Scientocracy by Patrick J. Michaels

Author:Patrick J. Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cato Institute

We are now at the stage where only a very few are “observing the anomaly,” in no small part because there is very little incentive and a lot of professional downside in doing so. When this lasts for multiple scientific generations, an alternative, more explanatory paradigm is systematically suppressed.

Linear No-Threshold: Origin and Implications

Ultimately the threshold model for ionizing radiation would morph into the LNT. This development was an outgrowth of the 1927 research findings of Hermann J. Muller that very high doses of x-rays could cause gene mutations in the mature spermatozoa of the male fruit fly, a discovery that took nearly two decades of intense focus and much competition.7

The first challenge to the threshold concept by the mainstream scientific community was offered by two physical chemists from the University of California, Berkeley, one of whom was the internationally famous Gilbert Lewis, who would be nominated for the Nobel Prize some 42 times before dying in 1946 from cyanide poisoning in his laboratory. They were seeking a mechanistic understanding of the process of evolution, one of the most significant questions of that time period.8

Following the discoveries of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel, there was great interest in trying to discover the mechanism by which evolution occurred. It was believed that evolutionary change must be mediated through gene mutation. The problem was that, since about 1910 and for the next 17 years, no one had been successful in inducing mutations using a whole host of toxic agents and different types of radiation. With Muller’s breakthrough, Lewis proposed that the mechanism of evolution was gene mutation caused by cosmic rays and background terrestrial radiation. Because the dose is so small, he assumed that the dose response would have to be linear at a low dose. As a result, Lewis’s hypothesis was only able to account for about 1,300th of the background mutation rate, based on Muller’s fruit fly data and assuming a linear dose-response relationship.9 Muller retained his commitment to understanding the causes of evolution, but it seemed pretty clear that the mechanism would not be found in Gilbert’s background radiation hypothesis.

Although Muller did not support Lewis’s arguments that cosmic and terrestrial radiation were the driving force for evolution, he soon directed several students to assess the dose-response features of the x-ray treatment. Muller ultimately won a Nobel Prize for this, but his research in fact did not yield a linear dose response. Of his three experiments, the third lacked a control group, thereby preventing a firm assessment; the second gave the suggestion that the responses varied nonlinearly with dose but with the square root of the dose, while the initial experiment yielded data consistent with a threshold dose response.10

His students’ research continued to employ what amounted to very high doses. Nonetheless, these researchers reported linear dose responses. Based on these findings, Muller developed a strong belief that the dose response was linear and that linearity would extend down to a single photon.11 The lowest doses tested in their linearity-supporting articles were about 300,000-fold greater than background.

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