Bernard Cohen

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This article is about the professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh. For the former professor of the history of science at Harvard University, see I. Bernard Cohen. For other people by this name see Bernard Cohen (disambiguation).

Professor Bernard Leonard Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh.

When Ralph Nader described plutonium as "the most toxic substance known to mankind", Cohen, then a tenured professor, offered to consume on camera as much plutonium oxide as Nader could consume of caffeine, the stimulant found in coffee and other beverages, which in its pure form has an estimated LD₅₀ of 13-19 grams for an adult human. Professor Cohen maintained that the radioactive substance would pass through his intestinal tract unabsorbed.

Professor Cohen has also been a staunch opponent to the so called Linear no-threshold model (LNT) which postulates that there is no safe threshold for radiation exposure. His debates in academic periodicals and published correspondence with R. William Field, Brian J. Smith (assistant professor of biostatistics, University of Iowa), Jerry Puskin (from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), Sarah Darby, and Sir Richard Doll and others regarding his radon-related ecologic studies are legendary.^[1]^[2] He offered many rewards ($10,000) if people could provide evidence that the inverse association he found between radon (county averages) and lung cancer (county averages) was due to some factor other than the beneficial effects of radiation. Puskin, Smith, Field and others have demonstrated that his findings are due in part to his inability to control for the inverse association between smoking and radon.^[3]^[4]

Professor Cohen has written at least five books, the most widely known of which is The Nuclear Energy Option (1990). Although published as a hardcover, the full text is also available online.

Other books he has written include Heart of the Atom (1967), Concepts of Nuclear Physics (1970), Nuclear Science and Society (1974), and Before It's Too Late (1983), from which some chapters of The Nuclear Energy Option were based.

[edit] References

^ Cohen's fallacy University of Iowa published correspondence.
^ Abstract from Response to Criticisms of Smith Et Al. Cohen, Bernard. Health Physics. 75(1):23-28, July 1998.
^ Abstract from Smoking as a confounder in ecologic correlations of cancer mortality rates with average county radon levels. Puskin, JL. Health Physics February 2004, pp203-4.
^ A respectable end to radon debate needed Published email correspondence between Cohen and Vanderbilt University.

[edit] External links

Bernard Cohen home page. Contains full text of The Nuclear Energy Option (ISBN 0-306-43567-5).
The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity famous paper in which Cohen discusses his challenge to Nader.