Strategic science performance and the illusion of consensus about Fukushima’s health effects

Abstract

ABSTRACT After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, one way that government authorities sought to quell public anxiety about the health impacts of radiation exposure was through the creation of the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey (FHMS). Though the survey was intended to document the absence of harm, it instead made visible abnormally high rates of childhood thyroid cancer in Fukushima Prefecture. Despite this, the official state narrative remained unchanged: these cases were not causally related to radiation exposure, and there was still no need to worry about biological health impacts. Academic researchers affiliated with the FHMS have cemented this narrative through the depoliticized and authoritative platform of English-medium scientific literature, strategically mobilizing FHMS data to demonstrate the absence of a causal relationship between the cancer cases and the nuclear accident – despite also contending that the FHMS was not designed to be a robust empirical study capable of determining causal relationships. Through strategic science performance (SSP), they utilize tools of formal scientific discourse and credibility in a way that forecloses dissent and obscures the largely incomplete status of the underlying science. SSP in this context has contributed to the reconstruction of scientific ignorance about post-disaster radiation health impacts, and has further enabled the institutionalization of this ignorance in state governance that denies public accountability for the health and well-being of populations exposed to radiation contamination after the Fukushima accident.