Talk:TORCH report

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We propose to add the observation that TORCH has been reviewed by the Low Level Radiation Campaign and to provide a link out to the review. This comment is provided by me, Richard Bramhall of LLRC. I don't at all like the anonymity of Wikipedia and the way it hides the authorship of tendentious and downright inaccurate entries. I intend to be openly identifiable and emailable at bramhall@llrc.org

It doesn't hide it at all, it keeps whatever information is possible. I.e , the ip address. Anything beyond that is pretty much unenforceable. Also, on talk pages it is helpful if you type four ~ characters in a row at the end of your post as this will mark it with the date you made the post, as well as your username ( or ip address if you don't have an account ) allowing others to see who made the comment. 137.205.236.51 12:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you should have a passing look at Wikipedia:Introduction and most of all at WP:Verifiability. The anonymous character is a detail when you're co-writing an encyclopedia with thousands of contributors, which makes the notion of "authorship" quite irrelevant. This is a collective work, and thus the only way to avoid "tendentious and downright inaccurate entries" is by citing sources, which you can easily insert in the text through Footnotes. Cheers! Lapaz 15:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have added a refernce to the comment made on the LLRC site, I think that it is clear that the LLRC have a dim view of the TORCH report.Cadmium

Low Level Radiation Campaign criticisms - Notable and neutral?

Hi,

I've removed the following as it is a self-published (not peer-reviewed) critique by a self appointed group that itself may be non notable. These concerns and others need to be addressed before it is replaced.

Criticisms

The TORCH report was reviewed by the The Low Level Radiation Campaign who commented that it was "a theoretical review of a small part of the evidence accrued in twenty years since the Chernobyl disaster" According to the LLRC review[2] "It reveals consistent bias in that it ignores or under-reports crucial developments in radio-biology", and ignores a large volume of evidence from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine.

Thanks. --SesquipedalianVerbiage (talk) 09:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

References

This article is clearly biased and insensitive

In fact, I think it displays gross indifference to human suffering and loss of life. Consider the following quote from it: "The TORCH report might be alarming but 4 kBq/m² of Cs-137 only gives an external gamma dose of 56 μSv per year (which is close to nothing, a 1 in 356000 chance of death due to cancer)." A 1 in 356,000 chance of death may seem insignificant to a person who gives it no thought. But this chance is being applied to approximately 120,000,000 people, with the result that about 400 people will wind up dead. Saying this is "close to nothing" is tantamount to saying human life is irrelevant. A random serial killer taking lives with these odds would be the object of a massive manhunt. ghh 13:50, 21 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by George H. Harvey (talk • contribs)

And yet driving a car with these odds would be construed as quite safe. --Aflafla1 (talk) 16:45, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

If I drive a car, I am accepting a slight risk in order to achieve a result. But the people who die as a result of external gamma dose of 56 μSv per year do not choose this. The two are not comparable.

If you want to make a comparison, make one that works. Suppose I can make a fortune on a bet, but there is a 1 in 356,000 chance that some randomly chosen person would die if I lose. If I were caught making such a bet, I suspect my actions would be construed as depraved indifference of human life. I can just imagine the reaction of a judge who heard a defense that my actions were safe compared to driving a car.

After reviewing my comments, I have had more come to mind on this, reinforcing my original contention. The very fact that the external gamma dose is raised as an issue in the article, while the internal dose is left unexamined, is objectionable. The internal dose has nowhere near the importance that the internal has. Cesium is a problem because it moves through the food chain, it becomes internal, and is retained by the body. Discussing a 1 in 356,000 chance, without assigning any number to the the most important part of the problem obscures the issue. As I think of this, I can see that the number of 400, which I used above, is probably low and off by more than an order of magnitude. The actual number might well be in the thousands, and this would mean the TORCH report might actually be correct.

The objections this article raises to the report make the article unbalanced on the face of it. Thought on the issue only makes it appear worse. I stand by my objections to the article. It is biased and insensitive to human life. ghh 15:34, 15 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by George H. Harvey (talk • contribs)

Nature references

Current reference 6 and 7 linking to Nature appear to be broken. EthicsGradient (talk) 16:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)