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Yes but is it like saying wolves are safer than dogs because statistically your are less likely to be harmed by a wolf than a dog? It ignores the fact that if y
by thekevan 16y ago
Yes but is it like saying wolves are safer than dogs because statistically your are less likely to be harmed by a wolf than a dog? It ignores the fact that if you do run afoul of a wolf, you are done.
- nitrogen 16y agoNot quite, because those who actually calculate statistics can account for differences in exposure. For example, the correct statistic to use with wolves and dogs would be something like, "survival rate after pissing off the animal in a similar environment," not just "total number of casualties." With nuclear vs. fossil fuel, the relevant statistic is deaths per terawatt-hour of energy produced, not deaths in total.
- varjag 16y agoIAEA and WHO are notorious for counting only directly attributable deaths. If someone dies from radiation-induced cancer 10 years after in the ripe age of 30-something, it doesn't get in the stats. Then the stats get perpetuated endlessly by nuclear fanboys.
- veidr 16y agoYeah, that is the most frustrating thing about the arguments from Chernobyl revisionists. There was no possibility to do all the science that would ideally have been done, everywhere it should have been done. So the anecdotal evidence is often the only evidence--and it is discounted. That is where you get idiotic statements like 'only 28 people died as a result of Chernobyl'. Also, there are many other things that happened to people short of death that nevertheless really sucked, e.g. getting nonfatal thyroid cancer. There's definitely merit to having a compendium of only rigorous scientific results, of course, but it doesn't help advance the debate (or the species) when such work is mischaracterized and used to promulgate bogus conclusions (much less weird fanboy ideologies).