This article provides both a personal reflection concerning major professional and scientific challenges that can occur when evaluating the concept of hormesis and the historical foundations of cancer risk assessment/linear non-threshold (LNT) dose-response model and a detailed response to a recent critic. The assessment briefly captures what happened when an established mid-career scientist (i.e., the author) somehow went “astray” and challenged the central dose-response dogma of the scientific community “establishment” and regulatory agencies. It highlights what can and did happen to me when I was perceived to be a threat to vested interests; and how professional forces became animated, mobilized, and organized to marginalize me and my ideas/research to destroy my reputation and even get me removed from my position of having a tenured university full professorship. This historical background and personal story provide insights on their own but also necessary context when addressing new or recycled criticisms generated out of a mixture of legitimate scientific questions and/or ideological bias. There are also deep and vexing frustrations due to my substantial successes in the hormesis and cancer risk assessment areas. This framework provides a necessary backdrop to address recent criticisms of the Health Physics Society (HPS) documentary, The History of the Linear No-Threshold Model , and my publications on this topic that were the principal foundations for this documentary. In brief, Beyea’s evaluation in the Health Physics Journal ( HPJ ) gives the impression that it is a broad evaluation of my research on the historical foundations of cancer risk assessment. Yet, Beyea addressed only a very limited set of discoveries that were discussed in the documentary. However, there have been numerous significant discoveries (about two dozen) published since the release of the documentary that he failed to acknowledge. All the new discoveries support, greatly enrich/extend, and do not contradict any aspect of the documentary. In addition, the Beyea assessment represents a recycling of information from his previous two highly compromised papers of nearly a decade ago. These papers, including the present one, display his confirmation bias that is strongly associated with his failure to use primary source materials, a source of novelty and significance in my historical research on cancer risk assessment. Failure to use primary sources greatly diminishes the historical and scientific value of the Beyea article, making it susceptible to secondary source opinion misinterpretations, frank errors, and bias, as repeatedly shown herein. In addition, Beyea attempts to damage my personal and professional standing/reputation, possibly violating ethical guidelines of the HPJ . Thus, the scientific basis for his comments is generally trivial and often devoid of historical foundation and accuracy, while failing to be representative of my body of work over the past two decades. The failure of Beyea to use a primary source-based research methodology, especially when such documents are copious, generally available, and essential for historical research on cancer risk assessment, represents a fundamental flaw that should have been addressed and corrected in the peer review process. Failure to do so led to the publication of a historically flawed and unreliable paper and calls into question the fairness of their review process.
Calabrese Ej (Fri,) studied this question.