Posted on 03/31/2024 6:36:05 AM PDT by MtnClimber
I have written a long series of posts, now 32 in number, titled “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Go to this link if you want to read some or all of those posts. The fraud in question in those posts is the intentional alteration of pre-existing temperature (or, in one case, sea level) records to create a narrative of dangerous climate change that, without the alterations, lacks support in the raw data. In the most recent post in this series, number 32, I remarked, “No other scientific fraud in world history comes close to this one in scope or significance.”
The climate-data-alteration fraud is hugely significant because the altered data provide the fundamental support for the ongoing multi-trillion-dollar effort of the Left to transform the world energy system, and ultimately the entire world economy. As the least expensive and most reliable forms of energy production get restricted, billions of people stand to see their lives impoverished to the extent of tens of thousands of dollars per year each. Is it remotely possible for any other fraud to come anywhere close to this one in significance?
As unlikely as it may seem, now along comes a second plausible candidate for the title. This fraud goes by the common acronym of “LNT,” which stands for the “linear no threshold” hypothesis of causation of diseases, particularly cancer, from environmental factors. The LNT hypothesis is the basis for huge swaths of enormously costly regulation, probably the large majority of environmental regulatory cost outside the sphere of “climate.” In a March 7 article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, a guy named Edward Calabrese makes the case that the LNT hypothesis has been advanced by means of intentional fraud since its inception nearly 100 years ago. The title of the article is “Cancer risk assessment, its wretched history and what it means for public health.”
The LNT hypothesis theorizes that if a chemical or phenomenon (e.g., radiation) is established as dangerous at some dosage, no matter how high, then it must also be dangerous at small dosages, no matter how tiny. That conclusion follows if the relation of dose to danger is linear, with no threshold below which the danger goes away. A tiny dose may have a tiny danger, but as long as the dose/danger relationship is linear without threshold, then there is no safe dose.
Calabrese’s article provides a thorough history of the origins of the LNT hypothesis, and how it was advanced and promoted by the suppression of definitive contrary evidence. By the 1970s the LNT hypothesis had the backing of the National Academy of Sciences, and had been adopted by the EPA as the basis for regulating hazardous chemicals and radiation. The EPA continues to use the LNT approach in its regulatory efforts today, even as evidence accumulates that it is wrong and has been based on fraud from the outset. And thus the LNT hypothesis is the fundamental reason why nuclear power plants are so expensive and difficult to build; why no long-term solution for storage of spent nuclear fuel can be found; why EPA constantly proposes new regulations lowering allowable levels of emissions of chemical substances like mercury or PCBs; why pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate become the subject of multi-billion dollar liability disasters; and so forth.
The LNT hypothesis may at first seem intuitively likely to be true. For example, it is established that large doses of radiation can induce mutations that can lead to cancer. So why then couldn’t a single item of radiation, like one alpha particle or a single gamma ray, induce the mutation that initiates the disease? But Calabrese points out that the LNT hypothesis presumes that mutations are rare, and that the body has no capacity to repair ongoing mutations. What research has revealed is that, far from being rare, mutations are extremely common; and the body has a large capacity to repair them. Thus a small external source of mutations, like background or low-dose radiation, is easily dealt with, and if anything helps to stimulate and exercise the body’s natural repair system. Only when an external force causes very extensive mutations exceeding the body’s capacity to repair — i.e., when some threshold is crossed — does the external force increase the risk of cancer or other disease. From Calabrese, page 16:
[T]he most dominating cause of evolution is our metabolism which induces millions of mutations per day in each cell, with 99.99999% being repaired each day. If our repair systems were not so exceptionally good, life would not exist. Our metabolism produces about 200 million times more genetic damage events per cell per day than that induced by background radiation. There is no contest between the two. What this means is that our body is our biggest enemy; it also means that it is also our best friend. The body’s great repair mechanisms evolved not to prevent and repair damage from background radiation but to fix the damage that our metabolism induces each day. Thus, the body’s repair systems are designed by nature to protect our bodies against ourselves, with background radiation being a very tiny and insignificant factor.
So how did the LNT hypothesis gain such enormous sway, and become the basis for extensive and destructive government decision-making for decades? Calabrese points out that, by contrast to the threshold hypothesis, the LNT hypothesis has the potential to induce great fear in the public, and thus to stimulate large opportunities for funding and career advancement:
[T]he experts got the radiation and chemical mutation idea wrong from the start but they convinced many that they were correct and created debilitating fear in the population at the same time. We also learned that one of the reasons that these great scientists created such fears was to advance their careers and to get a constant flow of government grant monies.
Calabrese’s article is long (18 two-column single-space pages) and goes into detail of the names involved, the particular pieces of evidence suppressed along the way, the manipulation of members of committees to get to desired outcomes, and so forth. It has a lengthy bibliography, including references to multiple prior articles of his own where he has been piecing together and building the story of the LNT fraud for years. If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend this article.
Meanwhile, our government and its “experts” merrily go forth regulating on the basis of the LNT hypothesis, and imposing enormous costs on society for no benefit. From Calabrese’s Conclusion:
[The scientists who promoted the LNT hypothesis] were driven by ideological and self-serving professional biases that would lead to both falsifications of the research record and suppression of key scientific findings, all to establish the LNT model for hereditary and cancer risk assessment, replacing the threshold dose-response model. This troubling history has now been revealed in a long series of peer-reviewed publications by the author and summarized in a broad conversational manner in this Commentary. This troubling history remained hidden from regulatory agencies around the globe since its inception. These groups simply and uncritically accepted a flawed and corrupt history, assuming that it was accurate and reliable. Yet this path of historical ignorance led the US EPA, and other national regulatory agencies, to accept a dishonest foundation upon which to base and frame cancer risk assessment, terribly failing in their public service mission.
As of today, there is no evident retreat by EPA or other U.S. regulatory agencies from the LNT model. Fear sells, and they have no ability or incentive to self-correct.
Is this fraud even greater than the climate data alteration fraud? I still vote for that one as being the more significant. But reasonable people could disagree.
Michael “Piltdown” Mann is the most infamous (will not associate the word greatest with that scumbag) fraud in history. Everywhere he goes, he brings respite and disgust to the institution he is employed by. /spit
Read later.
It’s a real fraud and I happen to know something about it, but the COVID Vax fraud must be right up there near the top of all scientific frauds in the world.
Let’s see. The internal combustion engine is like a mini volcano-right? Compress the gasses that come out of the earth, add a spark and kaboom! There will be smoke.
Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. How many internal combustion engines wasit compared to? It dwarfed the man-made ones.
It sure is.
It is actually theorized, that small amount of radiation is GOOD for you!
Places with high levels of natural radiation are generally healthier than places with very low radiation.
Extreme example, Ramsar, Iran, a city with the highest natural radiation in the whole world (a level which should call for immediate evacuation!) is a well known spa (on the Iranian level), where people travel to get better!
Saving for later
Easiest way to understand LNT:
LNT says jumping off a 10-foot ladder once does the same damage as jumping off a 1-foot ladder 10 times.
Which is, of course, ridiculous. But that’s how LNT works.
Uh, you do realize that giga = 10^9 = billion?
So 2 is 1/45 of 90. Small enough, no argument, though hardly deserving “insignificant, tiny fraction” rethoric.
But why mix up “billion” and “giga” numbers as if they were somehow different? That part makes no sense at all.
[[But why mix up “billion” and “giga” numbers as if they were somehow different? That part makes no sense at all]]
What are you talking about- first- it was the president of Guyana who told the reporter who attempted to shame him for exploring for oil and gas that their forests are capable of absorbing 90 gigatons of CO2- whereas their country only produces 2 billion tons of CO2- so they are net neutral in regards to atmospheric CO2 already- and there is plenty more absorbing ability of the forests should their CO2 demands increase-
i feel 35 feet- glad i didn’t have to fall 3 feet 10 times- i mighta sprained an ankle or something!
and yes, it is insignificant compared to 90 gigatons- and far more insignificant compared to the CO2 traps around the globe- There is far more than enough natural processes and CO2 traps to take care of the piddly amount we produce worldwide-
‘Feel’- sheesh- gettign late- meant to say “Fell”
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