Now find a chart of lung cancer deaths per 1000 and cigarette smoking and overlay them to this chart.
Dr Bernard Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Pittsburgh was one of the first to ask what was the impact of household radon radiation. When this whole issue was starting to take off one of the earliest suppliers of test kits was the University of Pittsburgh. Dr Cohen was a freaking hero for bringing this silent killer to the public’s attention...until he came out and said “hold on the data doesn’t support it” and then he was a pariah. Money was to be made and he was getting in the way.
I remember reading that his data showed the 5 of the worst radon level counties in American had some the lowest lung cancer rates in the country, while several of the lowest radon counties had high lung cancer rates. He said this needs to be explained and the growing radon mitigation industry went nuts.
I remember that retraction. The culprits were students who admitted that they made up the data.