that quack Mangano. Sternglass is an even bigger quack who has absolutely no training in epidemiology, public health, or any related field. Regardless of their credentials, however, their work speaks for itself. It is simply a collection of poorly done junk science that is designed to fool a gullible public, and this blog post demonstrates just one of the many tricks that they use to lie with statistics.
Studies of causes for cancer interests me. How do I get hold of the results of your wife’s studies? What’s her name and where does she do her research?
You can use Google Scholar to search for JE Heck.
Thank you very much!
[…] Non viene spiegato, e non si capisce, perché limitare il periodo di tempo esaminato antecedente all’incidente a sole 4 settimane. Se lo si estende a 10 settimane, la stessa lunghezza del periodo considerato successivo all’ìncidente, e si calcola la media del numero di morti per settimana (i dati possono essere recuperati sul sito http://www.cdc.gov), si ottiene un valore di 12,9. La situazione si è completamente rovesciata: il numero dei morti è diminuito, non aumentato. Viene il dubbio che… Come si dice, a pensar male si fa peccato, ma spesso ci si azzecca. Le stesse obiezioni dei miei ultimi due punti sono ben sviluppate per via grafica e quindi in maniera più intuitiva nell’intervento, dal titolo certamente poco benevolo verso gli autori dell’articolo sotto esame, Shame on you Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano/. […]
Congratulations on writing a clear expose of the latest effort by Sherman and Mangano to destroy nuclear power.
The only way that the “report” put out by Mangano and Sherman could possibly hold water is if it is clearly replicated in other parts of the world. Especially Japan. And there is the matter of providing the world with a solid explanation of physical mechanisms capable of ending infants’ lives from very low levels of radiation. The whole thing is incredibly unprofessional.
Also see a thorough treatment of Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano’s dubious statistics at http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?WT.mc_id=SA_Twitter_sciam&id=are-babies-dying-in-the-pacific-nor-2011-06-21
Yes? And? What does it matter if a killer’s shoes are tied or untied? Nuclear power cannot be made safe for one iron-clad certain reason: there is no way to safely store anything, much less a highly toxic thing such as spent fuel rods, for 300,000 years. How can we plan for a time that is longer than homos sapiens sapiens has been around? Stop the nonsense and wake up to the danger of this business.
Nature did it for 1.7 billion years… the waste moved less than ten feet in that time. That is 1 700 000 000 years, compared to the puny 100 000 years needed with today’s nuclear waste. That’s a 1 700 000% margin. Not good enough for you?
The problem with your waste-argument is that you’re not dissing nuclear power with it, because nuclear waste has a solution; it can get an even better solution with research; and the waste dismantles itself over time.
The “problem” with your argument is that no other permanent hazardous waste has these qualities. Waste chemicals, mining waste, things such as mercury, coal ash slurry, etc… these things lack a solution; there si little hope of improving the situation; and they persist forever.
You carefreely keep on using products that produce these kinds of toxic waste. No, you cannot claim that nuclear waste is uniqely worse because of radiation. Toxicity is toxicity, whether it’s chemical, biological or radiological toxicity. And there is plenty of waste that you produce through your consumption that rivals and supercedes nuclear waste when it comes to being a hazard for us and future generations. Yet only for nuclear power do you use waste as an argument.
You don’t say “we must cut down on coal power because of the waste”, even though coal slurry dams are a well known ecological hazard which cause disasters every year.
You don’t say “we must cut down on aluminium usage”, even though bauxite refining leaves behind huge dams of so called “red mud”, highly alkaline and corrosive poisonous sludge.
You don’t say “we must cut down on wind power”, even though neodymium mining and refining – a metal essential to wind power – are causing heavy pollution in China.
…and so on, which leaves me to conclude that the waste-argument is not an argument you take seriously. You just want to use it as support for your opinion on nuclear power.
No matter about your opinion about nuclear power, it does matter how your opinion is shaped. If you agree on the “common knowledge” that all radiation levels are dangerous, that nuclear power plants cause leukemia to children living nearby, that 1 million people died due to the Chernobyl accident, etc., then maybe you should ask yourself how you obtained this information. If it turns out to be from the same people that we just caught having their shoes untied, then it raises a suspicion, at least in me, that they may be completely naked. If this suspicion turns out to be correct, then we can discard much of our “common knowledge” regarding the dangers of nuclear power. And then we can engage in a discussion about highly toxic things such as spent fuel rods, and the consequences of failing to store it safely, without basing it on fear.
While this brings to light some very very questionable practices, where is your evidence that they are proponents of anti-nuclear? Also you should back up your accusation that “Joseph Mangano already has a track record of handling data in not so honest ways”. Simply saying so without citing the actually history is no better than what you have shown these two have done. Very poorly written post with a very important point. =
Good point Durhameh, I will respond by splitting up your comment in the 3 issues that I get from it (please correct me if I misinterpret):
1: Are Sherman and Mangano anti-nuclear proponents?
First, that is not what I wrote, I wrote that they are “renowned persons in the anti-nuclear movement”, which is something different. They and their studies are frequently referred to by anti-nuclear groups (and, as I mentioned in the post about the follow-up study in CounterPunch, by politicians in the Swedish parliament) in arguments about nuclear power. This does not make them anti-nuclear (just as we can not assume that the Swedish king is a member of the pro-royalist movement), they could as well be honest, hard working researchers who are keen on finding out the true consequences of ionising radiation (and releases from nuclear power plants), no matter what their personal opinion is in the matter. After their latest study we can surely remove the word “honest” from the description (see also the second point). If you want to find out if they are anti-nuclear or not, you can find plenty of clues on the internet, for instance on Janette Sherman’s web page: http://janettesherman.com or from any of the interviews with her by Lloyd Marbet and Karl Grossmann. You can probably also find out about Mangano’s stance from similar interviews, here is a clue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeghgzHqDRM
For your information, personally I do judge people on if they are pro- or anti-nuclear (hm, at least I try not to…), but on how they argue for or against nuclear power.
2: Has Joseph Mangano cheated before, and if so, where is my evidence?
This one I agree on, I should have given at least some link. So thank you for pointing it out. I will add the following links to the text. It is far from complete, but these two, both from NEI, are the ones that comes to my mind at the moment. As mentioned in the post, we hope to return to the issue if/when we find the time to look closer into it:
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2005/08/joseph-mangano-and-art-of-deception.html
and
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/factsheet/scienceonradiationhealtheffectsdispelstoothfairyproject/
3: The post is poorly written
Just out of curiosity (and to give me the opportunity to improve my writing…), is it the two issues above (i.e., two sentences, and I only agree on one of them) that makes it poorly written, or is there something else bugging you as well?
Hey–all other politics aside, just wanted to say thank you for exposing J. Sherman and J. Mangano and providing us with facts.
[…] z nich dane o śmiertelności niemowląt, analizę zrobił kto inny. Więc tylko zlinkuję post ślicznie pokazujący, co się działo. Owszem, tuż przed awarią w Fukushimie śmiertelność niemowląt w wybranych […]
[…] […]
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