Faculty of Business and Commerce

We discuss the editorial handling of two papers that were published in and then retracted from the Journal of Radiological Protection (JRP). The papers dealt with radiation exposure in Date City, and were retracted because “ethically inappropriate data were used”. Before retraction, four Letters to the Editor pointing out scientific issues in the papers had been submitted to JRP. The Letters were all accepted or provisionally accepted through peer review. Nevertheless, JRP later refused to publish them. We examine the handling by JRP of the Letters, and show that it led to a cover-up of the grave issues in the papers and in handling them, which went far beyond the use of unconsented data. By its actions in this case, JRP has established a dangerous precedent that unscientific, unfounded and erroneous claims can remain unacknowledged. We propose some ountermeasures to prevent such abuse of editorial power by academic journals.

This correpondence examines issues observed in "Commentary: The responsibility of the Japanese media, the Fukushima accident and the use of personal data'' by T. Sawano et al., published in QJM. from the points of view of scientific and factual recognision of the situation and issues related to legal scheme and research ethics addressed in the Commentary.

1. はじめに 「オピニオン・リーダー」は主にマーケティング研究にお いて重視されてきた。これまでに行われた研究によって、そ の特徴は明らかにされてきたが、どのようにしてオピニオ ン・リーダーとなるのか、またオピニオン・リーダーの影響 力がいつまで続くのかといったダイナミックな視点からの 研究はなされてこなかった。 オピニオン・リーダー自体は社会科学で定義された概念 であるが、この特性を解き明かし、情報工学の分野で活用 することは、レコメンデーションシステムの精度向上やネ ットワーク可視化技術の新たな方向性の提示に役立と考え られる。 本研究の目的は、オピニオン・リーダー度の持続度に基づ いてユーザーを分類し、その特徴を明らかにすることであ る。そのために 18 年間の Amazon.com のレビュー・データ [1]を用い、「有用 helpful」と評価されたレビュー数をオピニ オン・リーダー度と操作化する。レビューを投稿した期間 (年数)の長さと組み合わせることによって、ユーザーを分類 し、それぞれの特徴を明らかにする。

Line 48 For people living in long-term contaminated areas during the recovery process, progressive reduction in exposure will result from continuing optimisation of protection. Reference levels should be selected to support this progressive improvement, taking into account the progress already achieved. Levels should be within or below the Commission’s recommended 1–20-mSv band taking into account the actual distribution of doses in the population and the tolerability of risk for the long-lasting existing exposure situations, and would not generally need to exceed 10 mSv per year. The objective of optimisation of protection is a progressive reduction in exposure to levels on the order of 1 mSv per year.

The spatial panel model is applied to a new data set: monthly data of the number of ETC (Electronic Toll Collecting) transponders newly installed in 47 Japanese prefectures. The model incorporates marketing variables and highway-related variables. Regarding the spatial panel model, this work estimates fixed-effect and random-effect model for spatial-lag model and spatial-error model. For each formulation, four types of weight matrix, geographical adjacency matrix, automobile traffic OD (Origin-Destination) table, telecommunication OD, and the inverse of the geographical distance are employed. Among estimated models, fit of “the fixed effect spatial-lag model with the inverse of distance as the weight matrix” is the best. The positive and significant spatial-lag parameter means diffusion in neighbor area promotes diffusion in other area. In case of the ETC transponder promotions, we find that the promotions at the early stage are effective but promotions at later stages are not. In a...

We point out that the recently published Publisher’s Note concerning two retractions in Journal of Radiological Protection and the retraction notices contain various incorrect statements, misrepresentations of facts and omission of important events.

After the Fukushima–Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) disaster, thyroid ultrasound examination (TUE) has been performed in subjects who were aged ≤18 years. Previous studies reported controversial results. Through critical review, three limitations were identified: arbitrary grouping of 59 municipalities, 2) usage of region as proxy of dose, and 3) separate analyse of the 1st and 2nd round data. To overcome these limitations, this study examined the relationship between radiation dose and the number of participants with thyroid malignancy, using publicly available municipality level data (N = 59). To analyse two wave screening data, multi-level random-effect Poisson regression model was applied. The number of participants with thyroid malignancy was explained by dose estimates. Interaction between dose and screening round dummy (0 for the 1st and 1 for the 2nd) was also introduced to take into account latency. Interaction terms between external dose (Akahane et al. 2013) and screeni...

This Letter to the Editor points out several inconsistencies found in the paper written by Makoto Miyazaki and Ryugo Hayano published as J. Radiol. Prot. 37(2017) 623-634. This Letter to the Editor had been in the stage of "is ready to accept" from November 17, 2018 to March 23, 2020 when it has been accepted for publication. Onto this Letter to the Editor, an additional Letter to the Editor on the same paper has been added. The added Letter to the Editor has been provisionally accepted on April 7, 2020.