ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (08/04/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, August 4, 1986 4:23PM
Volume 6, Issue 134
Today's Topics:
KAL007
Re: radiation and health
Low-level ionizing radiation
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1986 09:48 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: KAL007
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
> From: Lin
> Since probably only the pilots of KAL007 know what the route was
> supposed to be (and you can imagine circumstances in which even they
> could be fooled), and they are dead, I guess [the intentionality
> of KAL007's route] is an open question... Plans would exist..
Do you think the pilots, if they were paid extra to fly over Soviet
territory, would be given leave to decide their route?
I misunderstood what you meant by intentionality. I thought you meant
by "intentionality" whether or not they flew into Soviet airspace at
all, not what route they would take once inside.
However, in any case, I stand by my statement. Detailed routing plans
might or might not exist even if the intelligence gathering mission
theory is correct -- it depends on just what kind of intelligence they
are trying to gather.
To make the mistaken data entry theory credible, one must construct
one or more hypothetical errors that could have resulted in the
flight path (which is now quite accurately known).
That doesn't bother me. The cumulative effect of errors upon errors
is a well-known sequence to accident -- see most specifically Perrow
on Normal Accidents -- and while any particular sequence of events is
most unlikely, unlikely things DO happen all the time. Indeed, if
there were only ONE error, the accident probably would not have
happened AT ALL.
> I have no confidence at all that the intentionality of KAL007's route
> could be revealed by Congressional inquiry, given the fact that the
> pilots are dead.
KAL015's pilot isn't dead. The RC-135's pilot isn't dead.
But those on KAL007 are dead, and they are the only ones who would
know FOR SURE that they were on an intelligence mission.
> In legal terms, the crucial issue is, did KAL007 take
> evasive action which gave cause for the shootdown?
>
> If I were an off-course 747 pilot, and I saw two fighters chasing me,
> I sure would be tempted to take evasive action, whether or not I was
> flying a secret mission.
It seems clear to me that if you were in international air space,
you'd just keep on, annoyed at the harassment, which you would
immediately report to ground control.
That's what I would try first. But what if nothing happened, e.g., a
dead radio?
All of the various KAL007 intelligence gathering theories have the air
of conspiracy theories about all kinds of things like the JFK
assasination. The general line of argument is "Here is a set of
events. Isn't it unlikely that these events would have occurred by
chance? Therefore, there must be a unifying theory (i.e., a
conspiracy) that accounts for all of them." While it is unlikely that
a particular set of events occurred, it is likely that some set of
unlikely events will occur.
To wit, if I toss a coin 10 times, and it comes up heads each time,
one is tempted to say that it is loaded. Why? Because one "expects"
that the probability of coming up with 10 heads is low. But what if
it comes up as so: HTTHHTTTHT? Would one say with this pattern that
it is loaded? Hardly. But the probability of the latter sequence
occurring is just the same.
In every accident there are anomalous data. You can also fit theories
to explain it all. The theories one proposes ultimately originate
with whether or not one views (in this case) the U.S. Government as
benign, incompetent, malicious, and in what combination. You (Cliff)
have shown a proclivity to view it as malicious, which I believe
guides your judgments in individual cases. I have a proclivity to
take a somewhat more benign/incompetent view, which guides my
judgments.
This will be my last message on this topic.
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 86 05:11:56 EDT
From: meccts!mvs@seismo.CSS.GOV
Subject: Re: radiation and health
Reply-To: meccts!mvs@seismo.CSS.GOV (Michael V. Stein)
I noticed that there is a discussion of radiation and health effects
in this group. I would like to add a few clarifications.
There seems a tendency to accept sources uncritically. Let
us take the case of Ernst Sternglass. Sternglass has had the
rare distinction of being rejected by the NRC and publicly
condemned by the American Health Physics Society. His infamous
work that proves that TMI increased infant mortality has been
rightly ridiculed. (Among other problems, radiation induced
cancers have a latency period of several years.
If his claim was true, how can people even survive in an area
of high background radiation like Denver?)
Brookhaven National Labs even presented a report of other numerous
Sternglass miscorrelations. (BNL 16613 by A.P. Hull of Brookhaven
National Lab, and F.J. Shore of Queens College, C.U.N.Y if you
want a more detailed study.)
Other sources mentioned were those of Gofman and Morgan.
John Gofman and Morgan were expert witnesses in the case of Johnson vs
The United States of America. The case involved claims of four people
who contended that their cancers were caused from working with
government equipment with luminius dials. I shall quote from the decision:
...this Court must find Dr. Johnson's refusal to measure radon
gas incompetence at best and deception at worst.
...Perhaps some of the reasons Dr. Johnson's opinions are of
no value are because he is not a certified health
physicist; he has had only one year of college physics; he
is not activly teaching any related subjects; he never had an
office medical practice; he had to resign from his position as
director for the Jefferson County Department of Health in
order to avoid being fired; he does not own basic health
physics equipment...
In talking about Gofman and Morgan jointly:
...the factual data is inaccurate, incomplete, and is the
product of rank speculation. The findings are unreliably
assessed and professed by the most partisan, unfair sorts this
Court has ever observed.
...This Court is disappointed with the apprarent fact that
these so-called experts can take such license from the
whitness stand; these whitnesses say and conclude things
which, in the Court's view, they would not dare report in a
peer-review format.
Much of the propaganda put out by such people can be easily countered
by checking the empirical evidence. For example, the Gofman and
Tamplin claim that plutonium burden is too high by a factor of
100,000 can be countered by looking at the evidence of those who have
worked with plutonium. A 30 year mortaility study done of 20,000
plutonium workers has so far shown that they have had about 60% of
expected cancers. (So much for the worlds "most toxic substance.")
(This isn't meant to imply that plutonium isn't a hazardous material.
It certainly is, along with many other substances.)
Reserch into the effects of radiation exposuure has been going on for
50 years and we know more about the health effects of ionizing
radiation then about most other toxins. For this reason, it is
inaccurate to imply that radiation limits are arbitarily set.
There are many groups that study this issue. In the US, we
have the Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation
(BEIR) of the National Acadamy of Sciences and
the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. The
international bodies include, the United Nations Scientific Committee
on Effects of Radiation (UNSCLEAR) and the International Commission on
Radiological Protection. Beyond that there are other scientific
and professional organizations such as the American Health Physics
Society, the American Nuclear Society and the American
Medical Association.
---
Michael V. Stein
Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation - Technical Services
UUCP ihnp4!dicome!meccts!mvs
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 86 10:16:35 pdt
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
Subject: Low-level ionizing radiation
The last couple of Arms-D digests have contained postings by Dave Benson,
Jan Steinmann and myself on this issue. In V6 #130, Mr. Benson gives
some useful information on the health effects of low-level ionizing
radiation, and states that these effects are a current research topic
with no firm conclusion yet, which I had also stated. I also did not
state that low-level radiation had no health effects; rather, I was
responding to Jan Steinmann's challenge to prove that the amount of
TMI radiation was less than the natural background. Since neither
Benson nor Steinmann disputed this in their postings, I must conclude
that they have no evidence to the contrary. (By the way, Dave, the
edition of Brittanica I used was dated 1978--hardly an "ancient
encyclopedia," as you called it.)
Jan Steinmann, in V6 #131, has a very civilized statement of his position,
and states he has no argument with my presentation of the information from
Britannica and Science magazine. If I may respond to a few points:
>There will always be controversy. Gallileo was wrong in his day due to the
>strong influence of the church and the prevailing political climate.
>Although atomic power's reputation has suffered some tarnish since TMI,
>government and industry are both solidly behind it to this day. Suggesting
>that 260 excess infant deaths occured as a result of the accident at TMI is
>today no less heretical than Gallileo's printing that the Earth circled the
>Sun.
Galileo published the first account of his telescopic discoveries, "The
Starry Messenger," in March 1610. In June 1610, he was given a gold
chain and medal by the Duke of Medici, and a letter appointing him "Chief
Mathematician of the University of Pisa..." He corresponded with Kepler,
who was delighted that the telescope had convinced Galileo where Kepler's
dynamics could not. Galileo traveled to Rome in 1611, arriving on April
1, where "he was promptly received in audience by Pope Paul V who showed
him rare deference by refusing to let him remain kneeling...On the night
of April 14, 1611, a banquet in Galileo's honor was held on a grand hillside
estate outside Rome's St. Pancratious Gate,..."--from Daniel Boorstin's
book "The Discoverers", pp. 321-22. Galileo's work won immediate accep-
tance from the scientific community of his day; had there been research
journals of the kind we have today, they undoubtedly would have published
his results.
>Luckily, things are a bit different today. When the prestigious, but
>biased, journal cited by Steve in his arguments (Science magazine)...
I have never detected a pro-government or pro-industry (nuclear or other)
in Science magazine, and I have read it faithfully for nearly 10 years.
>...refused to publish Sternglass's infant death study, he was able to publish
>elsewhere, unlike Gallileo, who was thrown in prison. One source does not
>an argument make.
Here we reach the heart of the this debate. Science is a peer-reviewed
research journal, which means that papers submitted for publication there
are first sent to a referee, someone else working in the same field who
evaluates the contents of the paper and recommends for or against its
publication, justifying his decision with reference to other research
in the field This process is the fundamental one by which new knowledge
is added to science today, and I think I can safely say that no important
new scientific discovery has failed to find publication in peer-reviewed
journals (along with much which turned out to be wrong). The fact that
Sternglass's study was published in a book after being turned down by a
peer-reviewed journal speaks volumes to a working scientist about its
probable quality--the same thing has happened to scientific creationism,
Velikovsky's peculiar ideas, and Joseph Newman's energy machine, none
of which have any scientific credibility. "One source does not an
argument make," indeed--has anyone independently analyzed Sternglass's
data and come to the same conclusions?
After a long life of research, teaching, and writing, Galileo was
tried by a faction of the Inquistion in Rome in February of 1633 at
the age of 70. "The trial focused on technicalities, on what Galileo
had or had not been told by Cardinal Bellarmine back in 1616, on how
clearly he had known the papal disapproval of Copernican doctrines."
He was never thrown in prison, but was placed in isolation under house
arrest. Four years later, he produced his final book on "two new
sciences" which was smuggled to Leyden and published, and which laid
the basis for Newton's science of dynamics and theory of universal
gravitation (Boorstin, op. cit.). Note again that Galileo's work was
accepted by his fellow scientists; its attempted suppression by the
religious authorities failed, even during Galileo's own lifetime.
>There are two points to this posting: 1) Because of the preponderance of
>the pro-nuclear forces of government, industry, and big money, we owe the
>other side a careful listen. 2) In matters of public safety, we should err
>on the conservative side.
I agree with both of these points. I would also add a corollary to point
2, that the duty of the scientific community is to present the public and
its elected representatives with the highest quality information possible
about the relative risks of various public policy decisions, such as which
of several methods to use for the generation of electricity.
>I do not accept the Science
>article (which I have read) as proof that no one was harmed at TMI,...
I did not claim it was proof of this--surely those two poor guys who got
1500 millirads were harmed. It was merely a description of the amount
of radiation released during the accident.
>Steve does not accept the Sternglass studies (which he has not read) as
>proof that a statistically significant increase in infant deaths occurred
>during the TMI accident.
I didn't say this, either. However, a jury of Sternglass's peers did not
accept his proof, and I am willing to accept their conclusion.
Stephen Walton, Ametek Computer Research Division
ARPA: ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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