Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumSexism couldn't have had anything to do with this, could it?
Richard Doll and Alice StewartReputation and the shaping of scientific truth
ABSTRACT
As the world watched the Fukushima reactors release radionuclidesinto the ocean and atmosphere, the warnings of Dr. Alice Stewart about radiation risk and the reassurances of Sir Richard Doll assumed renewed relevance. Doll and Stewart, pioneer cancer epidemiologists who made major contributions in the 1950s he by demonstrating the link between lung cancer and smoking, she by discovering that fetal X-rays double the chance of a childhood cancer were locked into opposition about low-dose radiation risk.
When she went public with the discovery that radiation at a fraction of the dose known to be dangerous could kill a child, her reputation plummeted, whereas Doll, foremost among her detractors, was knighted and lauded as the worlds most distinguished medical epidemiologist for his work.
Their lives and careers, so closely intertwined, took contrary courses, he becoming more of the establishment (as he said), while she became more oppositional. When it was discovered, after his death, that hed been taking large sums of money from industries whose chemicals he was clearing of cancer risk, his reputation remained unscathed; it is now en-shrined in the Authorized Biography (2009) commissioned by the Wellcome Institute, along with Dolls denigration of Stewart as an embittered woman and biased scientist.
Stewart lived long enough to see radiation science move her way, to see international committees affirm, in the 1990s, that there is no threshold beneath which radiation ceases to be dangerous; recent evidence from Chernobyl is bearing out her warnings. But a look at the making and breaking of these reputations reveals the power of status, position, and image to shape scientific knowledge and social policy.
... Stewart, in her sixties, was easily brushed aside. She had been immersed in her research, scrambling around for funding, and she had raised two children (on her own); after her sons death, she had helped care for his children which left her little time to do the kind of networking that creates allies. Made unwelcome at Oxford, she accepted a position at Birmingham. But then came the question, what to do with the Oxford Survey, which by this time consisted of 23,000 manila envelopes. Since my office in Birmingham was a trailer, a sort of hut, and the records were prodigious, it became a real problem. She offered to leave the files at Oxford, feeling that the survey ought to continue: We were building a database that would have allowed us to test several hypotheses about cancer. It ought to have been put on an ongoing basis. Thats what you have to do if youre going to find the cause for cancer. But Doll had no use for the files even though he would, several years later, launch his own study of childhood cancer, with great fanfare and £6 million funding (some from the nuclear industry), announced in 1992 by the U.K. Co-ordinating Committee on Cancer Re-search, as a new and unique nationwide investigation into the causes of cancer in children, the largest and most wide-ranging study of its kind to be carried out anywhere in the world.
Its as though wed never existed, Stewart said, though it was hard to see the difference between his study and ours. . . . Its hard to describe, like a current I was swimming against. When the Medical Research Council put together a committee on epidemiology, Doll was made chairman, which gave him enormous influence. [He directed the MRCs Statistical Research Unit from 1961 to1969.] After that, every department in the country was called in to consult except us. We never got invited to official meetings, never got asked to give our point of view. She was thus excluded from the processes, decisions, reviews, commentaries that shaped medical research in the United Kingdom, all the while she was developing an international reputation as an authority on radiation risk and receiving invitations to speak and consult from researchers throughout the world.
Omissions are difficult to document, but heres one that leaps out. Doll, reminiscing (in conversation with Sarah Darby in 2003) about the early days of epidemiology, describes how he and several young men (all men) gathered around those few senior people such as Professor Ryle at Oxford who were interested in developing the subject. He makes no mention of Stewart, though she was one of those young scientists: in fact, she is the one Ryle chose, when he was made Regius Professor at Oxford in 1945, to help launch his program in Social Medicine which set her on the path to epidemiology. Doll simply writes her out of the story.
...
Its as though wed never existed, Stewart said, though it was hard to see the difference between his study and ours. . . . Its hard to describe, like a current I was swimming against. When the Medical Research Council put together a committee on epidemiology, Doll was made chairman, which gave him enormous influence. [He directed the MRCs Statistical Research Unit from 1961 to1969.] After that, every department in the country was called in to consult except us. We never got invited to official meetings, never got asked to give our point of view. She was thus excluded from the processes, decisions, reviews, commentaries that shaped medical research in the United Kingdom, all the while she was developing an international reputation as an authority on radiation risk and receiving invitations to speak and consult from researchers throughout the world.
Omissions are difficult to document, but heres one that leaps out. Doll, reminiscing (in conversation with Sarah Darby in 2003) about the early days of epidemiology, describes how he and several young men (all men) gathered around those few senior people such as Professor Ryle at Oxford who were interested in developing the subject. He makes no mention of Stewart, though she was one of those young scientists: in fact, she is the one Ryle chose, when he was made Regius Professor at Oxford in 1945, to help launch his program in Social Medicine which set her on the path to epidemiology. Doll simply writes her out of the story.
...
Full paper at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51741898_Richard_Doll_and_Alice_Stewart_Reputation_and_the_Shaping_of_Scientific_Truth
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
0 replies, 559 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (5)
ReplyReply to this post