Playing Fast and Loose With the Data

Last week we told you how Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project had brought his traveling snake oil show to the area in and around Vermont Yankee. As we've noted before, Mangano typically pops from town to town, hoping nobody traces back his trail, and all the times public health authorities have rejected his findings concerning mortality statistics and nuclear power plants.

Well, it turns out that Mangano, this time in conjunction with the Clamshell Alliance, is at it again. This time, the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant is the target, but the charge is much the same.

From the Hampton Union (New Hampshire):

Childhood cancer deaths in the last two decades increased by 19 percent in communities surrounding Seabrook Station, according to the group awarding the nuclear power plant a Dirty Dozen award on Tuesday.

In a released statement, Paul Schramski of the Toxics Action Center in Massachusetts said the information came from a study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

However, neither CDC spokeswoman Susan Asher nor Seabrook Station spokesman Al Griffith had any knowledge of such a study, they said.

This is a familiar tactic that anti-nuclear activists employ. Essentially, they'll take selective data from a report or study, and then use it to draw conclusions that the data don't support.

That, and hope that nobody tries to double-check your data. The last time we encountered this was last February when my former colleague, Brian Smith attended an Environmental Impact Hearing in Louisa County, Virginia near the North Anna Nuclear Power plant. The following is a direct quote from Dominion Power employee Delbert Horn, and what he found when the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League claimed that local children were harmed by radioactive emissions from the plant:

"[Zeller] claims the data suggests these children were harmed by radioactive emissions from the plant. Mr. Zeller referenced the CDC website as his data source, so I went online myself to check out his numbers "… and I encourage all of you to do the same."

"While the Blue Ridge website says their death statistics exclude accidents, homicides, and suicides, what I saw at CDC.gov proved otherwise (Louisa County). Zeller's "Before"” numbers did correctly exclude accidents, but his "After" numbers did not exclude them. This is how Zeller's death rates are made to "“almost double."

Like I've said before: Same old story, same old song and dance.

POSTSCRIPT: For more of Mangano's nonsense from the pages of The Nation, click here and here.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Joseph Mangano, Health Physics, Junk Science