Peer Reviews

Reviews by Other Scientists & Clinicians

Reader Reviews

Here are the peer reviews (also known as referee reports).  Peer reviewers are scholars (in this case, clinicians and scientists) in relevant fields who referee a manuscript for a press (either journal or book publisher) and judge whether it merits publication.

Drs. Katz (epidemiology), Lehrer (otolaryngology), Haller (neurology), and Horn (population biology) were the peer reviewers for Pierpont’s book.  All four reviews have been reprinted in their entirety in the book.

 

Let me congratulate you on your case-series investigation on Wind Turbine Syndrome. . . . As an epidemiologist I fully appreciate your truly remarkable effort, one that smacks of being well done and with a full respect for honest inquiry. . . .

“Your high level of scientific integrity is revealed both in your [research] design decisions and in your writing, both of which are of the highest order. . . .

“You have laid a remarkable, high quality, and honest foundation for others to build upon with the next stages of scientific investigation. In doing so, you have made a commendable, thorough, careful, honest, and significant contribution to the study of (what we can now call) Wind Turbine

—from the referee report by Ralph V. Katz, DMD, MPH, PhD, Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology & Health Promotion New York University College of Dentistry

 

This [report] addresses an under-reported facet of Noise Induced Illnesses in a fashion that is detailed in its historical documentation, multi-systemic in its approach and descriptions, and painstakingly and informatively referenced. . . . [It] opens up the area of low frequency vibration to the medical community. . . . I applaud her.”

—from the referee report by Joel F. Lehrer, MD, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Clinical Professor of Otolaryngology, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.

 

This “report . . . deserves publication. . . . The careful documentation of serious physical, neurological and emotional problems provoked by living close to wind turbines must be brought to the attention of physicians who, like me, are unaware of them until now.”

—from the referee report by Jerome Haller, MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics (retired 2008), Albany Medical College, Albany, New York. Dr. Haller is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Neurology (Child Neurology Section), and the Child Neurology Society.

 

Dr. Pierpont has gathered a strong series of case studies of deleterious effects on the health and well-being of many people living near large wind turbines. Furthermore, she has reviewed medical studies that support a plausible physiological mechanism directly linking low frequency noise and vibration (like that produced by wind turbines and which may not in itself be reported as irritating) to potentially debilitating effects on the inner ear and other sensory systems associated with balance and sense of position. Thus the effects are likely to have a physiological component, rather than being exclusively psychological. . . .

—from the referee report by Henry S. Horn, PhD, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Associate of the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University