Really, once is more than enough.

* * *

I gather that rodents (and rats, which are no longer rodents!) are routinely exposed to saturation levels of phthalates in their drinking water and their cage materials, unless the phthalate effect itself is under examination. Can any negative result in a typical endocrine disruption experiment be trusted?

Uhm.

One of the three poster-boy examples for the non-monotonous curves from the article is not as clear cut as it might appear:

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.7015.1350997975!/image/Curves-graphic.jpg_gen/derivatives/fullsize/Curves-graphic.jpg

The BPA/cancer in mice study has cancer induced by other means, so there is a non-trivial interaction between BPA and the already present cancer.

BTW:
The stuff that mice are fed in studies is not necessarily an accurate representation of the diet from their evolutionary environment. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are non-trivial interactions between the “non-monotonous” substance on test, and possible evolutionary novel substances contained in mouse chow (you know, stuff like trans-fatty acids, high seed oil content, and so on – stuff mice had definitly no access to in their evolutionary environment).

BTW2:
If you like non-obvious results with regards to BPA, you will love this:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/reprint/87/11/5185.pdf
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/2009/12/bpa-in-thermal-printer-ink.html

As for L’Aquila, where is the outrage directed at the planners, the builders and the inspectors? This is only too common. The tragedies of various earthquakes in seemingly ‘targeting’ schools and care homes revealing shoddy building and the true values of society are repeated over and over. Lets blame the scientists because they fall back on those pesky things called evidence and hide behind bizarre concepts such as probability and relative risk. Easy targets.

We may compare it with what’s now happening in another part of Italy, the Pollino (Southern Italy). The other day there was a relatively strong earthquake (though just one person died, of heart attack), but in the last 2 years the area has been affected by HUNDREDS of small to medium magnitude seismic events – an earthquake swarm not at all unlike that in L’Aquila before the big one. If we follow the same logic that led to the L’Aquila conviction, people in Pollino should have left their homes 2 years ago and been living in tents or whatever since then!

Incredibly, many Italians still don’t seem to get that most of our country is at high seismic risk, and don’t demand enough from institutions in terms of prevention measures. After all the real problem with L’Aquila was that an earthquake of that intensity should NOT have caused so much damage – apart from the 300+ killed it really destroyed entire towns, which would not have happened if most building were anti-seismic, as they should have been according to Italian law.

And yet Italians don’t get it, they keep confiding on luck or divine providence, and then after some inevitable disaster occurs they must find someone to blame. This not only with earthquakes, but also with hydrogeological risk. Every year several Italian towns are affected by landslides and floods resulting at best in financial damage, and not uncommonly in casualties… and yet people not only keep living in high-risk areas (which is partly understandable, where else could they go, Yorkshire?), but to BUILD anew in high-risk areas. Italians after all aren’t renowned for long-term planning and “historic” memory…
Apologies for the overlong comment
-wsa

* If a 2nd year PhD students can be allowed to describe himself as a scientist. Usually I’d be modest and put inverted commas but today I’m totally going for the S word