Atomic Ideologies Back At It (UPDATED)

With another anti-science post denying the science of health physics.  Adams seems to think that because we use radiation to treat cancer (due to its genotoxicity) that the LNT theory is disputed.  He doesn't understand that the genotoxicity of radiation supports the LNT theory.  He is correct that folks shouldn't fear low level radiation, they should put the risk in perspective.  In order to understand what that risk is, they have to use LNT theory.

UPDATE:  I intentionally did not originally comment on the slides that Adams linked to because that would be like criticizing a film based on a few still photographs.  I had tried to find the study and had failed, but I kept at it and have finally succeeded.  This is bizarre!  Let's dig in!

HA! HA! Why am I not surprised?!?

The "study" appears in the pseudo-science journal called "Dose-Response, An International Journal".  It is controlled by pseudo-scientist Edward Calabrese, whom I've criticized before, search the blog for other examples.

Basically, the pro-hormesis folks can't accept the criticisms they receive for doing faulty science, so they formed their own cult.  The cult used to be called the International Hormesis Society, and the journal was called "Nonlinearity In Biology, Toxicology and Medicine".  They've attempted to be more covert and changed both the name of the journal and the society to "Dose-Response", but their aim is still to propagandize hormesis.

(This is similar to what the anti-evolutionary biology cult of Intelligent Design does.  They have a Discovery Institute which publishes studies, books, etc. which seeks to look scientific, but isn't.)


Now on to the "study".  The study is not a study at all, but a pseudo-meta-analysis:


The first bizarre thing is that it is dated 2004, and yet it's being presented at a 2012 meeting (from Adams' post)!  The even more bizarre thing is that the first topic of the 2004 paper is about some 25 year old (as of 2004) mice experiments!  That's some cutting edge science there!  What the author is engaging in for his "meta-analysis" is cherry-picking a few separate "studies", spanning 25 years, and tying them together to promote the agenda of hormesis.

Let's jump down to the point that Adams is trying to make in his post, which is that whole or partial body irradiation reduced non-Hodgkins lymphoma, ipso facto no LNT.  Of course, one has nothing to do with the other.  These would be two different biological endpoints.  This is similar to football....you can play and get in good cardiovascular health AND you can also suffer concussions, broken bones, bruising, etc.

So even if the "study" showed the effect claimed, it is irrelevant to LNT.  Also note that even the studies associated with the non-Hodgkins lymphoma included in the pseudo-meta-analysis are from the 1990's!  I tried to look up some of those earlier studies but had no luck, I may try some more later.  Lots of fixation of them though, by the same group of hormesis-cultists (Calabrese, Pollycove, etc.).

It is 2012.

I don't know what the treatment standard was in the 1990's but today we would never intentionally give TBI or HBI for non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  Skip to 11:00, to understand how it is treated by physicians today: