See also my pages on Wind turbines and health and Wind power in Australia.

There are occasional people who have ideas that are before their time; ideas that seem weird to less imaginative people. There are far more people who have ideas that are simply weird. Dr Laurie has ideas that are not accepted by 'the main stream', she has ideas that seem outlandish, she has ideas that reasonable people should reject until her extraordinary claims are confirmed by extraordinary evidence. At present, not only is there no extraordinary evidence for her claims, there is no acceptable ordinary evidence.

Dr Laurie's activism is also very convenient for those who support the fossil fuel industry and don't want to see development of sustainable energy. These people work behind the scenes through organisations like the Waubra Foundation, the Australian Landscape Guardians and the Institute of Public Affairs. There is also a group who simply hate wind turbines and make exaggerated and ridiculous claims of being harmed by them, even though they live at distances from which they could rarely, if ever, hear the turbines.

Feldheim, Germany Photo credit: The Independent, UK Feldheim, and many other German, Danish and Spanish villages, has turbines but no sickness.

The idea that wind turbines make people sick is hardly known outside of the English speaking world. Denmark, Germany and Spain, for example, have far more turbines in small areas close to people – there are millions in Germany who live within 10km of turbines – but very few people in those countries have health concerns about the turbines.

The nonsensical stories of ill-health caused by wind turbines, even at distances well beyond audibility, have been repeated by so many lazy or ignorant journalists that they have produced a level of epidemic hysteria in the English speaking world. It's a self-sustaining phenomenon, where the belief leads to fear and anxiety, the fear and anxiety leads to illness, the illness fuels Dr Laurie's beliefs, irresponsible journalists exploit and encourage those beliefs, more fear and anxiety is produced by the media, and more people experience symptoms.

It is the irresponsible media spreading naïve ideas from a very few people like Dr Laurie in the English speaking countries that have created the epidemic hysteria and it is they who should largely be blamed for the resulting damage to people's health.

There may well come a time when Dr Laurie realises that she is wrong and that she has actually added to an epidemic hysteria with no basis in fact. Such a realisation will be very hard on her. The irresponsible journalists who encouraged her, and the others her used her because it was convenient to do so, will be largely to blame.

Where we differ

Some people who live near wind farms are ill and they honestly believe that the cause of their illness is the wind turbines. Dr Laurie believes the turbines themselves cause the illness, a more reasonable interpretation of the evidence is that the reported health impacts are due to anxiety, fear (about a possible health threat or negative impact from the turbines), and annoyance (about the sound, sight, or imposition of the turbines). The health impacts reported by a minority of people living in close proximity to turbines are common stress reactions. Some illness is also possibly due to sleep disturbance in people with high sensitivity to noise who live very close to turbines; especially if those people have negative views, or unrealistic fears, of turbines.

Research opportunity If people truly were exhibiting measurable symptoms that were coordinated with wind turbine operation when the turbines were inaudible, as Dr Laurie claims, it would not be difficult for a qualified researcher to verify this. It could then be published in a respectable scientific journal. This research would be quite inexpensive; it would require one researcher and a few subjects, in their own homes, for several weeks and a few instruments such as a blood pressure monitor. However, a positive result would be hard to believe and would require verification by other researchers (see extraordinary claims). See also Research into wind turbines and health.

Dr Laurie spends a lot of her time talking to people who believe they have been made ill by wind turbines. It is not surprising that she has come to believe that this is fact; she "cannot see the trees for the forrest". She tells people to expect wind turbines to make them sick, they tell her how sick they are; the mass delusion feeds on itself.

Dr Laurie would have everyone believe that wind turbines are making people ill even when the people cannot hear the turbines! (See p48 of the Melbourne hearing of the Senate Inquiry into the Impact of Rural Wind Farms.) Give this a little thought. We can be absolutely sure that wind turbines do not produce any harmful radiation such as alpha, beta, gamma, x-rays, ultra-violet or even a significant amount of micro-waves. The only thing that we know that they produce, other than environmentally friendly electricity and some air turbulence, is low levels of sound. Sound, including infrasound, is produced by a great many natural and artificial sources; it is not harmful unless it is very intense. Yet Dr Laurie wants us to believe that turbines make people ill even when those people cannot hear the turbines! Dr Laurie tells us things that contradict our observations, experience and logic.

Dr Laurie knows that wind turbines do not produce much sound. As a means of trying to justify her allegations that turbines cause illness she has claimed that turbines can be louder at a distance than up close! This is a physical impossibility and a contradiction of science.

Dr Laurie's errors

1. She seems unable to see that people who believe they are being made ill by wind turbines might be mistaken about the cause of their symptoms. She seems unwilling to seriously consider psychological factors like anxiety and stress as the cause of the symptoms that she is recording. She seems unwilling to seriously consider annoyance as a cause of stress and of symptoms;

   NSW Health's findings on Dr Laurie's work The following was published in the Blayney Chronicle, 2012/01/26 Confidential briefings given to the state government, and obtained under freedom-of-information (FOI) laws, repeatedly warn there is no current credible scientific evidence linking wind farms to ill health. The briefings are also critical of Dr Sarah Laurie, who has played an influential role in local opposition to a planned wind farm at Flyers Creek. "NSW Health has met with Dr. Sarah Laurie. There is a clear hierarchy in scientific evidence and case reports [as provided by Dr. Laurie] fall into the lowest category of scientific evidence," one of the briefings advised. "On this basis, such studies can be regarded as hypotheses generating and not as hypotheses proving. In other words, they raise a question, but do not provide an answer. "To be widely accepted as evidence for adverse health effects, the study design, methodology and analysis has to be peer reviewed. This is lacking for the critical information presented by Dr. Laurie."

2. She does not take seriously factors that mediate between wind turbines and physical symptoms, like people's perceptions of wind farms, attitudes to wind power, visual impacts, attachment to where they live, and financial benefits (or lack of benefits);
3. She seems unwilling to believe that what she is doing is causing more fear and anxiety and making the problem worse. She says, rightly, that people believed that wind turbines had made them ill before she started her campaign and from this she concludes, wrongly, that she cannot be any part of the problem;
4. By failing to acknowledge that many symptoms are caused by stress, she is preventing distressed householders from taking steps to manage their stress and minimise their negative symptoms, and improve their quality of life;
5. She is unwilling to see that she is creating anticipatory fear and distress for people who are living close to planned wind farms, and risks creating in them the very symptoms that she (erroneously) attributes to wind turbines;
6. She is unable or unwilling to see that there is no credible physical mechanism whereby wind turbines could possibly make people ill from a distance of several kilometres;
7. She seems to ignore the dose – response relationship and believes that the inverse square law of physics must not apply to wind turbines;
8. She is unwilling to recognise that people who work on wind turbines and the great majority of those who earn income from wind turbines do not get sick, because this does not fit her model. She ignores the fact that domestic and wild animals live quite happily beneath and among turbines;
9. She cannot explain why illnesses 'caused by wind turbines' are practically unheard of in WA and Europe. (No-one has told them that they should be sick so they are not sick!);
10. She collects anecdotal evidence by finding people who believe they have been made ill by wind turbines and interviewing them. She is unwilling or unable to see that this does not prove anything about the causes of the illnesses. Anyone who is unwilling to do as she does – go out and talk to the people who have problems – is in Dr Laurie's opinion, unwilling to face the facts;
11. She seems willing to believe any story that puts wind turbines in a bad light and doesn't consider whether there is any relevant independent evidence that sould be examined and evaluated;
12. She ignores the 'nocebo effect' (the opposite of the placebo effect) by which people will often feel ill if they believe there is something causing them to be ill;
13. She neglects to compare the (alleged) health impacts of wind turbines with the well proven and very serious health impacts of burning fossil fuels. She ignores the many adverse health effects that will come with climate change if we do not seriously and quickly adopt alternative energy;

    Dr Laurie's claim that blood pressure is increased as wind turbine activity increases seems to be contradicted by her own data; see Blood pressure and turbines.

14. She places much too high a value to her anecdotal evidence, and is not scientific in her statements and claims. She has said that "You can stand underneath the turbines and not hear a thing, but up to five kilometres away they can sound like a jet engine or a low rumble or a washing machine." This is absurd, a physical impossibility! (See Louder at a distance.)

15. "The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction." Bertrand Russell (1872 to 1970), from Let the People Think, 1941

    She is intolerant of any view that runs contrary to her own, no matter how reasonable the grounds on which that view is based. She "knows she is right".
16. Finally, her claims go against common sense. Stand beneath a wind turbine and listen. Stand a kilometre away, two kilometres away, and listen. They are not loud, they do not shake your body; they give the impression of total benignity.

Dr Laurie's ridiculous demand

So far as I know, nobody with any credibility is suggesting harmful effects from wind turbines at distances greater than 1.5 to 2 km, and then only some loss of sleep in those who find the sounds made by turbines to be particularly annoying.

And becoming more absurd

Dr Laurie's beliefs are plainly well beyond anything that could be accepted by a rational and intelligent human being; turbines can rarely be heard or detected by an instrument other than an exquisitely sensitive seismometer beyond a couple of kilometres, how could they make anybody ill? She is intelligent, one has to question her rationality in this matter. As mentioned elsewhere, this has to be some form of epidemic hysteria.

Also see Professor Peter Seligman's statement on sound and infrasound within the body.

There are several reasons:

• She holds a controversial view about an issue that is important to many people – and the media love anyone with a controversial view, whether it has any factual basis is much less important;
• She is a medical doctor – people have a lot of respect for medical doctors;
• She is readily available to lazy journalists who don't have the ability, or don't want to take the time, to find a real story;
• She is a good 'grab' for the media, she speaks well.

As discussed elsewhere on this page, Dr Laurie, the public personality, has largely been created by an irresponsible and lazy media. The journalists involved should be considered responsible for spreading unjustified fear and anxiety about wind turbines and thereby making people ill.

While Dr Laurie receives attention at least partly because of people's respect for medical doctors, she is harming that respect by her unsupported claims and ridiculous demands.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Dr Laurie's claim that something coming from turbines is harming people at large distances is certainly an extraordinary claim. If the 'harmful emanation' is sound, then the extraordinariness is in the necessity of this sound being somehow much more harmful than other sounds of similar intensity. If it is something other than sound, then the extraordinariness becomes even greater; what could it possibly be?

Dr Laurie is unable to show even ordinarily convincing evidence in support of her claims, let alone extraordinary evidence.

What if Dr Laurie got her way?

Wind power has the greatest potential of all sustainable options Wind power in Australia is currently generating many times more sustainable energy than is solar, a single wind turbine generates about as much power as 2000 roof-top solar systems. There is little scope for increasing hydro-power in Australia, biofuels can help but their total capacity is quite limited. Geothermal, wave and tidal power are yet to be proven viable on a commercial scale. The cost of solar power is declining, but at the present it is more expensive than wind power – we cannot afford to wait; we must act on climate change now. So wind power is by a substantial margin the leading sustainable energy option available at present.

Dr Laurie is, in effect, demanding that expansion of renewable energy in Australia be stopped in spite of the fact that no research scientist could accept her 'evidence' as sufficient to justify her demands.

Fortunately no-one in any position of authority seems so far to have taken Dr Laurie's demand for a 10 km exclusion zone seriously.

Since it is not the wind turbines that make people ill, but rather anxiety and fear such as pierpont and Laurie are spreading, a more accurate term for the condition would be Pierpont-Laurie Syndrome.

Evidence that Dr Laurie is making people anxious and fearful

It seems from this that people like Nina Pierpont and Sarah Laurie are, in effect, doing their best to change what has been a very few people with health problems that they blamed on wind turbines to mass hysteria.

Dr Laurie became interested in the health effects of wind turbines when Origen proposed to build the Crystal Brook Wind Farm near her house; so the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) factor is involved. She relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, of which she has collected a large amount. I believe Dr Laurie to be honest and well meaning, but I suspect that to the Waubra Foundation and Australian Landscape Guardians – with which the Waubra Foundation has strong links – she is little more than a useful tool in their fight against renewable energy.

Dr Laurie's desire for independent primary research into the health effects of wind turbines is quite reasonable, but her claims of turbines causing health problems are unconvincing.

She goes looking for people who claim to have been made ill by turbines and, not surprisingly, finds them. If she visited Africa and looked for people who claimed to have been made ill by witches, or the USA and looked for people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, she would find many of those too.

She believes there is a direct link between turbines and ill-health in a minority of people, but is unable to point to any convincing mechanism that could allow wind turbines to directly cause illness. She dismisses any psychosomatic cause for the illnesses.

What if, as Dr Laurie claims, people within 10km of turbines are becoming ill?