Scientific American debunks key claim in 'Fukushima: It's much worse than you think'

[Newsjock]

Source: Scientific American

A recent article on the Al Jazeera English web site cites a disturbing statistic: infant mortality in certain U.S. Northwest cities spiked by 35 percent in the weeks following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The author writes that "physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.” The implication is clear: Radioactive fallout from the plant is spreading across the Pacific in sufficient quantities to imperil the lives of children (and presumably the rest of us as well).

The article doesn't link to the Sherman/Mangano essay, but a quick search reveals this piece that begins "U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate.” The authors churn through recently published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to justify their claim that the mortality rate for infants in the Pacific Northwest has jumped since the crisis at Fukushima began on March 11. That data is publicly available, and a check reveals that the authors’ statistical claims are critically flawed—if not deliberate mistruths.

... Let’s first consider the data that the authors left out of their analysis. It’s hard to understand why the authors stopped at these eight cities. Why include Boise but not Tacoma? Or Spokane? Both have about the same size population as Boise, they're closer to Japan, and the CDC includes data from Tacoma and Spokane in the weekly reports.

... This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.

Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=are-babies-dying-in-the-pacific-nor-2011-06-21

[Fumesucker]

1. I'd been trying to think of a plausible scientific link and was drawing a big zero.. n/t

[sharp_stick]

2. Anybody fixing data like this

should be completely drummed out of any kind of "reporting" field. If I was caught doing this with my results I'd be fired in a second.

[Terry in Austin]

3. But first the claim has to be bunk, right?

Remains to be seen whether "debunking" applies. (Not fond of that word!)

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. IMO, the 'infant mortality spike' was a bit of spin -

planted by the pro-nukes, because it created an easily debunked and dismissed strawman.

And while everyone is talking about that nonsense, the base of the reactor containers is melting through.

[bbgrunt]

5. good catch. Could be a disinfo honeypot.....a typical diversionary tactic.

[divvy]

6. You reminded me of the Bush AWOL document that was forged.

The document was correct in its allegation but proven to be a forgery, therefore the story (which was true) was a forgery.

This is a common RW tatic. I think you have fielded a pretty good (and plausable) guess.

[SidDithers]

8. Mangano is an epidiemiologist with the Radiation and Public Health Project...

are you saying the pro-nukers have co-opted RPHP?

I think it's much more likely that Mangano and the anti-nukers are RPHP are pushing an agenda and using deliberately misleading data to do it.

Sid

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. But, if you read what the RPHP wrote, it does NOT say Fukishima is responsible

for the spike in deaths which was reported by the CDC. It suggests radiation as a possible cause, and calls for testing of the radiation levels to learn if there is a correlation.

It is the SA article which claims that RPHP made that claim, then turns around and shuts it down, or attempts to, claiming poor sampling led to an inaccurate conclusion - which conclusion RPHP NEVER MADE.

IOW, the pro-nukers have co-opted Scientific American - and THAT'S a real surprise, isn't it.

[SidDithers]

14. Holy spin...

Stop it, you're making me dizzy.

Sid

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Read the article, THEN decide who is spinning. nt

[SidDithers]

19. I've read the article, there is no 35% spike...

even robdogbucky confirms this below. The authors cherry picked data.

When compared to 10 weeks before Fukushima, or the same 10 week period in 2010, there is no spike in infant deaths for the 8 cities the authors chose for their article.

There. Is. No. 35%. Spike.

Sid

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. From the counterpunch article:

"The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant."

Within the specific parameters that they are using, it exists. Comparisons to last year's numbers are irrelevant.

And, as the counterpunch article continues, they do NOT say it is because of radiation. They only ASK if it MIGHT be attributed to radiation, in light of how the numbers seem to correlate with their extensive research concerning Chernobyl.

And there could be a very good reason for not going back 10 weeks, either this year or last year (which is still irrelevant) in that going back 4 weeks instead of 10 weeks keeps the mortality rates from reflecting the increased infant mortality that is seen every winter, due to flu and other winter illnesses. Keeping the statistics reflecting springtime mortality, there was a 35% increase. Cause unknown.

What they ask for is monitoring. What's your problem with that?

[snooper2]

16. ROFL, you caught us again..

Damn you are sharp Dora...

Swiper try harder next time :P

[TheWraith]

18. Oh please. Talk about ludicrous levels of paranoia.

The "infant mortality spike" came from the exact same people, with the exact same level of sourcing, that 99% of the other stories have come from about radiation levels, "hot particles," children getting nosebleeds, etcetera.

Trying to spin it away as being "disinformation" "planted by pro-nukes" is only a thin attempt to cover up the fact that almost all of the "news" about Fukushima is equally fabricated.

[AsahinaKimi]

7. I guess this is sort of...

good news, ne?

[Brickbat]

9. Thanks for this. That was an odd story and I'm glad to see a scientific follow-up.

[SidDithers]

10. Anyone with any sense knew that story was bunk from the beginning...

the selection of cities and 4-week to 10-week comparison just screamed "cherry picking"

I looked at the same CDC data and found:

In the 10 weeks after Fukushima for those 8 cities, there were 125 infant deaths.
In the 10 weeks before Fukushima for those 8 cities, there were 129 infant deaths.
For the same "after Fukushima" 10 week period in 2010, there were 134 infant deaths.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1275202&mesg_id=1282856

Sid

[TrogL]

11. Correlation is not causation

The rise in infant mortality in those specific cities could be a local effect, such as a localized flu epidemic.

[lapislzi]

13. Ya beat me to it!

Drat!

:hi:

[robdogbucky]

17. Not so fast my Pavrovian friends:

IN RE:

The second item in this Counterpunch article discusses the data manipulation. They had their own statistician Pierre Sprey review the selected set, and expand it.

Sprey reviewed the data and confirmed that if you accept the sample cities that Sherman and Mangano picked, and also if you accept comparing 4 weeks before the March 11 Fukushima disaster and 10 weeks afterwards, then Sherman and Manganos calculations are valid.



http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06172011.html


One of the CounterPunch critics pointed out that using four weeks before and ten weeks afterwards looked like cherry-picking the data. To overcome this potential bias, Sprey collated the death numbers for the ten week period before, then did the calculations comparing infant deaths for ten weeks before and ten weeks afterwards for the same eight cities. His result was a statistically insignificant difference in deaths per week before and after an increase of infant deaths of only 2.4 per cent. To further guard against the possibility of some seasonal effect due to comparing a period earlier in the spring with one later in the spring, Sprey also compared the ten weeks after Fukishima with the identical weeks in 2010. He found exactly the same result: a 2.4 per cent increase in infant deaths over the prior year which, given 128 deaths in the ten week sample, is entirely insignificant statistically.

But then Sprey went further and looked at the Sherman/Mangano selection of eight cities from the 122 reporting to CDC&.Sprey elected to look at smaller, geographically consistent groupings of cities. The results were striking.

Simply by moving the boundary line northward from Santa Cruz Sprey found that the four northernmost Pacific Northwest cities in the CDC sample  Portland, Tacoma, Seattle and Spokane  show remarkably significant results  a larger infant mortality increase than the original Sherman-Mangano results.

During the ten weeks before March 11 those four cities suffered 55 deaths among infants less than one year old. In the ten weeks after Fukushima 78 infants died  a 42 per cent increase and one that is statistically significant. To confirm once again that these results were not due to seasonality Sprey compared these infant deaths in the ten weeks after Fukushima to the deaths in the equivalent ten weeks a year earlier. (continued in the article link).





And so it goes

[SidDithers]

20. Exactly. There is no spike in infant deaths in those 8 cities...nt

Sid