Posted on 06/22/2011 2:03:46 AM PDT by marbren
A recent article on the Al Jazeera English web site cites a disturbing statistic: infant mortality in certain U.S. Northwest cities spiked by 35 percent in the weeks following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The author writes that "physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and [sic] may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.” The implication is clear: Radioactive fallout from the plant is spreading across the Pacific in sufficient quantities to imperil the lives of children (and presumably the rest of us as well).
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
from 9.25 to 12.5 deaths per week is significant... but 3 more deaths across the entire west coast is fairly small.
without a comparison to same period last year, there is no discounting yearly trends. maybe that time of year is when the pollen count drastically increases, causing problems. maybe is was unusually rainy. maybe the preceding weeks were unusually low and the subsequent weeks were back to normal.
you can make statistics say anything you want... knowing the answer you’re looking for ahead of time, makes it easier to find.
BS.
It’s astounding to see the lengths to which some people will go to demonize nuclear power. Why not compare infant mortality around coal power plants, which routinely emit far more radioactive material than all the nuclear power plants in the world combined?
Perhaps, those Liberals, living in this area have been using for a longer time, the soon to be, Gov. mandated fluorescent light bulbs. Perhaps a study on 'birth/death stats should be considered, per this now Government, light-changing and who knows, maybe 'life-changing' MO.
But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.
Gee, Scientific American, where have we heard that criticism before? What branch of "science" seems to do this routinely, and yet never gets called on it by the "Scientific" American.
Let me think... I know I can remember if I try...
What a shame.
While it certainly is true that there were fewer deaths in the four weeks leading up to Fukushima (in green) than there have been in the 10 weeks following (in red), the entire year has seen no overall trend.
When I plotted a best-fit line to the data (in blue), Excel calculated a very slight decrease in the infant mortality rate. Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.
Ye gods! In the face of huge infrastructure destruction, I'm surprised it's not a lot higher. I'm sure that hospitals and other healthcare delivery mechanisms were much damaged if not outright destroyed. And the numbskulls want to blame it on radiation??? Ridiculous!
Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.
He also points out that they hand picked cities, Boise but not Tacoma, for instance. Even with cherry picked data, the statistical signifigance of the data is slight. They average a buncha of numbers to reach a conclusion. If I apply the poission distribution to the whole data set, the probablity of observing the actual number (accepting the authors' assertion about the average rate), I would expect to see that number of deaths per week (12.5 vs. 9.5) about 1.7% of the time, just by the operation of chance, without any intervening mechanism. If I choose enough statistics and cherry pick them to support my conclusions, I will have absolutely no problem finding outcomes that occur only once in 60 trials. What is significant is that they cannot find more convincing evidence, given the way they tortured the data.
Figures don’t like.. but liars figure..
Next time, try reading the article.
10. kukuiawana
10:56 PM 6/21/11And what are the causes of these deaths? Acute death by radiation poisoning takes a huge dose, much larger than would reasonably have been expected given the distances involved. Lower doses can result in chronic problems (i.e. higher cancer rates) which will impact long term mortality, but it will obviously take a lot more time to see any impact on statistics.
Has anyone proposed a reasonable mechanism by which sub-acute radiation exposure can increase infant mortality?
The other issue is cause of death. A spike in deaths from all causes means what? Probably nothing; it certainly can't be pinned on the effect of a tiny radiation spike that is within natural variability (e.g., an airline passenger is exposed to more radiation than someone at sea level). A spike in deaths from a single cause may or may not mean anything. Mangano, one of the study authors, is an epidemiologist: he should have known that, because one of the biggest challenges of his profession is trying to establish whether a spike in the number of cases is due to a real cause, or due to a random clustering of cases.
Even if there is a real spike in deaths from a certain cause, and a strong correlation is shown between them and the earthquake--how do we know those deaths weren't caused by the paranoid reactions of parents doing weird things to try to "protect" their babies from the radiation? I notice that the cities chosen for the analysis are among the most liberal cities in the country; it's amazing some of the things whacky liberals will do, thinking they're doing something good.
You may be right, I do not know.
Do you know of any good data monitoring source on Fukushima? The media is very quiet.
small spike in Massachusetts
The US west coast. Still ridiculous though.
Missed that point. That would put it into the category of "so ridiculous as to not even enter intelligent thought processes".
So... the highest concentration of 131-I was 23 picocuries per liter, or 0.6% of the amount of radiation found in a typical banana, which clocks in at 3520 picocuries per kg (CRC Handbook on Radiation Measurement and Protection, Vol 1 p. 620 Table A.3.7.12, CRC Press, 1978). Plus, with a half life of 8 days, it’s not like that 131-I is staying around.
I used to buy 1 milli-curie of 35-S at a time, and use about 1-2 micro-curies at a time. If the small amount of radiatioactive iodine in those rain samples is enough to kill, then I’m amazed that I didn’t fall over dead the first time I used 35-S! Shielding isn’t even required to work with 35-S.
That report trying to link the Fukushima plant with higher infant death rates is just plain irresponsible.
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