Report by Congress says: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist to Advance Climate Change Plans

I doubt Obama's media darlings will be reporting this

Dec 20, 2016: news report: Congress: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist to Advance Climate Change Plans, Investigation claims Obama admin retaliated against scientists, politicized DoE

Full report: U.S. Department of Energy Misconduct Related to the Low Dose Radiation Research Program (pdf)

Obama administration fired a top scientist who got out of line and wanted scientific research done into actual harms of banned substances.

Background: For decades now, the old ruling against carcinogenic substances: No safe dose, based on a linear, no-threshold, LNT, dose-response model has been disputed. No-safe dose is widely used by regulatory agencies, especially for carcinogenic substances. Some of the problems with no-safe dose are: at least one agency thinks everything is a carcinogen (such as the UN IARC who literally say 99.9% of everything (substance and activity) they investigated was carcinogenic. They sub-contracted NRDC researchers to find that. The no-safe dose model assumes there is no real protection against carcinogens, in that it considers every animal to be, more or less, equally susceptible. It believed genetic damage is carried down the lineage. That is absolutely not the case. In recent decades, modern biology found several mechanisms, which work at the cellular level, by which animals protect themselves from cancer. Some animals have high protection against cancer, such as: Elephants, blind mole rat, naked mole rat, water bears (tardigrades) to name but 4. These protective measures use a variety of mechanisms (proteins to protect DNA, widely different levels of cell lysis, mechanisms to prevent DNA insertion by alien creatures such as viruses, etc.). Different DNA repair mechanisms are present at a cellular level to repair damaged or broken DNA. Humans are about mid-way. Not the most susceptible animal but certainly not the least.

The cost of no-safe dose to industry may be in the trillions. It is certainly at least tens of billions each year. I guess no one knows because we don't really study it. Regulatory agencies never bothered with cost-benefit before they enacted no-safe dose. They do not review cost-benefits. E.g. Notice how Wikipedia don't even discuss cost-benefit. Presumably because there are not enough comprehensive studies; as academics and regulators are too cowed to write them. One might get sacked.

Scientists in the nuclear power, and radiation medicine (anti-cancer) industries have tried for years to establish a threshold dose instead. It looks like the Obama administration fired at least one scientist to make an example and establish who's in charge. To establish who has the right to decide what science says.