R's space

 

Have a look at some of these links which expose the ineptitude and conduct of Chris Busby, so-called "scientific" advisor to, and aspiring MEP for, the Green Party. 

 

Click on "Acrobat PDF" links to

"What to believe and what not to believe"  and to

"Leukaemia incidence in Welsh children linked with low level radiation - making sense of some erroneous results published in the media"

 

Click on "Acrobat PDF" link to

"Reflections on CERRIE"

 

Click on the link

"View the Menai Straits report here"  then click on the link

"050330MenaiReport.pdf"

 

Busby would have you believe that almost every scientist and doctor in the world is incompetent, involved in a gigantic cover-up, or complacent about the health of their families and friends.  Read on and see if YOU believe him....

 

Although superficially impressive to the gullible and the naive, his CV conveys a facade of scientific respectability that is built on sand. Here are some key points:

(1) BSc Chemistry (London), PhD Chemical Physics (Kent). Failed to complete his first PhD project - an early indication of his intellectual shortcomings.

(2) Glorified laboratory assistant for a few years.

(3) Dropped out to pursue a 'life of adventure' on the ocean wave - why bother getting a real job when millions of taxpayers will pay for education, health services, etc?

(4) Self-appointed "scientific consultant", "writer", and director of "green audit".

(5) Self-described government "expert" - in fact, Busby got himself invited on to the CERRIE committee by Michael Meacher MP to represent a tiny minority view (equivalent to flat-earthers) shared by virtually no scientists with any credible scientific record. Apparently, it was government policy to be as inclusive as possible, even if that meant including people with no talent beyond self-promotion. Richard Bramhall, Busby's sycophantic second lieutenant and former professional musician, was also invited on to CERRIE to represent the low level radiation campaign, even though this is effectively the same organisation as "green audit".

(6) Honorary Fellow in Dept of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Liverpool University.  As an aside, it appears that this may have been set up for him by his friend Vyvyan Howard. Howard was a colleague of the notorious Dutch pathologist, Dick van Velzen (famous for taking and retaining body parts without parental consent), and co-authored at least 25 papers with him.  Howard now appears to have been exiled to the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Curiously, Busby's name does not get a mention among the list of honorary staff on the website of the Dept of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Liverpool University, and when you 'phone the Department, nobody seems to have heard of him! Despite this, Busby still claims an affiliation to Liverpool University.  You'd think after the Alder Hey scandal, Liverpool University might be careful not to appoint people with a cavalier attitude to research ethics.

(7) More recently, visiting professor at (yes - you've guessed it!) the University of Ulster, Coleraine! I wonder who set that up for him? To be honest, I hadn't heard of this presumably glorified polytechnic either, but with honorary appointments like this, they seem intent on building a reputation as a centre of mediocrity. For an environmentalist, with all his travel to Coleraine and European cities, Busby must have one hell of a carbon footprint, but then with these guys its always do as I say, not as I do. And of course, he and his work are so important (pity he just ain't very good at it).
(8) Member of the editorial board of the grandiosely named, web-only "journal", European Journal of Biology and Bioelectromagnetics. In fact, this "journal" is not listed among official catalogues of scientific periodicals and so has equivalent status to the Beano! Anyone can set up an online-only journal and appoint themselves to the editorial board. After just six issues, the "journal" appears to have died, but not before Busby managed to publish eight allegedly peer-reviewed papers in it! Peer-reviewed by morons, obviously.

(9) Describes himself as an epidemiologist, but has had no formal training in epidemiology or statistics, or if he has, he should definitely ask for his money back! See further down for examples of his inability to perform basic arithmetic (kind of a prerequisite for this field of science, I would have thought).

(10) Superficially impressive list of publications, but

 - hardly any are peer-reviewed.

 - the original articles that are peer-reviewed are placed in journals with zero or negligible impact factors, and most have been criticised beyond recovery - perhaps he should re-name his organisation the "low level impact campaign".

 - some of the ones he tries to pass off as peer-reviewed papers are simply letters to the editors of journals - usually these do not go for external peer-review and attract much lower status in the scientific world.

 - the overwhelming majority of his "publications" are pretentiously titled "occasional papers" which are plainly not peer-reviewed, and have repeatedly been shown to be terminally flawed, third-rate attempts at "scientific research".

(11) Compared to some of the high-profile scientists he criticises, Busby's CV is actually pitiful - intellectually he is way out of his league. In the real world of science, most people haven't heard of him, and anyone who has regards him as a joke. But without a doubt, he is cunning and politically astute.

(12) "Expert" witness for hire. Incredible as it may seem, Busby has manufactured a career for himself as an "expert" witness. Basically, the more controversy he can stir up, the more he stands to earn in expensive court cases. Almost all of these single issue environmental campaigners have massive vested interests. See, for example, Ben Goldacre's assessment of one of Busby's buddies, Roger Coghill, who thrives on the controversy surrounding the potential health effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMF):

Having put the fear of God into vulnerable and scientifically naive individuals, Coghill markets measuring devices and EMF protection equipment on his website. Incidentally, Coghill's company, the Medcross Group, appears to be responsible for managing and publishing the pseudo-scientific "journal", European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics (see point (8) above). The problem is, if you add together all the purported health effects claimed by each single issue environmental campaigner (ionizing radiation, EMF, incinerators, etc), it would be impossible to survive on planet Earth!

 

Imagine the incidence of a disease is one new case per 200 persons per year. Imagine a village containing 200 residents in 50 houses, 4 people to each house. Every year, you might expect one person in the village to develop the disease. Anything unusual about this? Yes, according to Busby. He looks at the data and realises that he can manufacture a disease cluster if he just chooses the right boundaries of time and space. Like a Texas sharpshooter, who draws the markings on a target after he has fired his bullets, Busby draws a circle round the household containing the person with the disease. The incidence of disease in his study population is 1 in 4 per year, or 50 in 200 per year - a 50-fold higher incidence than background rates. Bring on the gullible journalists! Obviously, this is illustrative - in practice, Busby typically does his "analyses" at ward level. So, for example, if he is trying to prove a coastal effect, he looks at the data, and then ignores any coastal wards or periods of time during which the incidence of disease is average or below average. His highly selective approach is very nicely illustrated in this article:

Click on the "Acrobat PDF" links to the first listed paper, "Leukaemia incidence in Welsh children linked with low level radiation - making sense of some erroneous results published in the media".

Another more recent example of Busby's scientifically indefensible data manipulation comes from his secondary "analysis" of Scottish childhood leukaemia data. Despite the fact that the incidence of childhood leukaemia in the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland was apparently lower than expected in the years immediately following the Chernobyl incident, Busby selectively excluded the data relating to these years, on the demonstrably false grounds that this represented a "major period of risk". Despite this bit of statistical jiggery-pokery, designed to achieve the results he was looking for, even he could not come up with a result that was remotely close to being statistically significant. The letter reporting Busby's "results" and a commentary which comprehensively demolishes his woeful efforts can be found in the journal, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, April 2008, pages 286-287 (unfortunately you have to pay to access this). As an aside, and as reported in Busby's cleverly named propaganda comic, Radioactive Times (April 2008, pages 14-15), it seems that Busby had to effectively blackmail the editor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine into publishing his letter by threatening to stir things up in the media (who are invariably stupid enough to oblige).

Taking Busby's approach, you can generate a cluster of almost any disease almost anywhere in the country - all you have to do is choose your boundaries of space and time after you have looked at the data. Let's just ignore the fact that there is a major deficit of disease in the immediately surrounding area or time period. No amount of arrogance, fake concern or self-righteousness can conceal the fact that this is epidemiology for simpletons. If you want to swallow this kind of garbage, you are seriously lacking in any powers of critical analysis.

As one of many examples, in Busby's Menai Straits "report", when calculating expected numbers of cancers, he concludes that the 4-year period 2000-2003 is only 3 years. This seemingly trivial error is important because it leads to an under-estimation of expected numbers (by a factor of 3/4 or 75%). Even in the absence of any genuine increase in risk, this crass error misleadingly inflates the ratio of observed to expected cases, generating an apparent but spurious increase in risk of 33%. Of course, everyone can be forgiven for making occasional mistakes, but this is part of a depressingly repetitive pattern. For example, page 2 of the same "report" - "...in the 16 years between 1963 and 1982".  Actually, that's 20 years - count it out on your fingers like we used to do at primary school (although most of us probably got the right answer). It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Chris (I can't count) Busby is not competent to perform even simple calculations, or alternatively, he sets out deliberately to defraud (or both). Either way, none of his "analyses" can be trusted. He has been told about the errors in his Menai Straits "report" but the report remains on his bizarre website, an indication of his total lack of integrity.

Here's one more example of so-called "science" emerging from the Busby stable (and like the contents of most stables, it might be good for fertilising roses, but not much else). Its an article published in yet another little known journal, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, December 2007, pages 623-630. You can access the abstract, at least, from the sciencedirect.com website. Busby and his colleagues describe a new constant they have developed called the "cancer incidence temporality index". Sounds impressive, I hear you say. The equation describing this groundbreaking constant is given in the article's abstract as:

I = (∑O_a/∑E_a)/(∑O_a/∑E_a)

Only schoolboy mathematics is required to realise that this is indeed the ultimate constant - no matter what values you assign to Oa and Ea, the answer is always going to be 1! What a massively useful contribution to knowledge and mankind! Shurely deserves a Nobel prize.

Incompetent analyses, while irritating, are usually easy to spot. Of more concern is when data are apparently falsified. I quote from a letter published in response to an article of Busby's in the little known journal, Energy & Environment (I don't think this journal even merits an impact factor):
"Disturbingly, the only new data on infant leukaemia during the exposed period that are presented by Busby and Scott Cato, namely the Welsh registration data, do not accord with those held by the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit".
For more details including further evidence of Busby's breathtaking statistical incompetence, see the "journal" Energy & Environment, May 2002, pages 294-297 (Again, I'm afraid it is necessary to pay to access this).

There are so many falsehoods on Busby's llrc website, it is difficult to know where to begin. For example, "Radiation remains the only known cause of leukaemia" and "..the Government and the chancer [sic] charities do not dare commission the vital project - a case / control study in which patients and their parents are examined for their body burden of man-made radioactive elements, compared with healthy controls."

A 5-minute Google search of reputable websites reveals that the first statement is patently untrue (Try googling "benzene and leukaemia", for example). And why won't the Government and cancer charities commission the "vital" project? Because its already been done and shown nothing, perchance? See:

(1) Gibson BE et al. Lancet 1988;2:630  and (2) Watson WS et al. The measurement of radioactivity in people living near the Dounreay Nuclear Establishment, Caithness, Scotland. Int J Radiat Biol 1996;70:117-30.

Busby's approach is to latch on to anything that supports his own crackpot theory and ignore any evidence to the contrary. For example, see this interesting paper by Cook-Mozaffari P et al. Cancer near potential sites of nuclear installations. Lancet 1989;2:1145-7. The abstract is reproduced below:

Mortality and census data for 400 districts of England and Wales were analysed with respect to existing sites of nuclear power stations and sites where the construction of such installations had been considered or had occurred at a later date (potential sites). Excess mortality due to leukaemia and Hodgkin's disease in young people who lived near potential sites was similar to that in young people who lived near existing sites. Areas near existing and potential sites might share unrecognised risk factors other than environmental radiation pollution.

Does this get a mention on Busby's website? You must be joking! Because any fair-minded person would interpret this as suggesting the possibility that it is something about the characteristics of the areas chosen to build nuclear sites (rural, low population density, etc) that increases the risk of leukaemia rather than radiation per se.

It is tempting to think that Busby is simply so ignorant that he doesn't appreciate how ignorant he really is. Almost certainly true to some extent. But the real CERRIE report makes it clear that these papers were discussed - so he must be aware of them, but chooses to mislead visitors to his website. Clearly, his incompetence and his lack of integrity make him ideally suited to seek political office and join the political gravy train by standing as an MEP candidate for the Green Party. And while we're on the subject of politics, just what on earth are the Green Party thinking of? There are stacks of highly competent, mainstream scientists of unquestionable integrity, with serious scientific records and impeccable green credentials, yet the Green Party appoint an incompetent narcissist like Busby as their "National Speaker on Science and Technology"! Do they want to remain in the political wilderness forever?

 

Look, I could go on - but you probably get the picture. Don't take my word for it - you can verify all of this stuff on the internet. But beware of single issue campaign groups, and always question the motives of people with unashamedly political ambitions.

 

I have absolute contempt for perpetrators of pseudo-science who seek to defraud and exploit the gullible, the naive, and the vulnerable.