Things that apparently cause cancer
6 hours ago
- Harvard researchers published studies claiming that living near nuclear power plants increases cancer incidence and mortality, using a 'proximity score' based on distance up to 200 km.
- Critics replicated the exact methodology using absurd landmarks—Costco, private colleges, sports stadiums, state capitals, and Superfund sites—and found similarly positive cancer associations.
- For example, living near Costco was associated with over 2.2 million attributed cancer deaths, more than 20% of all cancer deaths from 2000 to 2018.
- The authors' methodology treats proximity as exposure, but radiation doses measured for nuclear workers are far below occupational limits, making claimed public exposures implausible.
- The replication shows the statistical approach produces positive results for any landmark, suggesting the result is an artifact of the methodology, not a real causal effect.
- The likely reason no negative result appears is that the ecological study design, with huge circular areas and arbitrary weighting, captures noise that consistently slopes positive, making the method blind to actual exposure or causal mechanisms.