Risks to health and risks to science: the need for a responsible "bioevidential" scrutiny.
Ethical issues of evidence relevant for risk policy are not adequately addressed if divorced from issues of the responsible interpretation of the risk evidence itself. Evidence for hormetic hypotheses are based on data that disagree with a null hypothesis asserting H0: zero (0) improvement (at low doses). We critically evaluate some of the reasoning and the procedures used by leading proponents of hormesis, and suggest how potential errors may be avoided.
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Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA. mayod@vt.edu
Spanos
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D000818:Animals; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000941:ethics* / Q000592:standards; D006291:Health Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*