Documents Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A 4 results

"Statisticians and scientists are often required to provide information outside the scientific community. One important example is as an expert witness in the law courts. The civil litigation cases of Reay versus British Nuclear Fuels plc and Hope versus British Nuclear Fuels plc are a vivid illustration of how science and scientists interact with the law and lawyers. The personal injury cases were decided on the basis of how a specific epidemiological association should be properly interpreted, and this involved many experts. It is desirable that statisticians and scientists understand the nature of expert evidence, and these two cases are used to illuminate the role of the scientist in civil litigation."

"This study investigates whether there was evidence of increasing risk of still-birth with increasing paternal exposure to ionizing radiation received during employment at the Sellafield nuclear installation before the child was conceived. A significant positive association is found between the total paternal preconceptional exposure to external ionizing radiation and the risk of still-birth (after adjustment for year of birth, social class, birth order and paternal age, odds ratio at 100 mSv 1.24 (95% confidence interval 1.04-1.45)). A summary of the principal scientific findings of this study has been published in the Lancet. This paper describes in detail the statistical methods that were used in the investigation and presents the results in full."

"During the last few years several studies of childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear installations in the UK have been undertaken. These studies have looked in particular at leukaemia rates around specific nuclear sites but also around groups of installations. Attempts to control for potential confounding variables in some of the analyses have not explained the excess, and its cause-whether related to radiation or to other factors-is still unclear."

"The International Commission on Radiological Protection has given estimates of the risk of fatal cancer from low doses of ionizing radiation for use in the radiological protection of workers. Recent publications present data which, it is claimed, show that these estimates substantially underestimate the hazard. One of these (Mancuso et al, 1977) is based on data from the Hanford plant. This paper presents a more standard analysis of these data in which the observed death rates are examined for trends with increasing radiation dose, and also the total numbers of observed deaths are compared with those expected from United States national mortality data. Overall, no evidence is found to show that the currently used risk estimates are too low. However, there is increased mortality from multiple myeloma in the higher dose categories."