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Sun, 7 Oct 2007 13:04:44 -0400 |
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Eric Brown writes: “ Steve, if you're asking for evidence, you missed my
point. It's because of all the evidence we *DON'T* have that the "nothing
but good" claim is
preposterous.”
Eric, I think the reason I may have missed your point was because I was
thinking more of irradiation as it applies to getting rid of persistent
diseases on used equipment, and not as it applies to irradiation of honey
for consumption by humans. As has been pointed out on this thread, the
latter would be unnecessary, and in any case I don’t think that was what
Jim Fischer was referring to in his post.
“As an aside, it should be noted that what evidence we do have is largely
limited by (and potentially biased by) financial incentives to fund the
research.”
I agree it is wise to be skeptical of studies that are done by non
independent parties, but financial incentives can include fear of getting a
class action suit against you if it is shown that you did not perform due
diligence before introducing a product that could harm consumers. I don’t
think you can automatically throw out studies of this kind, but they can
and should be subjected to the highest level of peer review that good
science demands.
“the reasonableness of maintaining doubts about the safety of irradiation
in the absence of complete knowledge (omniscience), especially given the
newness of the technology.”
Maintaining a healthy degree of skepticism is always a good idea in
anything where “omniscience” is lacking. However since complete certainty
is seldom the case in anything (at least for me), rejecting or even calling
into question, something that is new and presumably exists because of some
potential benefit that it might offer, should require at least some
evidence or basis for hypothesizing that it could be harmful under the
prescribed conditions. All I am saying is it would be nice to know if
there are substantiated reasons to think either that a technology under
discussion is potentially harmful or that it is absolutely 100%
beneficial. Stating that because asbestos turned out to be harmful, we
should be suspicious of irradiation doesn’t get it for me, nor do I take it
for granted that because Jim Fischer, a very knowledgeable guy, said it is
nothing but beneficial, it must be so.
Steve Noble
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