Don't waste your time on Dr. Calabrese's opinion of Linear, No Threshold (Plus: Two good scientists with better sources to check out instead.) by Ace and Sharon Hoffman April 25, 2023 (posted online December 18, 2025) On the 37th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster (April 26, 1986 in Ukraine, April 25 in the USA time zones), one can reflect on the enormous number of lies Russian and Ukraine officials told -- and continue to tell -- to hide the truth about how bad that disaster was. How many lies have been told in America about the dangers (or rather, the supposed lack thereof) from Low Level Radiation? Who is lying and who is merely misled? Sometimes it can be hard to tell. But in this case, Dr. Calabrese disparages someone we know was a very good man and a very good scientist (as well as a mentor to one of us, over a number of years late in Gofman's life). We've read a number of Gofman's books and subscribed to his newsletter for many years. He was awesome: Meticulous, brilliant and dedicated to finding the truth. He was fair-minded and highly respected, as witness Gofman's lifelong friendship with one of HIS mentors, Glenn Seaborg, despite their differences on important issues. Reading the paper by Dr. Edward Calabrese titled "The Gofman-Tamplin Cancer Risk Controversy and Its Impact on the Creation of BEIR I and the Acceptance of LNT" (1) is a waste of time because it does not discuss the scientific facts related to LNT. Linear-no-threshold (LNT) is the theory or assumption that the likelihood of health consequences from something (in this case radiation) is approximately proportional to dose, down to any low dose level above zero. The severity of health effects (in the case of radiation, effects such as cancer, genetic damage, heart disease or other health effects) generally does not diminish with dose, it is only the likelihood of occurrence that is considered "linear" to absorbed dose. There are usually some statistically significant exceptions, some caveats that should be considered, some apples-to-oranges comparisons that are mistaken for exceptions, and some genuine arguments against LNT in specific cases. However, Calabrese's paper does not discuss these issues in any detail. Instead the article is an attempt to discredit work done by Dr. John Gofman and Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin in the late-1960s and early 1970s, and an opportunity for Calabrese to promote his own views. Calabrese has long been an opponent of LNT, as his own institution (UMass, Amherst) points out "... Calabrese ... continues ... to question the legitimacy of the linear no threshold (LNT) model for risk assessment for ionizing radiation exposure as adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and many others." (2). Almost all the citations in Calabrese's paper (except those citing Calabrese's own work) predate 1980. As Calabrese acknowledges, Gofman and Tamplin sacrificed their careers in the U.S. nuclear establishment (at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) to influence public policy and support the precautionary principle behind LNT-based regulations. The intervening 50+ years of research shows how much we owe these early scientists who worked for radiation standards based on LNT. Despite Calabrese's attempts to suggest that alternative theories (which have also been around since the 1950s) are valid, the LNT theory is STILL the best way to model radiation damage as the following resources explain. In 2012 Ian Fairlie addressed controversy surrounding LNT and looked at both historical and contemporary data, including studies of people receiving medical radiation and medical technicians exposed to radiation in their work. Fairlie considers relationships between low-level radiation dose and response in several categories "... (a) linear, (b) supra-linear, (c) sub-linear, (d) threshold, and (e) hormetic." In his review of studies of leukemia in Chernobyl cleanup workers, Fairlie found "... that these are (a) very large studies with statistically significant results, and (b) at very low doses, even down to background levels. In other words, the usual caveats about the validity of the linear shape of the dose response relationship down to low doses are becoming less and less justified." (3) Fairewinds.org links to a video by Ian Goddard which meticulously analyzes all the studies of radiation exposure in the disputed region below 100 millisieverts that were published from approximately 2006 to 2015 and are available at the National Library of Medicine. Goddard then overlays the results to illustrate how LNT fits the data compared to the fit for two other theories: that no effects occur below the 100 millisievert threshold or that doses below that level are beneficial (hormesis). In all cases, Goddard shows that LNT is a much more accurate representation of the data. (4) In 2016, the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) published a brief explanation of LNT and why radiation standards should continue to be based on LNT. The posting is a summary of a response to an article in Physics Today that contended (as Calabrese does) that LNT is inaccurate. The NRDC article concludes with the following paragraph: "Opponents of the LNT model simply chose to disregard core research and findings in the field of radiation health physics. The LNT model is based on sound science, and it adequately protects people. It is better to acknowledge that the science at present is consistent with the LNT model." (5) The controversy surrounding Gofman and Tamplin's views about radiation standards has existed since they first shared their findings. For example, in 1970, Physics Today published a letter to the Editor from Freeman J. Dyson and a response from the editor, Henry A. Knoll concerning Gofman's and Tamplin's Senate testimony. Dyson is complaining about a previously published editorial and points out that Gofman and Tamplin are well aware that the data is incomplete “... Gofman and Tamplin's testimony ..., a large part of which is concerned precisely with the statistical impossibility of proving damage in a large population exposed to low-level radiation. Gofman and Tamplin correctly point out that the damage may be real and serious even when it is not statistically demonstrable.” (6) (1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9987470/ (2) https://www.umass.edu/news/article/new-calabrese-paper-continues-criticism (3) https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/the-linear-no-threshold-theory-of-radiation-risks/ (4) https://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education//radiation-risk-lnt-model-tested (5) https://www.nrdc.org/bio/bemnet-alemayehu/hold-fast-linear-no-threshold-radiation-protection#:~:text=Linear%20no%2Dthreshold%20(LNT),in%20the%20low%2Ddose%20range. (6) https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.3022273?journalCode=pto (This copy of the Letters to the Editor page includes only a portion of Knoll's response, which attempts to reassure readers that there is no need to be concerned about radioactive releases from nuclear power plants.)
Previous essays and submissions regarding Hormesis: Comments for Docket ID NRC-2015-0057 "Linear, No Threshold":
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2015/09/comments-for-docket-id-nrc-2015-0057.html Comments on yesterday's NRC hearing on LNT and ALARA (July 16, 2025):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2025/07/comments-on-yesterdays-nrc-hearing-on.html A slow, agonizing death... (Ace Hoffman's Nuclear News Blog for April 5th, 2011, a few weeks after the start of the Fukushima-Daiichi triple nuclear meltdowns):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2011/04/slow-agonizing-death.html
Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
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Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
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