You're not comparing bananas to bananas. As I understand, the limited information that has been publicly released about the backscatter machines is a useless m

You're not comparing bananas to bananas. As I understand, the limited information that has been publicly released about the backscatter machines is a useless measurement when you take into account how they actually work. You can't apply a standard measurement from a medical x-ray machine that targets a small part of your body using one technique to a different machine that targets your entire body using a different technique. So the two problems are: 1. You don't have good numbers to even evaluate how dangerous they are, many evaluations, including possibly the article above, are useless because they don't have the real data to compare to. 2. The radiation exposure from a banana also effects your body differently than a medical x-ray machine which is in turn different from a backscatter machine targeting your entire body. I'm not saying people aren't trying to evaluate the actual risk in good faith. I'm saying they're skipping the step where we get useful numbers from the manufacturer of the machine to even apply good science to. Edit: by "whole body" I mean "whole surface of your body" since it's concentrated on your skin