Corruption At Harvard - Fluoride

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chri...er_scandal.htm

Further to the earlier note "Harvard Fluoride Cancer Scandal" here is a
request to send a much simpler second letter to President Bok.

We need to do this to show that interest in this issue is not going away but
growing.

In addition to the recommendations made below, some of you may be interested
in reading the Bok 2003 interview as it should give fodder in generating a
question or two to turn things around!

In addition a letter to the local newspaper may help boost queries to the
President on this matter.

Chris Gupta
http://tinyurl.com/zqwed
=========

Again I would like to emphasize how clearly this present struggle with
Harvard symbolizes the efforts of ourselves, and many of those who have come
before us, to get institutions - some highly respected like Harvard - to
exercise integrity on the fluoridation issue - and how often they don't. But
we have Harvard in the cross hairs on this and we must not let President Bok
wriggle out of doing the honorable thing. Maybe his wife Sissela Bok holds
the key - note the last paragraph in Albert's letter, which some have
incorporated into their short letters.

Thanks for anything you can do to boost our numbers on this.

Paul Connett

You might also refer to the FAN home page at www.FluorideAction.net for a
comparison of the old and new Harvard shields!
-------------------------
The short letter of support for Albert's letter, with the recommended
subject heading and cc, bcc destinations.

To:

From:

Subject: Veritas or Non Veritas?

Cc: ,

Bcc:


Dear President Bok,

Please respond to Albert Burgstahler's Sept 10 letter to you by giving a
simple explanation as to how it was possible for the unnamed investigators
at Harvard to have exonerated Professor Douglass of charges of academic
dishonesty.

If you are unable to do this please use the power of your office to
instigate an independent review of this matter.

Signed

(name, state , country and any personal details of interest, e.g. a Harvard
grad; professional qualification; occupation; public health interest or a
parent of ... young boys)

-------------------------

Albert's Sept 10 letter

September 10, 2006

Derek Bok
President, Harvard University

Dear President Bok:

I am writing directly to you because Dean Margaret L. Dale's September 7,
2006 reply to the joint letter a group of Harvard alumni and I sent to you
on August 22, 2006, did not address the central issue raised in our letter
concerning Harvard's brief August 15, 2006 statement exonerating Professor
Chester Douglass of any academic misconduct.

In essence Dean Dale simply reaffirmed the August 15 statement without
providing any explanation for Professor Douglass first having "hid, then
misrepresented, his graduate student's PhD dissertation, which found a
'robust' association between fluoridated water and an increased risk of
osteosarcoma in young boys, a frequently fatal disease."

What was submitted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to Harvard for
investigation showed that after the above dissertation submitted by Elise
Bassin had been approved and her PhD degree granted in 2001, Professor
Douglass made public statements categorically claiming his research did not
find any evidence for a significant association between water fluoridation
and osteosarcoma. In his one-page 2004 written statement to the National
Research Council panel investigating evidence for this association, he cited
Dr. Bassin's dissertation as a reference but did not state that the "robust
association" reported in it contradicted what he presented in his statement.

Similarly, in his final report on his grant from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to investigate the epidemiology of
osteosarcoma, he again cited Dr. Bassin's dissertation without noting that
its findings did not support his claim of no significant association between
water fluoridation and the incidence of osteosarcoma.

To be precise, in his report to both the NRC and the NIEHS, Professor
Douglass gave an "Odds Ratio of 1.2 to 1.4 between fluoride and osteosarcoma
that was not significantly different from 1," but he cited Elise Bassin's
dissertation as a reference without indicating that she had found a five- to
seven-fold increased risk for osteosarcoma in young boys exposed to
fluoridated water in their 6th, 7th, and 8th years. (A pdf file of Professor
Douglass's one-page communication to the NRC is available here.)

This conduct by Professor Douglass is what is at the heart of our concern,
not whether fluoridation is safe or not. In scientific research, honest
scholarship requires that any cited reference that does not agree with the
position of the author(s) be openly identified as such. By failing to do
this, Professor Douglass clearly misled his readers and committed a serious
breach of scientific trust and integrity. Dean Dale's letter did not provide
any explanation for why the Harvard review committee concluded that
Professor Douglass had not committed research misconduct by acting in the
manner he did, which is the reason for our inquiry.

In concluding her letter to me, Dean Dale stated: ". . . Harvard stands
behind its faculty review processes, which are thorough and fair and which
apply to all [members of the] faculty, regardless of public interest in the
matter." If this is the case, then a satisfactory explanation for why the
review committee did not find that any research misconduct had been
committed should be forthcoming.
Without such an explanation for dismissing the evidence of misconduct by
Professor Douglass, how can one conclude that Harvard is abiding by its
commitment to uphold academic integrity?

For the sake of living up to its exalted motto "Veritas," Harvard University
would indeed do well to heed what an author well known to you wrote: "Trust
and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain.
They can survive only on a foundation of respect for veracity." (Sisella
Bok: Lying - Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, Pantheon Books, New
York, page 249)

Sincerely,

Albert W. Burgstahler, PhD, '53,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS

JOHN wrote:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chri...er_scandal.htm

Further to the earlier note "Harvard Fluoride Cancer Scandal" here is a
request to send a much simpler second letter to President Bok.

We need to do this to show that interest in this issue is not going away but
growing.

In addition to the recommendations made below, some of you may be interested
in reading the Bok 2003 interview as it should give fodder in generating a
question or two to turn things around!

In addition a letter to the local newspaper may help boost queries to the
President on this matter.

Chris Gupta
http://tinyurl.com/zqwed
=========

Again I would like to emphasize how clearly this present struggle with
Harvard symbolizes the efforts of ourselves, and many of those who have come
before us, to get institutions - some highly respected like Harvard - to
exercise integrity on the fluoridation issue - and how often they don't. But
we have Harvard in the cross hairs on this and we must not let President Bok
wriggle out of doing the honorable thing. Maybe his wife Sissela Bok holds
the key - note the last paragraph in Albert's letter, which some have
incorporated into their short letters.

Thanks for anything you can do to boost our numbers on this.

Paul Connett

You might also refer to the FAN home page at www.FluorideAction.net for a
comparison of the old and new Harvard shields!
-------------------------
The short letter of support for Albert's letter, with the recommended
subject heading and cc, bcc destinations.

To:

From:

Subject: Veritas or Non Veritas?

Cc: ,

Bcc:


Dear President Bok,

Please respond to Albert Burgstahler's Sept 10 letter to you by giving a
simple explanation as to how it was possible for the unnamed investigators
at Harvard to have exonerated Professor Douglass of charges of academic
dishonesty.

If you are unable to do this please use the power of your office to
instigate an independent review of this matter.

Signed

(name, state , country and any personal details of interest, e.g. a Harvard
grad; professional qualification; occupation; public health interest or a
parent of ... young boys)

-------------------------

Albert's Sept 10 letter

September 10, 2006

Derek Bok
President, Harvard University

Dear President Bok:

I am writing directly to you because Dean Margaret L. Dale's September 7,
2006 reply to the joint letter a group of Harvard alumni and I sent to you
on August 22, 2006, did not address the central issue raised in our letter
concerning Harvard's brief August 15, 2006 statement exonerating Professor
Chester Douglass of any academic misconduct.

In essence Dean Dale simply reaffirmed the August 15 statement without
providing any explanation for Professor Douglass first having "hid, then
misrepresented, his graduate student's PhD dissertation, which found a
'robust' association between fluoridated water and an increased risk of
osteosarcoma in young boys, a frequently fatal disease."

What was submitted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to Harvard for
investigation showed that after the above dissertation submitted by Elise
Bassin had been approved and her PhD degree granted in 2001, Professor
Douglass made public statements categorically claiming his research did not
find any evidence for a significant association between water fluoridation
and osteosarcoma. In his one-page 2004 written statement to the National
Research Council panel investigating evidence for this association, he cited
Dr. Bassin's dissertation as a reference but did not state that the "robust
association" reported in it contradicted what he presented in his statement.

Similarly, in his final report on his grant from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to investigate the epidemiology of
osteosarcoma, he again cited Dr. Bassin's dissertation without noting that
its findings did not support his claim of no significant association between
water fluoridation and the incidence of osteosarcoma.

To be precise, in his report to both the NRC and the NIEHS, Professor
Douglass gave an "Odds Ratio of 1.2 to 1.4 between fluoride and osteosarcoma
that was not significantly different from 1," but he cited Elise Bassin's
dissertation as a reference without indicating that she had found a five- to
seven-fold increased risk for osteosarcoma in young boys exposed to
fluoridated water in their 6th, 7th, and 8th years. (A pdf file of Professor
Douglass's one-page communication to the NRC is available here.)

This conduct by Professor Douglass is what is at the heart of our concern,
not whether fluoridation is safe or not. In scientific research, honest
scholarship requires that any cited reference that does not agree with the
position of the author(s) be openly identified as such. By failing to do
this, Professor Douglass clearly misled his readers and committed a serious
breach of scientific trust and integrity. Dean Dale's letter did not provide
any explanation for why the Harvard review committee concluded that
Professor Douglass had not committed research misconduct by acting in the
manner he did, which is the reason for our inquiry.

In concluding her letter to me, Dean Dale stated: ". . . Harvard stands
behind its faculty review processes, which are thorough and fair and which
apply to all [members of the] faculty, regardless of public interest in the
matter." If this is the case, then a satisfactory explanation for why the
review committee did not find that any research misconduct had been
committed should be forthcoming.
Without such an explanation for dismissing the evidence of misconduct by
Professor Douglass, how can one conclude that Harvard is abiding by its
commitment to uphold academic integrity?

For the sake of living up to its exalted motto "Veritas," Harvard University
would indeed do well to heed what an author well known to you wrote: "Trust
and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain.
They can survive only on a foundation of respect for veracity." (Sisella
Bok: Lying - Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, Pantheon Books, New
York, page 249)

Sincerely,

Albert W. Burgstahler, PhD, '53,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS





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anything just to be realize you as urself that is enaugh to began....go
on...