Talk:The Low Level Radiation Campaign
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The following comment was placed on the article page
The Low Level Radiation Campaign is aware of this entry. It says more about the prejudices of its author and the problems associated with letting an encyclopaedia grow by a process of Darwinian evolution than it does about us. (Not that we believe any other sort of encyclopaedia can necessarily be trusted either. "What is truth?", asked Pilate. Would Pilate have accepted as truth the opinion of the BNFL employee cited it this diatribe? Can anyone take a BNFL employee for a "mainstream scientist"?) Obviously this is written by a proponent of hormesis (look at LLRC's jargon buster for a definition - www.llrc.org/jargonbuster.htm). It is highly tendentious, misrepresenting the scientific views LLRC advocates and the radiobiological establishment's responses to them. It is also badly out of date (as at February 2007) and contains many factual errors, half-truths and biased accounts of the many attacks the nuclear establishment and its myrmidons have launched at us over the years. However, we don't propose to deconstruct it - there are too many other things to do, particularly since one has to learn yet another set of protocols to edit Wikipedia entries.
I would suggest that if a person does not like an article that they should discuss the article or become involved in the editing process rather than posting a paragraph such as the above text.Cadmium
On 21st February 2007 on the main page about the Low Level Radiation Campaign I posted the entry which "Cadmium" refers to. It was immediately removed to the discussion page — an action which increases my mistrust of the Wikipedia approach. Cadmium says that, instead of making our views visible in that way, we should become involved in the editing process. That may seem reasonable but (as I have written to him) it has the substantial fault that other sites use Wikipedia as a source. These external sites (e.g. answers.com and reference.com) don't show the discussion page, so dissenting comments are not visible to people who come into the main entry by that route.
The basic problem is that the initiative was seized at the outset by a contributor with a biased position. It would take a lot of work to pull the discussion back into line with the reality of what LLRC does. The originating contributor would remain in a commanding position, not least because he seems to be au fait with Wikipedia's opaque formatting protocols and voluminous editing guidelines, neither of which I have any intention of getting my head around. When the contributor purports to be describing living people this is a denial of natural justice.
Cadmium did at least have the courtesy to email LLRC after I posted the comment. I said in my reply that Wikipedia seems to be an attempt to create a free encyclopaedia without the problem inherent in conventional encyclopaedias; that "experts" bring their baggage with them and cement outdated views and inadequate information for the lifetime of that edition. I suggested that, if this agnostic model were indeed what's intended, someone who wanted to write about LLRC should get in touch and say "Let's agree something accurate and fairly complete". I pointed out that if, instead, an author writes a lot of biased, selective and frankly wrong material and posts it on the site without even telling us, it looks like he has an agenda. This pushes Wikipedia straight back into the conventional encyclopaedias' pitfall. Since February Cadmium and Chris Busby have corresponded and the original article has changed very considerably. It is now less tendentious, though it still contains simple factual errors which could have been avoided if LLRC had been shown a draft before it was published. I don't know if Busby can be bothered to keep up the debate; I'm not sure I can be but, anyway, Cadmium hasn't replied to me. I'll email him the text of this.
Richard Bramhall, Company Secretary, Low Level Radiation Campaign.
18th March 2007
- Dear Richard, I would be interested to know what you think a page on the LLRC should contain, do bear in mind that in a world where you are free to express your point of view others are free to express their thoughts even if their thoughts disagree with yours (or even are distasteful to you). For instance the BNFL scientist (David Cartwright) quoted in the article is entitled to express his point of view, the editors here are entitled to report/quote what he has said and I am sure that the readers are entitled to read what he said and consider his thoughts on the matter before making up their own minds.
- I found the comparison to the events of holy week rather distasteful as Pilate has nothing to do with BNFL, the LLRC, or events after about 30 AD. I think that a discussion of him should be best left to those who know understand him better. While I am not a great fan of Godwin's Law, I do think that a person who suddenly decides to make comparisons to some very unpopular and irrelevent person from history does weaken their own case. Godwin wrote his law becuase he thought "that overuse of the Nazi/Hitler comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact."
- If you look at my editing record then you will see should I have edited and added a large amount of information (oftein writing from a neutral point of view) on topics such as the nuclear fuel, Goiânia accident and Radioactive scrap metal. So do not worry, I have not singled out the LLRC for special treatment and I do not have some hidden agenda. I look forward to hearing from you.Cadmium
Cadmium asks what I think a page on the LLRC should contain. At the top of any encyclopaedia entry on any organisation there should be a factual outline of what the organisation is, its history, its aims, its activities, achievements and failures. This should be as objective as possible. At present there's little if anything to fill these categories of knowledge for LLRC. I'll provide some material.
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. This defines it as a medium for knowledge rather than opinion. It should contain facts. Any discussion of relevant evidence, opinions and theories should be balanced and objective so that the reader is left with a true impression of the state of the issues. At present most of the discussion is not balanced and objective and the overall impression is extremely biased.
So there are two broad categories in which the LLRC entry is deficient. As I have already said, the ideal for writing an entry about identifiable people and organisations is to commence by approaching those people and organisations. But we aren't in that position — we're in the position of the "unauthorised biography". Starting from where we are now will require a piecemeal approach to editing the existing content. I'll probably start at the top and work down as and when time allows.
Cadmium says "David Cartwright quoted in the article is entitled to express his point of view, the editors here are entitled to report/quote what he has said and I am sure that the readers are entitled to read what he said and consider his thoughts on the matter before making up their own minds." Who could disagree with that? The point is that the entry has David Cartwright in a category entitled "mainstream scientists". This is just wrong. What evidence is there for David Cartwright being a scientist in any relevant sense? He works (or worked) in BNFL's press office as a public relations man. Cadmium quotes him as claiming that "Dr Busby runs his own anti-nuclear company and makes a living out of producing these anti-nuclear reports." and goes on to warn Wikipedia readers that it's "important to note that it is possible that Chris Busby (and possibly the others who run the LLRC) may have a vested interest in the field." How biased can you get? What about BNFL's vested interest? Cadmium seems to suggest that it's acceptable for a BNFL press officer to receive a salary but somehow unacceptable for people to be paid for researching the health effects of radioactive pollution and publishing their findings. The main entry doesn't address any of the evidence, except to say, with just one citation, that other scientists have failed to reproduce them. We'll come round to the facts of that, in which I'll show how those other scientists have had to admit elementary mistakes. This is in the literature, so maybe the research for Wikipedia was inadequate. In fact, as far as making a living is concerned, nobody at LLRC is paid. We would all be much better off doing something else, but we contine our work in the interests of public health and the people who will die unnecessarily early and painful deaths if we stop. Busby is barred by law from being paid for his work as a Director of LLRC. He scrapes by on working as an expert witness (in court cases which he tends to win) and as a consultant for Green Audit. (www.greenaudit.org).
Cadmium "found the comparison to the events of holy week rather distasteful as Pilate has nothing to do with BNFL, the LLRC, etc. etc.". I stand by my quote —"What is truth?". Pontius Pilate, as John's Gospel (Ch 18 vss 33-38) shows, was copping out. This is a seminal text for copping out. Pilate was a politician doing what politicians often do when in a corner — using the most superficial line of (non)reasoning to avoid the real issue, and not waiting for an answer. I invoked this image to illustrate that if an encyclopaedia aims to describe truth, its contributors must be vigilant even for their own unconscious biases.
As for Godwin's law and any presumption against citing Nazis, maybe readers would be interested to know that we recently used a quote from Mein Kampf as an epigraph in responding to an ICRP consultation. The great mass of the people are more apt to believe a great lie than a small one. The great lie in question is ICRP's refusal to address any work that challenges their orthodoxy. This is an utter denial of scientific method. The latest set of ICRP Recommendations contains the word Chernobyl just once, and that is in the context of denying that they can learn anything from its consequences. They are thus systematically depriving the human race of the best chance we have ever had to study the health effects of radioactive pollution. Those scientists who disagree with ICRP's approach estimate that the final death toll from cancers resulting from Chernobyl will be 6 million, so we are apt to give in to temptation and describe the long term impact of Chernobyl as a holocaust. If that too is thought distasteful I shall defend it.
Richard Bramhall. 23rd March 2007
Immediately after I posted the above, changes were made to the main LLRC entry without consultation. On seeing them I looked at various WP guidelines; being a newcomer I needed to do that. I find that my immediate impressions about balance and point of view, as I expressed them in earlier posts on this discussion page, are in line with Wikipedia's. So I find it very questionable that the bias on the main page is now even worse. If we are, as I thought, in a dialogue about style and content, surely the decent way to proceed would be by agreeing on content rather than making unilateral changes. I thought this was the Wikipedia way of doing things. Am I mistaken?
In a private email from one WP editor this morning LLRC has been accused of "mud throwing". The same person has obviously trawled the LLRC web site for examples and has added three of them to the top of the "LLRC" entry. This action highlights a mistaken view which affects the writing of almost everything in the entry. LLRC is not a learned scientific society; it is a campaign about radiation biology and radioepidemiology. In these fields we campaign for good science and against bad science. This distinction has always been at the core of our mission. We also cross over into doing some of the science; there's no reason why we shouldn't. In the science we use scientific methods. In the campaign we use campaigning methods. These include non-violent direct action, lobbying, letter writing, responding to consultations, participating in stakeholder dialogues, speaking at meetings and publishing Radioactive Times. As campaigners and popularisers of arcane scientific topics we use various modes of communication, as appropriate to our various audiences. Our style includes polemic, satire, lampoons, cartoons, anecdotes and jokes. Scientists may see this as abuse, as at least one WP editor does; we see it as fair comment and as a necessity in a world where ever-increasing information competes for ever-diminishing attention.
The LLRC entry as it stands today includes a lot of material that, on my reading of WP's guidelines, ought not to be there. I think I would be justified in asking for it all to be wiped and a fresh start made. I haven't asked for that but if the content is changed further before I have had time to propose detailed additions and edits I shall do so. So far I have had time only to outline the high level problems with the entry, as described in my previous posts on this page.
How many editors will at this stage be interested in this topic? Could they, perhaps identify themselves, at least by their aliases? While I'm on the topic, why do people use aliases?
Richard Bramhall 12.57 GMT 24 03 07.
Changes proposed by Richard Bramhall.
I am editing blocks of text from the main entry as I found it on 24th March 2007. New material is flagged as BEGIN INSERT and END INSERT. Any explanatory notes are (in round brackets). I have struck through text proposed for excisionwith a note to say why, again (in round brackets). Overview
The Low Level Radiation Campaign is a organisation which campaigns on the subject of ionising radiation and health. BEGIN INSERT LLRC's central concern is that the health effects of radioactive contamination of the environment have been very considerably underestimated by official agencies. END INSERT Much of the LLRC's work is related to the induction of cancer by radioisotopes released by the nuclear industry.
The organisation's web site [8] contains a variety of articles on the subject. many authored by Chris Busby(Why: the original editor has little information on who authored what articles, and authorship of LLRC website content is irrelevant) and at least one link to a shock site containing graphic images of deformed infants which claims to show the effect of uranium upon humans(Why: the shock site referred to belongs further down the entry, if anywhere, and in fact the link to it is repeated later).
The LLRC was started in 1993 as a campaign under the aegis of the Green Party and in 1996 it became independent (this was made possible by a grant from the Goldsmith Foundation). The LLRC claims to be the acknowledged gobal site of expertise on the health effects of nuclear radiation (Why: it's too high up the entry. At this stage we should attend to facts, rather than LLRC's view of itself.) one thing which sets it apart from other nuclear / radiological organisations is the fact that its web site contains a large amount of abusive material (these quotes are taken from the jargon buster of the LLRC) such as Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters. An oppositional committee set up by the UK Environment Minister in 2001. Notable for caving into legalistic threats from Departmental lawyers right at the end of its two-and-a-half year deliberations. and The LLRC also describes the ICRP as the Incestuous Cabal for Radioactive Pollution and The LLRC comments that the idea of Controllable Dose is "(the) ICRP's idea for allowing the nukes to pollute anybody and everybody with radioactivity up to an arbitrary threshold ". (Why: This is a matter of style. The three extracts given are not abusive in the sense used by WP — i.e. not inaccurate or wrongful — and in any case external sites are not bound by WP's standards. Campaigns cannot be criticised for methods which include satire, lampoons, cartoons, anecdotes and jokes though some of the subjects may complain. If there are any complaints a WP page would be entitled to cite them but such material does not belong in an Overview.) Richard Bramhall 11.55 BST 25 March 2007
Central thesis of the LLRC
BEGIN INSERT (Why: the article as it stands attacks the central thesis without ever saying what it is; the examples given are not representative. None of the material in the original is relevant to a central thesis. ) LLRC holds that radiation protection standards are fundamentally flawed on two main grounds. One is that they are based on radiation dose as an average energy transfer into large volumes of undifferentiated body tissue from external radiation sources and from the radioactive decay of unstable elements within the body. LLRC cites a number of authorities who have criticised this on conceptual grounds (see links below). The second flaw is that estimates of health hazard are based primarily on the so-called Life-Span Studies (LSS) of the health of people who survived exposure to acute external irradiation from the A-bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. LLRC points out that the LSS suffer from methodological flaws including selective recruitment of the study group, as the studies didn't begin until five years after the bombings. More seriously, according to LLRC, the control group used to define the baseline of expected disease rates in an unexposed population was drawn from the populations of the bombed cities, so that both the study group and control group were equally contaminated by activation products and fission products. For this reason the LSS are held to be silent on the effects of fallout and informative only on the effects of acute instantaneous external irradiation by gamma-rays, X-rays and neutrons from the explosion of the bombs. LLRC claims support for this view from the official French radiation risk agency IRSN (Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire) (link) and the European Committee on Radiation Risk (link).
LLRC holds that on biological and radiological grounds internal contamination of body tissue by some types of radioactivity is inherently more dangerous than predicted on the basis of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki studies. According to the LLRC the reason for the discrepancy is that external irradiation is uniformly distributed on a macroscopic level, with all cells receiving the same amount of ionising energy, while many forms of radioactivity when inside the body deliver their energy exclusively to microscopic volumes of cells; some types of radioactive decay are heterogeneous even on the far smaller molecular level. LLRC's favourite analogy for this heterogeneity of energy distribution is that external irradiation is like a person sitting by a fire and warming himself. If the person were to reach into the fire to take a burning coal and eat it the local tissue effects would probably be fatal, even if a similar or smaller amount of energy had thereby been absorbed by the person's body. On such logic LLRC holds that radiation dose (link / citation? to be obtained) is virtually meaningless in some circumstances. They cite authorities including ICRP, CERRIE IRSN and the ICRP (all in full with links to be added). Since official radiation risk agencies universally quantify risk in terms of average dose, LLRC states that there are many types of exposure for which official reassurances are highly questionable and that it is not tenable to assert that disease phenomena like the Seascale cluster of childhood leukaemia could not be caused by radiation on the grounds of low doses. LLRC points to infant leukaemia after the Chernobyl accident as unequivocal evidence of a large error in ICRP risk factors (citations to be added). The Campaign is severely critical of the ICRP for failing to cite or discuss any epidemiological findings or radiobiological developments that challenge their assumptions. END INSERT
The views which are held and expressed by LLRC are very different to those held/expressed by the majority of scientists working within the field . Due to some of the methods and claims made by the LLRC it is possible that some of their work on could be regarded as an extream point of view (Why: redrafted as follows…)
some of whom regard them variously as extreme or scaremongers. which is different to other workers within the field (Why: tautology) , some might even consider the work to be possible pseudoscience. (Why: No citation. I am not aware that anyone other than Cadmium, writing within WP's LLRC entry, has used this concept of pseudoscience to describe LLRC's work. Since there is a substantial discussion of the topic further down the page I shall return to it there) For instance they treat the very real hazard of radon differently to the bulk of radiation biologists/health physicsts, the LLRC do express the view that corona discharge (present sometimes on powerlines) modifes the transport properties of solid particles containing either radon daughters, radioisotopes formed by the action of cosmic rays on the air or artifical radioisotopes.[10] This change in transport behaviour according to the LLRC is likely to increase the dose suffered by a human near the powerline. (Why: the question of what hazards may or may not be very real, and why there is scientific disagreement about the degree of hazard is the LLRC's central topic; editorial opinion on what constitutes a very real hazard therefore obscures and prejudices the WP treatment. LLRC has reported research findings on disease and power lines and on possible mechanisms for power lines to enhance risk. These are in the peer reviewed literature. This topic would be a legitimate part of the entry, but not in the context of the Central thesis of the LLRC .) One item on the web site of The Low Level Radiation Campaign which is very useful is a method based on plastic sheet for the detection of alpha emitters.[11] This method uses a plastic sheet which is damaged by the action of alpha particles, after etching with sodium hydroxide (a strong base) the plastic is examined by optical microscopy. This method is one which is widly used for the measurement of radon gas and other alpha emitters.(Why: This would be a legitimate part of the entry, but not in the context of the Central thesis of the LLRC. The issue of how useful this technique might be needs to be established by citing other agencies, not by linking to the LLRC's own website.)
Richard Bramhall 13.20BST 25th March 2007
I am in communication with "Cadmium" (the original author of most of the material). He has seen fit to make very minor amendments on the basis of some of the above but they make so little difference to the overall impression of LLRC given by the entry that they are not acceptable. I have proposed a way of working but Cadmium has not responded to it.
LLRC's position is that the entry as it stands is too rambling and poorly structured to be addressed in the piecemeal way Cadmium seems to want to work. It misrepresents LLRC by being seriously incomplete and by concentrating on aspects which Cadmium has brought in, for example illustrations of internal and external irradiation which might be suitable for a primary school project but which aren't relevant to the scientific basis of LLRC's case. It brings in "possible pseudoscience"; Cadmium has offered no citation for this (in other words it's his own speculation, which he elaborates at length). In the context of Chris Busby's CV there is a link to a 3-headed frog, though Busby has no connection with the frog. This section of the entry does NOT link to Busby's real CV, though it does link to the Wikipedia entry for 1987. (Did anyone need to know that?)
There is far too little fact about LLRC's views, evidence and activities. Here is a list trawled from Radioactive Times, which is online.
- mission statement from the top of the LLRC site;
- Epidemiology (a very large and influential part of our work which the entry ignores);
- the establishment of CERRIE (believed to be the only scientific advisory committee set up at the behest of a Non-Government Organisation);
- analysis of the problems of policy makers being scientifically illiterate and a proposed remedy in Oppositional Committees;
- publication of the CERRIE Minority Report;
- analysis of flaws in the theoretical basis of current radiation risk estimates;
- involvement with the European Committee on Radiation Risk;
- the "EURATOM campaign" (in which we seriously affected transposition of a European directive, including a 30,000 signature petition);
- our journal Radioactive Times;
- our long and influential involvement with stakeholder dialogues with industry, regulators, and government;
- consultations with government on regulatory practice and standards including drafting Exemption Orders and policy;
- an international Symposium in the House of Commons in 1996 (10th Chernobyl anniversary) and other conferences we have organised and participated in, including a STOA workshop in the European Parliament;
- research and publications;
- campaigns which have blocked incineration of contaminated materials and the diversion of radioactive water into domestic supplies;
- Uranium weapons research;
- Uranium toxicity mechanism;
- representations on biased media reporting;
- the Irish Sea — its plutonium content and associated health studies (this is an area which the present entry seriously under-reports and misrepresents, for example by concentrating so heavily on the Disneyland anecdote and ignoring major TV documentaries based on our work);
- interpretation of other people's epidemiological studies, e.g. nuclear industry workers, nuclear test veterans, and the Nordic leukaemia study;
- access to and analysis of official cancer data;
- the increase in infant leukaemia after Chernobyl which unequivocally falsifies ICRP's model.
This isn't a complete list; I have proposed to work on this project bit by bit but, because it will take a lot of time, I am not going to begin until Cadmium has agreed a way of working.
Richard Bramhall. 8th April 2007
[edit] Changes
Dear Richard,
I think that you may want to add the following template to the top of the page as the LLRC is interested in pollution. The template is a index of other pages which deal with pollution.
Also you might want to consider the use of the next template, which is on the subject of environmental science
Cadmium
Dear Cadmium,
I have a problem with your suggestion about the template or header; linking to all these other pages implies some level of endorsement. I haven't time to read through them all. I think this may be one situation where more information does not help. This isn't an outright rejection. Maybe we coudl return to it when I have more time. Richard Bramhall 14:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
