Zgarbas Wrote:Sometimes they're right, sometimes wrong, but a full working picture is simply impossible to obtain if you do not already have a background to support it. I wasn't trying to insult anyone, it was a response to Stansfield's comment that omg anyone who did not google the same things that I did is an idiot, you can learn science in 2 hours .

I heard your argument before. Not in a chat about radiation, but about evolution. Religious lunatics who argue against evolution invariably complain that I can't possibly dismiss their Intelligent Design "science", because I don't have a Ph.D in evolutionary biology.

But I can. Because you don't need a Ph.D to recognize junk science. You just need to know what actual science is. The anti-nuclear movement, just like Christian fundamentalism, is a propaganda machine. They use the same exact tactics, and they are very easy to recognize to anyone who prefers facts to meaningless philosophizing. Science is based in empirical evidence. Every hypothesis is verified, and in the absence of empirical proof, dismissed. Pseudo science refuses to hold itself to that standard, and instead holds its critics to the standard of "go ahead, prove me wrong". Or "I'm a scientist, so whatever I say is science".

That is exactly the tactic the people pushing the "we can't know for sure if there are or aren't any victims, because the data isn't accurate enough" argument are using. It's not science. It's an arbitrary proposition that kinda sounds sciency, backed up by zero empirical evidence, that people who think science is "whatever self proclaimed scientists say", buy into.

bertoni Wrote:It's easily verified with enough data in support of it. How could it not be verifiable? It's a simple and measurable phenomenon.

Because it's a statistical argument. Statistics are only as accurate as the size of their sample size. There aren't enough people exposed to low level radiation, to make for a large sample size.

Junk statistical analysis is a tactic that's been used since the beginning of the environmentalist movement, by the way. Here's the simplistic description of how it works (if you don't like my simplistic example, and want to get technical, read the WHO report I linked to instead):

Statistics always allows for a natural variance (the smaller the sample size, the bigger the variance). Let's say there are 13.5 people out of a 100,000 getting thyroid cancer in Belgium in a year, and there are 13.6 out of 100,000 getting it in France. Someone who wants to argue that French cheese causes cancer will take that difference, and declare that French cheese just gave 60 people cancer.

But a statistician will point out that no, sorry. Belgium is a tiny country, not that big a sample size. That 0.1 drop compared to French thyroid cancer is just natural variance from the mean, not any kind of statistically meaningful difference.

Similarly, when the World Health Organization, which employs reputed, established scientists, says that they foresee no statistically meaningful increase in cancer rates in the Fukushima area, what they mean is that there will be no statistically meaningful evidence for the arbitrary "linear no threshold model" proposition. It's an unverifiable proposition. Pseudo science.

Tzadeck Wrote:I found a few sources putting the number of 'suspected' thyroid cancers among the normal base level as 16 (a jump from 59 to 75), with only 33 of the 75 total being confirmed as cancer.

Thank you. There you go. Precisely the argument I described above. People latching on to statistically insignificant variation as "evidence". I bet I could find a city in France with even more cases, thus providing even stronger "evidence" that French cheese is worse than a nuke meltdown.

sholum Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:

yogert909 Wrote:Yes, eating 10 bananas(>1 μSv) or flying from new york to los angeles(40 μSv) would expose you to more radiation than spending an hour in most areas of chernobyl(~1 μSv/hour). And of course, you are getting about 1 μSv/day of 'radiation' just from living on earth.

yogert909 thank you for those details!

I wonder how all of this tanslates to Fukushima... If you look at her channel she did some analysis of algae from Fukushima and she end up saying there are no increased radiation in that sample. Then she asked to send her some car filters to see what there is inside them and to be able to understand the radiation level on the environment. But apart from this she didn't add anything about Fukushima. Maybe some of you which live in Japan could help her xD
I read some paper about fish and algae on Fukushima by the governament, and it seems the situation is not so much alarming. Some says the official data are not impartial but if there is something that governament can not hide, it is radiations. Also I've read some students did their own indipendent researches. I wonder what were their results!

Except for the area immediately surrounding the damaged cooling tanks, there were no areas with significantly affected radiation levels.
There were a lot of conspiracy theorists that were claiming that California was being affected, but it was complete bs, and all their 'data' had nothing to do with radiation (they used some weather map and claimed it was the flow of radioactive water coming off the coast of Japan towards California).
While it's unlikely you heard that exact conspiracy theory, the idea that dangerous levels of radiation were spreading far from the reactor got spread all around. Only workers in the areas directly around the affected reactor were required to take radiation precautions after the damage had been assessed.

... And of course, I don't have any sources, because I never save them. I do remember seeing a video about misused map on Thunderf00t's YouTube channel though, that probably had related sources tacked on it.

I've seen that picture! And to be sincere, as an ignorant in the nuclear field, in the beginning I was a little scared xD Waaa nuclear is death, we are all going to die, look how it has spread! xD

Stansfield123 Wrote:

yogert909 Wrote:Of course it's verifiable given enough good data. Why do you say it is not verifiable?

Because that data doesn't exist. Nor will it exist in the future.

Well, your statement is unverifiable too isn't it?

Stansfield123 Wrote:That is exactly the tactic the people pushing the "we can't know for sure if there are or aren't any victims, because the data isn't accurate enough" argument are using. It's not science. It's an arbitrary proposition that kinda sounds sciency, backed up by zero empirical evidence, that people who think science is "whatever self proclaimed scientists say", buy into.

You have this exactly backwards. No decent scientist makes absolute statements like "we know for sure". It is always preceded by phrases like "the data suggests..". There's even a principle called underdetermination that essentially says that no theory can be proven, only disproven.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Science is based in empirical evidence. Every hypothesis is verified, and in the absence of empirical proof, dismissed.

There are a number of books that have been written (and basically the entirety of 20th century science happened) since logical positivism was dismissed as functionless prescriptively, and inaccurate descriptively.

Basically all of post enlightenment thought, and all modern science.

It's worth reading some of what has been written, since Comte's idea about what science consists of were dismissed.

There is a movie from 1987 called radium city about the young women hired to paint watch faces.

Close access to radium really did a job on the workers. The subsequent government "health reviews," propaganda, and clean up efforts are shocking.

Watch the on-site interviews in the 1980s of the US federal government "clean-up." A lot of the laborers are moving ground-zero debris, just wearing tee-shirts and jeans. One of the local activist shows his Geiger counter in action, claiming a lot of ground-zero debris was just scattered to a variety of local dumping grounds.

That was not too long ago!

.be

Stansfield123 Wrote:

bertoni Wrote:It's easily verified with enough data in support of it. How could it not be verifiable? It's a simple and measurable phenomenon.

There aren't enough people exposed to low level radiation, to make for a large sample size.

That's your opinion, and it might be true today, but it might be false tomorrow. "Never" is a long time. I would say that we might or might not have enough data yet on low levels of radiation exposure, but your statement about "unverifiable" is simply wrong.

"It is scientific only to say what is more likely and less likely, and not to be proving all the time 'possible' and 'impossible'."
-Richard Feynman

yogert909 Wrote:Well, your statement is unverifiable too isn't it?

Which statement? That claims of people dying from the Fukushima accident are not backed up by evidence?

No, that's perfectly verifiable. All you have to do is ask the people making the claims to provide the evidence. When they don't, then you will have verified that their claims are not backed up by evidence.

The burden of proof is on the people making the claim, not on the people disputing it. You're attempting the ol' "prove God doesn't exist" argument. See my point above about the anti-nuke crowds using religious fundamentalist tactics.

Tzadeck Wrote:"It is scientific only to say what is more likely and less likely, and not to be proving all the time 'possible' and 'impossible'."
-Richard Feynman

Yes, but likeliness isn't the result of a poll among self proclaimed scientist, or random guessing. It's the result of the evaluation of actual evidence. There is zero evidence for the linear no threshold model. Inferring likely victims based on that nonsense isn't science. Richard Feynman would be the first to tell you that.

Based on the actual evidence (what we know about the results of medium level radiation exposure of the type only the workers at the plant were exposed to), the most likely number of victims to this accident is zero. The second most likely, but significantly less likely number is one. Two or more, on the other hand, is extremely unlikely. 400 is in fact an impossibility, since less than 200 people were exposed to radiation levels that are known to be harmful.

I've read literally every book Feynman wrote, including his textbooks, and watched every major interview and lecture of his made public. So, I don't need you telling me what he would or would not say; plus, in fact, it's rude to put words in the mouths' of the dead. I also have a better grasp of what science is than you, so if you could be quiet about that too, it would be great. I'm already aware that you think you understand science better than me, half because you don't really know what you're talking about, and half because you keep assigning beliefs to me that I don't hold.

Stansfield123 Wrote:There is zero evidence for the linear no threshold model.

Do you have an actual source for that statement?

Stansfield123 Wrote:Based on the actual evidence (what we know about the results of medium level radiation exposure of the type only the workers at the plant were exposed to), the most likely number of victims to this accident is zero.

Do you have an actual source for that statement? Scientists and doctors who actually have backgrounds in this area say otherwise.

[Zgarbas]

So this was published recently. Late cite is better than no cite.

Quote:Radioactive iodine affects the thyroid immediately. Iodine-131 is short-lived with a half-life of 8 days, and I-129 has a very long half-life of 15.7 million years. Both would be readily absorbed into the thyroid gland, as iodine is used to make thyroid hormones. In the nuclear reactor, both are produced in comparable amounts, but I-131 affects the thyroid more seriously. An entity with a shorter half-life emits radiation more often than that with a longer half-life in the same chemical quantity. The distribution of I-131 in the environment is difficult to determine accurately, as it is short-lived.

In Dec. 2014, the official nuclear regulatory committee (Japan) published a report to indicate that Fk-1 is still emitting I-131 and other I-radioisotopes 10. According to their report, trans-uranium Cm-242 and other such nuclides were formed in the fuel rods during the operation, and they fission spontaneously, as a result producing radioactive nuclides including I-131. The possible maximum amount of I-radioisotopes released from this source has been estimated as 28 mSv/week (=170 mSv/hr) in terms of equivalent dose for child thyroid at the border of the premises of Fk-1 10.

[...]
The rate of thyroid cancer is very low among children (those under 18 years) under normal circumstances; 1 or 2 per million children per year. Fukushima prefecture started to investigate abnormalities in the thyroid gland in children (under 18 years old) in 2011. Soon they found high rates of abnormalities: nodules, cysts, and then tumors mostly malignant. By the spring of 2015 they have counted 126 thyroid cancer cases (mostly papillary) among 370,000 children in Fukushima 14. This rate amounts to 340/1,000,000 over 4 years, i.e., 85/1,000,000/year. This is abnormally high, approximately 60 times the normal rate, even much higher than that reported in Chernobyl.

[...]

Table 3 shows the number of diagnosed cases recorded at Fukushima (prefectural) Medical School Hospital (latest published data based on ref. 20). Cancer of the small intestine, which is normally rare, increased by 400% in two years. Eye disease (cataract), brain, heart disease (angina) and all kinds of cancer have increased. Many diseases other than those listed in the table have also increased since the Fk-1 event.

[...]

The health effects have been investigated by the Japanese national and local governments only with respect to Fukushima children’s thyroid abnormalities, as mentioned above. The Fukushima prefectural medical school is reportedly collecting data from all hospitals in Japan, but it has not published the data. Although still in denial of the causal relationship between children’s thyroid cancers and radiation, they finally admitted recently that the cancer rate is indeed abnormally high 15.

Anyway, my quip with the whole thing is not really the radiated area per se, and I'm not against nuclear energy in itself, but when it's in the hands of incompetent companies and governments which range from withholding information to outright lying on their reports, maybe they can't really be trusted with it?