Well yea, that’s a very good way to describe it—made of bias. We always believed that if something is bad in excess it’s good in moderation, and then proceeded to rationalize.
The topic is actually not very obscure. It pops up in any discussion of Chernobyl or Fukushima or cold war nuclear testing or radon testing of the households or the like, there’s that ‘scepticism’ towards choosing linear no threshold model as a prior.
The seriously bad bit is that it is entirely missing the historical reference. When I am looking up an article on some pseudoscience, I want to see the history of said branch of pseudoscience. It’s easier to reject something like this when you know that it is the first hypothesis we made about biological effects of radiation (and the first hypothesis we would make about new poisons in general until 20th century).
With regards to sanity of the talk page, that’s what’s most creepy. They get rid of historical background on this thing, calmly and purposefully (i don’t know if that’s still the case, going to try adding link to quack radiation cures again). There are honest pseudo-scientists who believe their stuff and they put up all the historical context up themselves. And there’s the cases whereby you got some sane rational people with an agenda whose behaviour is fairly consistent with knowing full well that it is a fraud.
note: the LNT makes sense as a prior based on knowledge that the radiation at near the background level is a very minor contributor to number of mutations, and if you look at the big picture—number of mutations—for doses up to many times background, you’re still varying it by microscopic amount around some arbitrary point, and you absolutely should choose linear behaviour as prior. Still, there’s the ‘sceptics’ who want to choose zero effect at low doses as a prior because the effects were never shown and occam’s razor blah blah blah.
edit: ahh by the way, i wrote some of that description outlining the hypothesis, making it clearer that they start from beneficial effects then hypothesise some defence mechanisms that are strong enough to cancel the detrimental effect. That’s such completely backwards reasoning.
Overall, that sounds more like a bunch of folks who have heard of this cool, weird, contrarian idea and are excited by it, rather than people who are trying to perpetrate a fraud for personal benefit. Notably, there isn’t any mention on the article of any of the quack treatments you mention above; there’s no claims of persecution or conspiracy; there’s not even much in the way of anti-epistemology.
It’s a pseudoscience article from which they remove the clues by which one could recognize pseudoscience, that’s what’s bad.
Also, it should link to past quack treatments of 20th century. I’m going to try again adding those when I have time. It’s way less cool and contrarian when you learn that it was popular nonsense when radiation was first discovered.
It’s been ages ago (>5 years i think), i don’t even quite remember how it all went.
What’s irritating about wikipedia is that the rule against original research in the articles spills over and becomes attitude against any argumentation not based on appeal to authority. So you have the folks there, they are curious about this hormesis concept, maybe they are actually just curious, not some proponents / astroturf campaign. But they are not interested in trying to listen to any argument and think if it is correct or not themselves. I don’t know, maybe it’s an attempt to preserve own neutrality on issue. In any case it is incredibly irritating. It’s half-curiosity.
Well yea, that’s a very good way to describe it—made of bias. We always believed that if something is bad in excess it’s good in moderation, and then proceeded to rationalize.
The topic is actually not very obscure. It pops up in any discussion of Chernobyl or Fukushima or cold war nuclear testing or radon testing of the households or the like, there’s that ‘scepticism’ towards choosing linear no threshold model as a prior.
The seriously bad bit is that it is entirely missing the historical reference. When I am looking up an article on some pseudoscience, I want to see the history of said branch of pseudoscience. It’s easier to reject something like this when you know that it is the first hypothesis we made about biological effects of radiation (and the first hypothesis we would make about new poisons in general until 20th century).
With regards to sanity of the talk page, that’s what’s most creepy. They get rid of historical background on this thing, calmly and purposefully (i don’t know if that’s still the case, going to try adding link to quack radiation cures again). There are honest pseudo-scientists who believe their stuff and they put up all the historical context up themselves. And there’s the cases whereby you got some sane rational people with an agenda whose behaviour is fairly consistent with knowing full well that it is a fraud.
note: the LNT makes sense as a prior based on knowledge that the radiation at near the background level is a very minor contributor to number of mutations, and if you look at the big picture—number of mutations—for doses up to many times background, you’re still varying it by microscopic amount around some arbitrary point, and you absolutely should choose linear behaviour as prior. Still, there’s the ‘sceptics’ who want to choose zero effect at low doses as a prior because the effects were never shown and occam’s razor blah blah blah.
edit: ahh by the way, i wrote some of that description outlining the hypothesis, making it clearer that they start from beneficial effects then hypothesise some defence mechanisms that are strong enough to cancel the detrimental effect. That’s such completely backwards reasoning.
Overall, that sounds more like a bunch of folks who have heard of this cool, weird, contrarian idea and are excited by it, rather than people who are trying to perpetrate a fraud for personal benefit. Notably, there isn’t any mention on the article of any of the quack treatments you mention above; there’s no claims of persecution or conspiracy; there’s not even much in the way of anti-epistemology.
It’s a pseudoscience article from which they remove the clues by which one could recognize pseudoscience, that’s what’s bad.
Also, it should link to past quack treatments of 20th century. I’m going to try again adding those when I have time. It’s way less cool and contrarian when you learn that it was popular nonsense when radiation was first discovered.
If you added those before and they were reverted, then you should be discussing it on Talk and going for consensus.
It’s been ages ago (>5 years i think), i don’t even quite remember how it all went.
What’s irritating about wikipedia is that the rule against original research in the articles spills over and becomes attitude against any argumentation not based on appeal to authority. So you have the folks there, they are curious about this hormesis concept, maybe they are actually just curious, not some proponents / astroturf campaign. But they are not interested in trying to listen to any argument and think if it is correct or not themselves. I don’t know, maybe it’s an attempt to preserve own neutrality on issue. In any case it is incredibly irritating. It’s half-curiosity.