In December 2009, the editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences decided to provide printing services for a small group of people who had a history of pursuing an agenda against the use of nuclear energy. They had translated a book titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment that had initially been sponsored by Greenpeace and written by a co-founder of Greenpeace Russia, Alexey V. Yablokov.
Using scientifically unsupportable techniques, Yablokov claimed that hundreds of millions of people had been exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident and close to a million had already died as a result of that exposure. Several months after the book was published, Ted Rockwell, a long time member of the NYAS began a letter writing effort to convince his organization that the work violated many of the principles on which the organization was founded. You can find a number of articles on Ted’s saga here on Atomic Insights.
A couple of days ago, Ted sent out an update that he wants shared widely. Ted is a tenacious man who is a staunch defender of the scientific method and the integrity of scientific organizations against efforts to co-opt their credibility with the public. He wants everyone to understand the reasons he is so offended by the continued availability of the unscientific work on the web site of the organization of which he is a proud member. I’ll let Ted do the rest of the talking:
