Mike Conley
This is a true-crime story. Not a whodunnit, where the basic facts are known while the perpetrator remains a mystery, but a case like Lieutenant Columbo would tackle. We see the crime committed right up front, then watch how Columbo unmasks the perpetrator, discredits their lies, and brings them to justice. As the story unfolds, we discover the sordid details of how the crime was conceived, executed, and covered up, and learn how the perpetrator’s fatal flaws led to their undoing.
The crime in question is the attempted (and nearly successful) murder of nuclear power through bad science, ginned up with assumptions and contrary facts while lacking any solid evidence. But unlike a Columbo episode, we’re left with a cliffhanger: Now that the mistakes, cover-ups, and misinformation have been tracked down and exposed, will there still be time to save humanity from the looming threat of climate change?
This is the long, strange tale of LNT (Linear No-Threshold), the late Dr. Hermann Muller’s widely-accepted but unproven claim that any form of ionizing radiation is harmful, down to the smallest dose. Devised nearly a century ago, and still considered gospel by far too many people, Muller’s LNT hypothesis falsely claims that there is no safe dose of radiation and that all doses are cumulative. As the story unfolds, you’ll see how the world’s regulations for low-dose radiation have been based on Muller’s bad science (BS) right from the start, and you’ll learn what can be done to remedy the error.
After working with Ralph Nader on environmental issues in the mid-seventies, Ed Calabrese became a professor of toxicology and risk assessment at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he still works today. Among his many accomplishments, he won the 2009 Marie Curie Award for his groundbreaking work on hormesis. Over the last several years, Calabrese has been a scientific Columbo, carefully documenting exactly how and why the LNT model became the world’s radiation safety standard, even though:
● Muller’s seminal 1927 paper was never peer-reviewed. He never published an experiment for others to replicate his work or verify his claims, and his model has been roundly refuted by modern science
● Establishing Muller’s Linear No-Threshold hypothesis as the default model for radiation risk assessment required the sustained action of influential and deep-pocket supporters:
- The petroleum-rich Rockefeller Foundation funded the original research, and influenced the 1956 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to adopt the LNT model as public health policy.
- Detlev Bronk, the president of the NAS at the time, was also the president of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Sciences (later Rockefeller University).
- The June 1956 NAS pamphlet Report to the Public on LNT was widely promoted and distributed by the New York Times, whose chairman Arthur Sulzberger was on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation.
● A growing body of evidence contrary to LNT has been systematically suppressed, ignored, or shouted down.
Since the advent of commercial nuclear power in the 1950s, Hermann Muller’s fatally-flawed “no-safe-dose” hypothesis on radiation safety risk assessment has frustrated humanity’s efforts to clean up our energy act. For nearly a hundred years, Muller’s incorrect assertions have conjured a gnawing sense of anxiety in the public psyche, slowing the deployment of nuclear power, the world’s most reliable and safest clean-energy solution.
More than a fact-finding investigation, the historical research of Dr. Calabrese brings to light a tragic tale of brilliant minds gripped by pride, power, and blind ambition—Shakespearean flaws that have complicated so many endeavors down through the ages. But as we learn who the players are and what they did, let’s keep in mind that they were not cardboard characters with ill intent, but highly competitive and all-too-human explorers trying to make sense of the world around them. Working at the bleeding edge of knowledge, with the primitive equipment available at the time, and tantalized by the possibility of world-changing discoveries, they sometimes fell short of the humility, dispassionate analysis, and rigorous standards demanded by the Scientific Method. This is a moral lesson about why facts matter.
Whatever the intentions at the time, it is incumbent upon the scientific community to acknowledge the errors and correct the mistakes, and incumbent upon governments around the world to update their rules and regulations accordingly. At the same time, it is equally incumbent on us to never forget that we, too, have all made assumptions we have stridently defended, long after the evidence has turned against us. This, then, is a story of people, not monsters, but a true-crime story nonetheless.
More than any other factor, Muller’s LNT model of radiation risk assessment has been the principal bottleneck restricting the advance of nuclear power. Muller’s false ideas, codified a half-century ago in our regulatory standards and practices, have needlessly driven up the cost of commercial nuclear power in a misguided effort to prevent the release of the most negligible wisps of radiation, while costing a needless fortune. Like the claim of a stolen election with no evidence to back it up, LNT is the “big lie” in anti-nuclear circles, an enduring article of faith that has undermined the conversation on clean energy for nearly seventy years.
Humanity is facing this urgent question: How do we power a planet of eight billion people without despoiling the natural world? Nuclear energy, with its small environmental footprint, is a critical component of the solution. In view of this, the LNT bottleneck must be removed for humanity to flourish and prosper. And that requires a clear understanding of why LNT is bad science. We need to address and correct Muller’s mistaken ideas (there is no safe dose of radiation and that all doses are cumulative) that underlie of the world’s nuclear safety regulations that have been in place since the 1950s. Rather than increasing public safety and confidence, LNT-based rules and regulations have increased the public’s nuclear fear, dissuading too many of us from the best technology we have to address the climate crisis by providing the abundant clean power we need both now and in the years to come.
Mike Conley has authored/co-authored books that explore this topic further:
The LNT Report: How Bad Science Made The World Afraid of Nuclear Power, and Earth is a Nuclear Planet: The Environmental Case for Nuclear Power, and the upcoming Roadmap to Nowhere and Power to the Planet.
Endnotes
Recent discoveries on the historical foundations of cancer risk assessment: Shedding light on the limits of LNT (31 May 2024) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969724038233
Muller and mutations: mouse study of George Snell (a postdoc of Muller) fails to confirm Muller’s fruit fly findings, and Muller fails to cite Snell’s findings (4 April 2024) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-024-03718-1
Cancer risk assessment, its wretched history, and what it means for public health (7 March 2024) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15459624.2024.2311300
Ethical Issues in the US 1956 National Academy of Sciences BEAR-I Genetics Panel Report to the Public—(27 May 2022) https://local.ans.org/ne/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HP-Ethical_Issues_in_the_US_1956_National_Academy_of.28.pdf
What would become of nuclear risk if governments changed their regulations to recognize the evidence of radiation’s beneficial health effects for exposures that are below the thresholds for detrimental effects? (December 2021) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8647278/
LNT and Cancer Risk Assessment: Its Flawed Foundations Part 1: Radiation and Leukemia: Where LNT Began (18 Mar 2021) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111025
LNT and Cancer Risk Assessment: Its flawed Foundations, Part 2: How Unsound LNT Science Became Accepted (18 March 2021) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111041
Ethical Failings: The Problematic History of Cancer Risk Assessment (5 December 2020) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110582
The Muller-Neel Dispute and the Fate of Cancer Risk Assessment (15 July 2020) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109961
Muller’s Nobel Prize Data: Getting the Dose Wrong and Its Significance (8 June 2019) https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31228809/
EPA Adopts LNT: New Historical Perspectives (15 May 2019) https://sci-hub.se/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009279719307033
The EPA Cancer Risk Assessment Default Model Proposal: Moving Away from the LNT (July 2018) https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/1559325818789840
The EPA Cancer Risk Assessment Default Model Proposal: Moving Away from the LNT (12 June 2018) https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/1559325818789840
Was Muller’s 1946 Nobel Prize Research for Radiation-induced Gene Mutations Peer-reviewed? (6 June 2018) https://peh-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13010-018-0060-5
From Muller to Mechanism: How LNT Became the Default Model for Cancer Risk Assessment (22 May 2018) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.05.051
Societal Threats from Ideologically Driven Science (30 October 2017) http://www.scientificintegrityinstitute.org/AQEJC121517.pdf
Flaws in the LNT Single-Hit Model for Cancer Risk: An Historical Assessment (14 July 2017) https://radiationeffects.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Calabrese-2017_Flaws-LNT-single-hit-historical-assessment.pdf
The Threshold vs LNT Showdown: Dose Rate Findings Exposed Flaws in the LNT Model Part 1: The Russell-Muller Debate (10 December 2016) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2016.12.006
The Threshold vs LNT Showdown: Dose Rate Findings Exposed Flaws in the LNT Model Part 2: How a Mistake Led BEIR I to Adopt LNT (30 November 2016) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.envres.2016.11.024
The Integration of LNT and Hormesis for Cancer Risk Assessment Optimizes Public Health Protection (17 August 2015) https://sci-hub.se/10.1097/hp.0000000000000382
On the Origins of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Dogma by Means of Untruths, Artful Dodges, and Blind Faith (17 July 2015) https://sci-hub.se/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935115300311
An Abuse of Risk Assessment: How Regulatory Agencies Improperly Adopted LNT for Cancer Risk Assessment (6 January 2015) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-015-1454-4
Cancer Risk Assessment Foundation Unraveling: New Historical Evidence Reveals that the US National Academy of Sciences (UN NAS), Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation (BEAR) Committee Genetics Panel Falsified the Research Record to Promote Acceptance of the LNT (6 January 2015) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-015-1455-3
LNTgate: How Scientific Misconduct by the U.S. NAS led to Governments Adopting LNT for Cancer Risk Assessment (6 January 2015) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935116301219
The Genetics Panel of the NAS BEAR-I Committee (1956): Epistolary Evidence Suggests Self-interest May Have Prompted an Exaggeration of Radiation Risks that Led to the Adoption of the LNT Cancer Risk Assessment Model (4 July 2014) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-014-1306-7
How the US National Academy of Sciences Misled the World Community on Cancer Risk Assessment: New Findings Challenge Historical Foundations of the Linear Dose Response (4 August 2013) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-013-1105-6
Origin of the Linearity No Threshold (LNT) Dose-Response Concept (11 July 2013) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-013-1104-7
Muller’s Nobel Prize Lecture: When Ideology Prevailed Over Science (13 December 2011) https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22166484/
Toxicology Rewrites Its History and Rethinks Its Future: Giving Equal Focus to Both Harmful and Beneficial Effects (19 September 2011) https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/etc.687
Key Studies Used to Support Cancer Risk Assessment Questioned (22 July 2011) https://www.junkscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/calabrese-stern-paper.pdf
Muller’s Nobel Lecture on Dose-Response for Ionizing Radiation: Ideology or Science? (13 April 2011) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s00204-011-0728-8
The Road to Linearity: Why Linearity at Low Doses Became the Basis for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (27 February 2009) https://sci-hub.se/https://sci-hub.ru/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-009-0412-4
Cover Up and Cancer Risk Assessment: Prominent US Scientists Suppressed Evidence to Promote Adoption of LNT https://www.xylenepower.com/Calabrese-Selby-2022_Cover%20up%20and%20cancer%20risk%20assessment%20to%20promote%20adoption%20of%20LNT.pdf
The Health Physics Society interviews of Ed Calabrese (11 hours / 22 Episodes) http://hps.org/hpspublications/historylnt/episodeguide.html