Expert dismisses Mass. “Wind Turbine Health Impact Study” as junk science (Dr. Raymond Hartman)

Jul 22, 2013

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Junk science

“Critique of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Planning (DEP) ‘Wind Turbine Health Impact Study, Report of Independent Expert Panel,’ January 2012”

Raymond S. Hartman, PhD (6/5/13)

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Editor’s note:  Dr. Raymond Hartman thoroughly trashes the Mass. DEP’s “Wind Turbine Health Impact Study” that claimed there are no real health effects from industrial wind turbines.  (If you’re not familiar with the Mass. DEP report, read “State of Mass. pronounces Wind Turbine Syndrome [expletive deleted].”)

Dr. Hartman is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University (in economics), and holds the PhD in economics from MIT (Mass. Institute of Technology).  He is currently Director and President of Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA), a consulting and litigation support firm located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  For forty years he has been a professor at a variety of universities (including the Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley and Boston University) in mathematical economics, focusing on microeconomics, econometric and statistical modeling and the study of industrial organization.

Over the last 35 years, I have submitted oral and written testimony before United States federal and state courts of law and regulatory commissions. I have submitted testimony to international arbitration panels, international governments and the World Bank.

My testimony as an expert witness has addressed anticompetitive behavior, fraudulent pricing schemes, merger efficiencies, breach of contract, employment discrimination, patent infringement, class certification, adverse health impacts of particular technologies and products, and the estimation of damages in a variety of markets and industries including, but not limited to, the pharmaceutical industry, the health care services industry, the electric power industry, the banking industry, the copper industry, the defense industry, the cable TV industry, the tobacco industry, the electrical and mechanical carbon products industry, the medical devices industry, the automobile industry, and the construction industry.

My testimony has been upheld by federal appellate courts.

My two primary areas of specialty are the economics of energy markets and the economics of the markets for health-care services, health-care devices and pharmaceuticals.

Over the last twenty years, I have analyzed and/or submitted testimony in approximately 100 matters of litigation in a variety of health-care, pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The cases most frequently involved antitrust allegations of market foreclosure and economic injury.

My testimony in these matters addressed market definition, product competition, antitrust violations, class certification, unlawful promotion (under RICO) and/or consumer protection laws, and/or damage estimation. My CV provides a more complete presentation of my testimony.

Finally, he writes:

In rendering my opinions, I have relied upon the materials reasonably relied on by experts in my field in forming opinions and drawing inferences on subjects such as these.

Click here to read why he judges the State of Mass. “Wind Turbine Health Impact Study” to be garbage.  In his succinct wording:

I have reviewed and responded to reports like this in excess of 100 times over my career, as an expert witness and as a peer-reviewing academic research referee.

The Health Impact Report fails to rise to the level of reliable scientific research. In matters of litigation, research or testimony that does not reflect, or indeed violates, standard scientific practices is excluded from the record as Junk Science. As noted above, I have submitted many pieces of testimony over the last 35 years. My testimony has never been excluded as Junk Science.

I find that the Health Impact Study is Junk Science. As Table 1 summarizes, there are major flaws with the Health Impact Study.

Click here to read his entire report.

Table 1:

Hartman table2

Screenshot of cover page:

Hartman2

Click here to read the final conclusions.

 

  1. Comment by Kaz on 07/26/2013 at 11:48 pm

    Grrrr! I am so frustrated!

    Over and over again we have respected individuals such as Dr. Hartman who debunk the junk of ‘wind’.

    But how to make regulatory agencies (which approve and issue permits for wind facilities) listen to the truth instead of buying into the rhetoric supplied by biased sources?

    I’m no scientist. I don’t even have a college degree. But this seems like a ‘no brainer’ to me.

    We watched as this panel did little more than read already-written reports and ‘studies’ provided by biased sources. Then the panel audaciously declared that wind turbines didn’t cause any (verifiable) health problems! What a bunch of horse puckey!

    Cripe…wasn’t one of the panelists Dr. Dora Mills? She was head of the Maine CDC under John Baldacci, the Godfather of Wind here in Maine who rammed LD2283 (Maine’s Wind Energy Act) through the 123rd Legislature. Dr. Mills’ sister was attorney general under Baldacci and her brother Peter, a Senator. I have emails (garnered through a FOIA request) from Dora that show she asked the chair of Gov. Baldacci’s Wind Task Force (head of the Maine Forest Service at the time) how she should respond to doctors’ complaints and questions about turbine noise emissions. Yes… a doctor asking a forester how to answer questions submitted by a doctor…

    Dora Mills has an extensive record of writings in support of wind turbine development. Mills has defended wind development since first confronted with the issue of adverse health effects of wind turbines in 2009. In 2011, she gave written testimony to Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection, extolling the virtues of wind power, presumably to discourage the BEP from enacting stricter noise standards for wind turbines – a change that might have disadvantaged developers. Mills was slated to testify on behalf of a Maine wind developer (former goveror and current U.S. Senator Angus King) in 2011 until the Highland Wind application was pulled.

    The notion that Mills didn’t have preconceived views about wind turbines is far-fetched.

    In addition, Ken Kimmel, the Massachusetts State Commissioner of Environmental Protection said the state’s report on wind turbine related health issues was conducted by a “truly independent panel.” He stated, “We selected people, and…we ensured that they didn’t have any preconceived view about wind turbines in general….”

    Give me a break. See the above example as proof that those on the panel DID have ‘preconceived’ views.

    As another example: the University of Massachusetts’ profile of James Manwell, director of the Dept. of Engineering Wind Energy Center, states that he has written a wind energy text and “provides assistance…to facilitate the introduction of renewable energy to the state.”

    The Mass. study needs to be trashed. Shredded. Thrown on the burn pile. That common-sense people could take such a biased and poorly researched report as authoritative is ludricrous.

    Respectfully,
    Kaz in Maine

  2. Comment by Protecting the Nests in the Midwest on 09/23/2014 at 7:16 pm

    Again, thanks for sharing this important critique of this JUNK SCIENCE propaganda that was recently printed in the local papers.

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