OT: Surprise! Radiation is _good_ for you!

here:

Traumatic events, like severe bacterial infections, can sometimes cure cancer. Apparently by revving up the immune system.

John

Evacuating people from a large area might be good for the wildlife.

John

RG > So, in other words, you don't have any RG > facts or figures to refute the facts and RG > figures reported in the article?

BS > No. He's exhibiting a perfectly rational BS > disdain for Anne Coulter and journalists BS > like her, who tout fringe science without BS > realising that it is fringe science.

RG > Ah, so it's simply personal. RG > Why does that not surprise me?

Liberals accusing conservatives of using fringe science is a bit of humor as well.

What about those e-mails that exposed how the liberal fringe scientists made an organized and deliberate effort to LIE about the global warming "fringe science"?

Algore's groupies accusing conservatives of fringe science is just pathetic.

You need to read Fred Pearce's "The Climate Files". You are almost certainly talking about the - very bad - paper published in "Climate Research" in January 2003, written by Willie (Wei-Hock) Soon and Sallie Baliunas, both active in the denialist propaganda machine.

The Climategate e-mails included quite a few that covered the climate researchers reaction to this paper. Under their prodding it became clear the action editor - Chris de Freitas (a climate sceptic) - who had accepted the paper had done so despite four reviewer's reports which had wanted him to reject the paper.

The editorial board of "Climate Research" were embarraseed by this information and wanted to publish a retraction. The journal's publisher initially refused, prompting the editor-in-chief to resign, along with four out of the ten members of the editorial board. This brought the publisher to his senses.

Fred Pearce doesn't approve of the way that the climate researchers ganged up to get the paper retracted - he's not a scientist (like most English language science journalists) which means that he wasn't trained to take the scientific literature seriously, nor encouraged to act to correct errors in the literature when he ran into them.

The scientists involved in cleaning us the mess didn't lie at any point - they didn't have to. For the record Willie (Wei-Hock) Soon and Sallie Baliunas didn't publish any untruths either, but the evidence they presented - essentially a list of anecdotes - fell a long way short of supporting the claim they were trying to make which was essentially that Mann's "hockey stick" was rubbish.

Since you've got the Climategate story completely wrong, you probably also think that Mann's "hockey stick" is rubbish, despite the fact that it has been broadly replicated a dozen time since Mann first published, by independent researchers using a wide variety of different proxies for global temperatures

Climate scientists aren't actually Al Gore groupies. If anything, Al Gore is a Roger Revelle groupie - Roger Revelle was one of Al Gore's lecturers at Harvard and Gore claims that Revelle triggered his interest in environmental issues.

And the Soon and Baliunas paper wasn't even fringe science - it was a straightforward exercise in denialist propaganda, sufficiently deceitfully packaged that it could get published in a scientific journal, but short on rational content (which is why four reviewers recommnended rejection).

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Um... no. I'm traveling today so I don't have access to my sources, but I recall they were reliable (US Government, or government sponsored, and passed peer review). I can't stand Anne Coulter. So if she happens to agree with anything I've said, I can assure you it's just a fluke, or weird circumstance. And I am definitely NOT relying on anything Anne Coulter gen'd out.!!

I recall researching this (for fun) after hearing the NPR story (twice) about the book "Last train to Hiroshima". Which, if you recall, got its author into a lot of hot water since it appears he fabricated a lot of material in the book. This cancer cure thing was in the book too, which is what led me to the independent research in the first place. So, either I've just stumbled upon the same sources at Coulter, or there really is something to this....

Also, I don't think they tried to replicate the effects of the bombs on patients. They merely recorded the uptick in cases presenting remission, (which, admittedly, "could" have other underlying causes", but what are the reasonable odds for that?) If it walks like a duck....

Anne Coulter is merely the latest example of a fairly large group of journalists who have taken fringe science publications at face value, rather than doing the investigative work required to reveal that the publications aren't actually reliable sources of information.

The story of the Co-60 contaminated appartment block in Taiwan is a fair indication of the weakness of her investigative powers. John Larkin dug out the relevant Wikipedia article

where there are two references to the Taiwanese story. The first - reference 34 - is clearly the story that Anne Coulter mentions. The second - reference 35 - is the follow-up that revealed that first report was considerably less thorough than it might have been.

According to the abstract, it found that 141 of the residents had some some kind of cancer, not five, and people under the age of thirty at the time of exposure did show a significantly increased risk of cancer, rather than the protection claimed.

The reason it doesn't surprise you Rich, is that you don't actually pay attention to what you have been told and see only what you expect to see, which is obviously unsurprising.

Anne Coulter wasn't being disdained in her own right - which would have been personal - but rather as a member of a class of news reporters who don't investigate science reports with any kind of thoroughness. The fact that she missed the follow-up publication on the Taiwanese story is a fair example of defective investigation.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It would have been worth it to call the lying dittohead out on his fatuous claim. Although whether anyone would have been rash enough to provide Cohen with a plutonium laced drink is another matter.

100mg of caffeine is in an espresso coffee and somewhat less than the contents of a large Jolt. That would not cause him any harm at all. 100mg of reactor grade plutonium ingested would require Cohen to be put in containment to protect innocent bystanders as he would become a 1 Curie radioactive source. His best bet would be refined bomb grade plutonium which is about 20x lower in activity as the short half life Pu241 content is much lower.

It would have been worth doing if unkind - Darwinism in action.

The UPPu club members did significantly better than might have been expected given that in the early days alpha embrittlement of glass beakers from refining plutonium contaminated them. They were followed very closely afterwards for signs of ill effects. Ultra trace analysis techniques managed to track the lifelong depletion of Pu in their pee.

Regards, Martin Brown

It is certainly good for the life expectancy of hill sheep in Wales. Thank to Chernobyl they are still too radioactive to be eaten if grazed on certain areas!

Regards, Martin Brown