Why the NT in SNT?

Avoiding the Muller Trap

Figure 1. Lucy and the meaning of the word negligible

You people still don't get it. I've had repeated requests from the choir to drop the No Threshold from the name Sigmoid No Threshold. After all using an S-shaped curve to model dose response is common throughout medicine; and we just call the model sigmoidal or logistic or the like. No need to unnecessarily alarm the public by emphasizing the predicted harm is never exactly zero except at zero dose. The NT was only added in the fifties to increase the fear of radiation in the attempt to stop nuclear weapons testing. As far as I can tell, the first use of the term threshold in this context was in Herman Muller's infamous 1948 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

But the problem is not the public. The public knows there's no such thing as an absolutely zero risk activity. We accept that fact every time we walk out the door. We understand the word negligible, and act on it just about every hour in every day of our lives.

The problem is the nuclear establishment. The public looks to these authorities for advise, and they keep telling us the harm from even very low dose rate radiation is not negligible. The reason is that the damage just keeps adding up. This doctrine is called Linear No Threshold. That's why almost all the radium dial painters should have died. That's why millions were invisibly killed by test fallout. That's why there were tens of thousands of occult deaths from Chernobyl. There's nothing negligible about those outcomes.

We've got to get these oracles to change or disappear despite the fact that many of them believe, with good reason, their careers depend on LNT remaining the foundation of radiation protection regulation. That's a tall order.

Fortunately, LNT is so wrong --- we see no cancer in the dial painters who received up to 100,000 mSv --- that it cannot be defended except by deflection and false dichotomy. The ploy is simple. Change the argument from

a) why is LNT so wrong in situations where very large doses are incurred more or less evenly over protracted periods; to

b) prove there is a threshold below which there is absolutely zero harm.

b) is impossible.

This is a tactic that should not work. It depends on the premise that no threshold means linear, an obvious non-sequitur. But amazingly the anti-LNTers fall for it. Even worse, they hand their executioner the axe that kills them by claiming there is a threshold and that's why LNT is wrong.

This suicidal argument has allowed LNT to survive. Take that away, and the LNTers are revealed for what they are, a conclave of corrupt or willingly indoctrinated priests whose creed depends on a false dichotomy. The No Threshold in SNT is what will kill LNT. The name stays.