Reflections on the viral thread by Dr Louise Raw spreading fake news about unethically performed radiation experiments on Punjabi women in the 1950's

On the 19^th of August, Dr Louise Raw wrote a series of tweets that spread fake news about unethically performed radiation experiments on Punjabi women in the 1950’s. The tweet went viral, and I saw many academics I follow on Twitter uncritically retweet this fake news.

I read the thread. It is well written – a masterclass in the spread of fake news. It starts with kindness, only to later spring the trap of abuse. As you read the thread, you will be surprised, and your emotions will get the better of you. It is very effective. 

But then we come to the main claim. 

When I read this, alarm bells go off. First of all, the main source is a filmmaker. That is an unreliable source for me. Some filmmakers of course tell the truth, but I have also seen a massive amount of documentaries that twist facts – after all, these people need to make money by selling their documentary, and the truth does not always sell. Now, if this really was unethical research of Tuskegee Syphilis level (https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm) you would have both the truth, and a best selling documentary. So, it can be true, but it starts with a very weak source. 

The second point in this tweet (screenshot above) about the chapatis almost made me laugh out loud, it is this silly to me. They performed this experiment to examine effects of radioactive food, choosing Punjabi women, and feeding them radioactive chapatis. Now, maybe it is because I do experiments, and I like to do them efficiently. But if I want to unethically test the effect of radioactive food, I would go to a prison, or a mental health facility, where people are already getting food served to them. I don’t try to find a community of Punjabi women, and bake them chapatis.

At this point, I do not trust this thread and the claims. This sounds ridiculously implausible. And when things are ridiculously implausible, they often are lies. I evaluate the probability that some activist like Louis Raw would fall for such a lie – and I think that probability is extremely high.

A logical thing to do now is search for other sources. Surely, someone must have written about this somewhere. One of the first articles I find is https://www.independent.co.uk/news/britons-used-in-radiation-tests-affected-200-1353929.html. It says the claims were made by the "Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament", an activist group founded in 1957 in the wake of widespread fear of nuclear conflict and the effects of nuclear tests. I reduce my confidence in the accusations even more - activists can be right, but my prior is there is also great risk of bias. A second source I find is https://www.jstor.org/stable/25179350. The title ‘MRC cleared of unethical research practices’ reduced my belief in the claims even more. I know that it is possible there 1) was an unethical experiment, and 2) an investigation into the unethical experiment suffered from a huge conspiracy level cover up. But, for example, when a press story about the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee broke in 1972 the independent committee investigating it just found clear unethical conduct and said so. I would now need to believe researchers performed an unnecessarily complex study, AND there was a government cover up. That is getting a bit too much for me.

The investigation revealed one act of unethical behavior, where the doctors removed the femora of a baby that had died and the mother was refused the body of the baby. That sounds unacceptable to me, but it has nothing to do with the claims of the use of radiation.

The article provides a great possibility to quote out of context when it says “The inquiry concluded: "Many of the studies would not be considered acceptable now"”. But what is not deemed acceptable now is that participants were not updated about the results of the study – again, this has nothing to do with radiation.

Another article reporting on this outcome summarized it as follows “But the five-member committee did conclude that some of the participants had been caused long-term worry and distress, which "could have been avoided by better communication by researchers during the studies, and by ensuring information on the study was readily available afterwards." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9662351/

I started to tweet my conclusion that this was a fake news story. Richard van Noorden provided me with an additional link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2550248/

This piece is written by K E Halnan, the doctor involved in the study. He studied cancer and iodines and published over 70 papers in his lifetime on related topics. His obituary states “Having seen the horrors of war, he resolved to take up medicine in order “to make more of a difference”.” https://www.hkmj.org/system/files/hkm0604p167.pdf

Doctor Halnan was upset when the documentary was shown on Channel 4 on July 6, 1995. To be clear, this story about unethical conduct was not hidden away for the last 30 years – it was broadcasted on prime time, and caused a great stir. The reason it is not remembered, is because later investigations showed it was not true. I think if you get accused by people who misrepresent the research you have done, you would be upset enough to write a letter about it as well. Note there was no reason for Halnan to write this personal letter where he identifies himself as one of the researchers. He could have remained anonymous.

Doctor Halnan tried to explain why the study was performed. The experiment was performed out of concern over widespread anaemia among Asian women due to iron deficiency due to traditional food this population ate. For me, this is a much more logical reason to do a study in Punjabi women and baking them chapatis.

I am not writing this blog to accuse anyone for making a fool of themselves. It is true that I was disappointed in the many academics I saw retweeting this fake news. It also reminded me we need to do a lot more to train critical thinking skills in people. Maybe this blog can help a little in training people to evaluate whether a tweet contains fake news.