Given our recent discussion on this topic, I thought I would share the
following article that appeared on the front page of Saturday's New york
times.  It should be pointed out that the research in question only linked
cancer with the fields.  this is not to say that other valid research is
invalid that draws a relationship between the fields and other health
problems.  It should also be pointed out that the New York times Company
owns about  a half a dozen television stations and a number of consumer
product companies that produce appliances that generate these fields are
advertisers with the newspaper.

I wonder why a notice published in the federal register more than a month
ago takes so long to be reported on by the New York times?

kelly


July 24, 1999

Scientist Faked Data Linking Cancer to Electromagnetic Fields, Probe Finds

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

     A federal probe has found that a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley
     Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., faked what had been considered
     crucial evidence of a tie between electromagnetic radiation and
     cancer. The disclosure appears to strengthen the case that electric
     power is safe.

     Robert P. Liburdy, a cell biologist at the laboratory, an arm of
     the Energy Department, was found to have published two papers with
     misleading data. Investigators said Liburdy eliminated data that
     did not support his conclusions. After the investigation, he
     resigned quietly from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in March and
     has agreed to withdraw his research findings.

     Federal officials say his misrepresentations helped him win $3.3
     million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, the
     Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to investigate a
     link between electric power and cancer.

     Debate has raged for decades over whether power lines cause cancer
     even though top scientific groups such as the National Academy of
     Sciences have repeatedly found no evidence of danger. But other
     researchers say enough tantalizing clues keep emerging to warrant
     further investigations of possible links between electromagnetic
     radiation and killer diseases, sowing seeds of anxiety among people
     living near high-tension power lines.

     "If he hadn't gotten these results, nobody would have paid any
     attention," a federal investigator in the case, who spoke on the
     condition of anonymity, said Friday.

     The two papers reported data indicating that electromagnetic
     fields, also known as EMF, exert a biological effect by altering
     the entry of calcium across a cell's surface membrane. The fields
     are ubiquitous forms of radiation that arise from all power lines,
     home wiring and computers.

     Federal officials say Liburdy's claims were potentially very
     important when published in 1992 because they purported to link
     electromagnetic fields to calcium signaling, which is a fundamental
     process governing many important cellular functions.

     "When he originally published these papers, there was quite a bit
     of interest in it," said Glenn R. Woods, the laboratory's counsel.
     "Now both the lab and the Office of Research Integrity have found
     that data on which he based his conclusions were fabricated. He's
     been asked to withdraw that data, and I think he's doing that right
     now."

     As part of his federal settlement, Liburdy has agreed to make no
     applications for federal grants for three years and not to contest
     the federal findings in administrative proceedings.

     Liburdy can, however, disagree publicly with the misconduct
     findings, and he is doing so vigorously, professing his innocence.

     The ethics probe of Liburdy began after a whistle-blower challenged
     his intriguing results. In July 1995, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab
     determined that Liburdy had indeed falsified data, and it alerted
     the Office of Research Integrity, an arm of the U.S. Department of
     Health and Human Services.

     Last month, the integrity office announced its findings in the
     Federal Register, saying Liburdy had "engaged in scientific
     misconduct in biomedical research by falsifying and fabricating
     data and claims about the purported cellular effects of electric
     and magnetic fields."

     Recently, in letters sent over the Internet to scientific
     colleagues and interested parties, Liburdy has denied that his
     research is wrong and said he agreed to the federal settlement only
     because he was unable to spend $1 million to mount a legal defense.

     "The raw data for these figures is not challenged, and is valid,"
     Liburdy wrote in one letter. "How I graphed them is a matter of
     disagreement among scientists. Independent scientists have reviewed
     this for me and concluded that misconduct is not warranted."

     He also stressed that "none of my scientific conclusions in the two
     papers are being retracted," only the disputed published data.

     Requests for further comments left Friday at Liburdy's residence in
     Tiburon, just north of San Francisco, went unanswered.

     Federal experts vigorously disagree with Liburdy's defense and
     claims of innocence.

     "This is not a matter of interpretation or graphing," said the
     investigator. "This is fabrication and falsification. He can
     express his opinion, but not to an appeal board."

     In misconduct cases, especially ones involving large sums of money,
     the federal government can bring civil or criminal charges, and the
     defendant can be fined and sentenced to jail. In this case,
     officials say, they concluded that an administrative remedy was
     sufficient.

     The terms of the settlement with Liburdy are detailed in the June
     17 Federal Register. The notice says Liburdy "neither admits or
     denies" the finding of scientific misconduct.

     Federal officials say Liburdy did not spend all of the $3.3 million
     in grant money, and that the remainder is controlled by the
     Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

     "It's being used for other science" and none of it has been
     returned to the federal government, Woods said Friday.

     Liburdy's two disputed papers both appeared in 1992, and in both
     cases he was the lone author.

     The paper, "Biological interactions of cellular systems with
     time-varying magnetic fields," appeared in the Annals of the New
     York Academy of Sciences. "Calcium signaling in lymphocytes in ELF
     fields" appeared in FEBS Letters, published by the Federation of
     European Biochemical Societies.

     In the years since Liburdy's research appeared, more than 20
     studies have found no hard evidence that electric power causes
     cancer, a National Institutes of Health panel concluded recently.

     Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of
     Maryland who has long questioned the power-cancer link, said
     Liburdy's deception was probably typical for the field, which he
     said seems to attract crusaders out to vilify industry.

     "It's often not deliberate fraud either," Park said of slanted
     data. "People are awfully good at fooling themselves. They're so
     sure they know the answer that they don't want to confuse people
     with ugly-looking data."

     In the power line debate, Park added, the proponents of danger
     "were desperately looking for a physical effect, and the nearest
     they could come by was the calcium signal."

     The growing consensus among researchers seems to be that electric
     power is safe.

     Two years ago, a large, meticulously designed study found no
     evidence that electromagnetic fields emanating from power lines
     cause leukemia in children. The study was a collaboration between
     scientists at the National Cancer Institute and childhood leukemia
     specialists from the nation's leading medical centers.

     The study involved 636 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia,
     the most common childhood cancer, and 620 healthy children who were
     matched to the cancer patients by race, age and residential
     neighborhood.

     Scientists tracked the children's exposure to the fields that power
     lines produce, but found no relationship between exposure and risk.

     Park said the new findings of power-cancer misrepresentation will
     aid the emerging consensuses on safety. "But I'm not sure how
     strongly," he added, as other scientists are still investigating
     and advancing the idea of a cancer linkage.
     _________________________________________________________________


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