After reading Crazy Horse's reference to the study I assumed the increase was two or three - or maybe five - percent increase.  A thirty-five percent increase is shocking.  

Granted it's a first study.  Granted the findings need to be verified.  It's still (barely) possible the increase is just one of those things that happens.  However, the math is as straight-forward as it can be and the findings are consistent with previous episodes.  I rather pride myself on my skepticism and I have a general unwillingness to theorize ahead of data but this is altogether too much like the early studies of the Navaho uranium mine tailings for me not to think the authors have got something.

Gawd, what a mess.


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre