LNTgate: How scientific misconduct by the U.S. NAS led to governments adopting LNT for cancer risk assessment

Abstract

This paper provides a detailed rebuttal to the letter of Beyea (2016) which offered a series of alternative interpretations to those offered in my article in Environmental Research (Calabrese, 2015a) concerning the role of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation (BEAR) I Committee Genetics Panel in the adoption of the linear dose response model for cancer risk assessment. Significant newly uncovered evidence is presented which supports and extends the findings of Calabrese (2015a), reaffirming the conclusion that the Genetics Panel should be evaluated for scientific misconduct for deliberate misrepresentation of the research record in order to enhance an ideological agenda. This critique documents numerous factual errors along with extensive and deliberate filtering of information in the Beyea letter (2016) that leads to consistently incorrect conclusions and an invalid general perspective.

Keywords: Cancer risk assessment; Dose response; Hormesis; Linear dose response; Mutation; Threshold dose response.