Joseph Mangano and the Art of Deception

In reference to Kelly Taylor's earlier post, I've been passing around copies of Mangano's article, and I've been getting nothing but groans from many of my friends in the business. The following is a short excerpt from a note I got from Bill Casino, an employee of Framatome-ANP:

I too attended the nuclear regulatory commissions' early site permit hearing with Kelly Taylor and I concur with everything she said. I also would like to add that I had many discussions with locals about this subject and heard nothing but positive and supporting comments from all about Entergy, the plant at Grand Gulf, and its employees.

Here's Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist:

Mr. Mangano's allegations of health effects associated with emissions from nuclear power plants have been reviewed in detail and repeatedly discredited by at least 8 state and 2 county public health departments, as well as the USNRC, as follows:

USNRC; State of Connecticut; State of Florida; State of Illinois; State of New Jersey; State of New York; State of Pennsylvania; State of Minnesota; State of Michigan; Westchester County, NY and Suffolk County, NY.

In fact, we are not aware of any federal, state, or local government public health departments that have reviewed Mr. Mangano's allegations and found them to be credible.

Here at NEI, Mangano is best known for his involvement in the "Tooth Fairy" project, a bundle of bad science and statistical nonsense that we debunked earlier this year. For more details, click here.

I also got a note from another friend of ours at Dominion Power, Delbert Horn. Delbert is familiar with the sort of statistical chicanery that Mangano engages in, and dealt with much the same tactics at an NRC hearing earlier this year where the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League played fast and loose with the facts.

Here's what Delbert had to say in a note he sent me a few minutes ago:

Put the burden of proof on Mangano... call him out like we did with BREDL... how "in similar previous claims for the North Anna ESP that used the Mangano death rate statistics methods, it was determined that selective statistics were employed....carefully picking and choosing counties, excluding, then including accidental deaths..."

Urge him to state his counties used, and list the death rates before and after operation. Criticize the inconsistency and sweeping general claims of "infant deaths soared" in one paragraph and "adult death rates doubled" in the next.

In other words, "Where's the beef?" So here's the deal Mr. Mangano, once you show your work the same way that my colleagues David Bradish and Elizabeth King do, then we'll start to take you seriously. Until then, we can only conclude that there's no there, there.

UPDATE: It would probably be a good idea for our readers to go back and read the contemporaneous accounts of what really happened at Grand Gulf that were posted here at NEi Nuclear Notes. Click here for our roundup post from a few weeks ago.

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