Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

1. World's leading Chernobyl experts & radiation scientists are condemning as junk science the new book "Manual for Survival" by Kate Brown published today. It is to nuclear power what "vaccines cause autism" was to vaccines. Attached is a devastating 12-page review. Please share

2. "Brown did not report what I had told her...I have stopped counting the number of times I have visited Chernobyl ...but I guess it is around 40. I am happy to be argued with, but it is poor and biased scholarship..."

pages 5-8 of 12 page review attached

3. "What is astonishing... is that Brown fails to mention, in the section of the book dealing with dosimetry, all the measurements conducted in the years after the accident both in the former Soviet countries and abroad"

pages 9-12 (12 is blank)

4. Brown uses junk science methods to exaggerate deaths from Chernobyl just as Helen Caldicott did.

ALL MAINSTREAM SCIENTISTS REJECT THESE METHODS.

How many will Chernobyl end up killing? At most 200 people. Science here

forbes.com/sites/michaels…

5. Brown's book has already been widely & uncritically reviewed in main mainstream news outlets, including @guardian @TheEconomist by @NoahSneider @oliverbullough who did not interview actual radiation scientists and thus abdicated their basic journalistic and ethical duties.

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough 6. Perhaps most outrageously, @Victorsebby reviewed the book @thetimes which included a photo of a girl with birth defect.

All mainstream science has concluded THERE WERE NO INCREASE IN BIRTH DEFECTS FROM CHERNOBYL

SUGGESTING OTHERWISE IS JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE AND UNETHICAL

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 7. Brown even cites as an authority a scientist who, Chernobyl expert Jim Smith explains in his review, was "once found guilty of manipulating data" (!)

By contrast, says Smith, Brown dismisses him "by calling me a physicist and implying that I have never been to Chernobyl" (!!)

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 8. "Brown... does not mention the one person... most closely associated with wildlife at Chernobyl... Brown may not agree with Gaschak’s opinion (formed from 30 years in the Zone)...that wildlife is not significantly affected by radiation but she should at least report it"

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 9. "My faith in Brown... was a bit shaken when I was interviewed by her... she very clearly did not know that non-radiation related cancer was very common across the world." (!!!)

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 10. "I was further shocked to read... Brown's bald statement that radiation is the only known cause of myeloid leukemia...Brown did not consider or cite any of the public health statistics on myeloid leukemia incidence... Nor does she cite the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Life Study."

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 11. "The most controversial claim in the book is that very low dose radiation causes chronic radiation sickness... [But] the world-leading expert in chronic radiation sickness has stated that she did not believe that either the liquidator group or the population suffered" from it

@guardian @TheEconomist @NoahSneider @OliverBullough @Victorsebby @thetimes 12. The "vast body of knowledge in the international scientific literature is almost completely ignored except where it coincides with Brown's thesis"

Brown's book is junk science. It threatens our largest source of clean energy. It should be condemned, not just ignored.

/END