I'm not cherry-picking anything; these are quotes from the published opinion. And both leave space for doubt, because the science is not conclusive. As I said, I support their decision; it's definitely a "better safe than sorry" situation.
And why does there have to be an agenda, as opposed to simply being an unresolved scientific point of contention? We don't know if there's life on Europa either, and I'm sure there's scientists on both sides. But I wouldn't say any of them have an agenda except for making the best educated guess they can, lacking any solid evidence one way or another.
EDIT: Also, to reply to an earlier point:
> There's no even any logical proof that the radiation, that even in the lowest dosages destructs the DNA whenever it hits it, can make beneficial mutations instead of simply producing a cancer.
It can also just kill the cell. If it kills problematic or pre-problematic cells more proportionately than healthy cells, then the net effect could be positive. Such disproportionate effects are the very basis of otherwise indiscriminate treatments like chemotherapy [0].
> And why does there have to be an agenda, as opposed to simply being an unresolved scientific point of contention?
Because there's no way that the radiation particles don't destruct DNA if they hit it. The "debaters" don't have any scientific explanation how it can be even "harmless" not to mention "beneficial."
Chemotherapy is just "let's kill enough of this guy's fast replicating cells to kill the cancer cells before they kill him." There's absolutely no any connection there to the radiation effects on the DNA.
We're constantly bombarded with radiation by simply living. We wouldn't make it to adult hood if all DNA damage was lethal. DNA damage is more likely to be repairable or outright kill a cell than cause cancer, just by pure numbers.
> Chemotherapy is just "let's kill enough percentage of this guys cells to kill the cancer cells before they kill him."
That's exactly what I said with "otherwise indiscriminate treatments." Our body is not a homogenous mass of one type of cell; different cells react differently. If cancer cells react disproportionately negatively to a substance than other cell types, then that substance could be useful to treat cancer. All forms of hormesis are basically an extension of this idea: that the harm done by a substance can be otherwise offset by positive effects.
> If cancer cells react disproportionately negatively to a substance
The radiation is not a "substance" it's a radiation, the destructive and completely non-selective bombardment of all the molecules reached by it. It's not a chemical effect at all, but a nuclear one.
I suggest that those who claim the additional low dosages are beneficial start to expose themselves to such. Somehow I doubt they'd do it. It's always for somebody else.
I was using the chemical process of chemotherapy as an example of a disproportionate effect of a process. The specific process chosen by me was immaterial to the argument, except that it was a convenient example of the effect I wished to describe. My use of the word substance was perhaps imprecise, as it is usually reserved for items with mass, which ionizing radiation does not have. But it was, again, immaterial to the idea of a disproportionate effect, which is what I was actually conveying. And I am choosing to label as pedantic the attempt to disarm my point by discussing the word chosen as opposed to the point being made.
Damaged DNA gets repaired. The proposed mechanism for hormesis is that low levels of radiation stimulate the repair process and get the immune system to step in earlier. I have no idea if this is really true, but it doesn't seem absurd on its face.
There's no observed instance of such "earlier repair," it's just an invented "hypothesis." Only the non-linearity is observed, and not even by majority of the experiments. The explanation for the observed non-linearity is that the single impacted cells simply have time to die (or be targeted by the white cells) at low levels, whereas at higher dosages there are enough cells for cancer to progress more often. It's just the game of probabilities at the levels at which we have enough noise (low enough doses).
And why does there have to be an agenda, as opposed to simply being an unresolved scientific point of contention? We don't know if there's life on Europa either, and I'm sure there's scientists on both sides. But I wouldn't say any of them have an agenda except for making the best educated guess they can, lacking any solid evidence one way or another.
EDIT: Also, to reply to an earlier point:
> There's no even any logical proof that the radiation, that even in the lowest dosages destructs the DNA whenever it hits it, can make beneficial mutations instead of simply producing a cancer.
It can also just kill the cell. If it kills problematic or pre-problematic cells more proportionately than healthy cells, then the net effect could be positive. Such disproportionate effects are the very basis of otherwise indiscriminate treatments like chemotherapy [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy#Mechanism_of_acti...