Light Pollution: Burning Earth at Both Ends

"A Science Journalist's Open Notebook"?

Here is my blog entry in response to:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20080623/ts_usnews/forcesofdarknessmakepitchtocongresstofightlightpollution

and

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/thinking-harder/2008/3/14/light-pollution-burning-earth-at-both-ends.html

It's clear you're a science *journalist* and not a *scientist*. Your multitude of statements implicating artificial light as causes of health issues (primarily cancer) both here and in more "mainstream" articles (like this, from Yahoo's news page: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20080623/ts_usnews/forcesofdarknessmakepitchtocongresstofightlightpollution) are so patently *unscientific* it is really a travesty that you are promoting them. They are poster children for the pitfalls of correlational studies, yet you treat them as scientific fact. For example, nursing shift workers having higher incidence of breast cancer. There are too many confounding variables in that to even enumerate, both internal (how the types of people who choose/do shift work differ from other types of people) and external (all the other factors that change in the hospital, the air, the wind, etc. at night). You don't even blink in mentioning that. Of all the comments above, only Robert Gillette seems to understand the experimental method. What's worse than your presentation of data without enlightening your audience to its weakness (perhaps you're not aware of its weakness) is that you seem to *intentionally mislead* your audience with statements like this: "shift work has been labeled a probably human carcinogen by a branch of the World Health Organization.". What is the relevance of that statement at all. Are you railing against shift work? I thought you were writing about light "pollution". Clearly you're trying to trick people into associating that organization's label with *light pollution* not with shift work, even though that is not what they said. It is also clear that you are hoping your audience will take away that the WHO made this statement, when they didn't... it was made by a "branch of the WHO".

It's a classic case of trying to find mainstream arguments that are popular in this country; "it harms our health and causes cancer", "it is wasteful of energy" to drive forward a fringe agenda.

Labeling you a "journalist with an agenda" is putting it *very* mildly. This whole "light pollution" issue is yet another example of a fringe group in this country being able to influence legislation for all of us.

One final comment: The "before and after" pictures you have... in almost every one of them I think it is way more beautiful with the lights shining. Yes, stars are beautiful, but city lights aren't eliminating stars... if you want stars, go to the country, or the mountains, or the desert... me, I like my cityscapes.

Keith B. of @ Jun 24, 2008 12:29:43 PM