Ian Fairlie

Ian Fairlie is a professional anti-nuclear power activist. At one stage he was secretary of Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), which included such illustrious anti-nuclear power campaigners as Christopher Busby among its members. He flaunts his status as a science graduate to lobby government against nuclear power. He speaks passionately at anti-nuclear power rallies (for example: just after the Fukushima tsunami, he spoke in Berlin).

He has been very influential in promoting radiophobia within the UK government and beyond as he had been the head of the Secretariat of the UK Government’s CERRIE Committee on internal radiation risks from 2000 to 2004, and after retiring from his post acted as a consultant on radiation matters to regional, domestic and international European governing bodies.

He has been accused of cherry-picking data. As an example he referred to the atomic bomb survivor study in 2011 because it appeared to support the linear no-threshold (LNT) or no-safe dose hypothesis of radiation harm he supports. Newer atomic bomb survivor data however no longer support the LNT model (and its no safe dose), because the dose-response data are no longer linear, having significant curvature. He just ignores the newer data.