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Epidemiology need not yield clear answers. For example, epidemiological evidence for a link between men's exposure to ionising radiation at work and the risk of their children developing cancer has been argued about for years. In 1990, Professor Martin Gardner published the results of a case-control study of families around the Sellafield nuclear plant. He said the higher rate of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the children of radiation workers was due to their father's occupational exposure to radiation. The so-called "Gardner hypothesis" has been debated ever since, most recently in a report from the National Radiological Protection Board, who said that the increased incidence of childhood leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was not due to their fathers' work, because there was no dose-response relationship. In other words, the NRPB said that the fathers' exposure did not cause the children's disease because there was not more disease in the children of men with greatest exposure to radiation (A. Draper et al., Cancer in the offspring of radiation workers - a record linkage study, NRPB, 1997, ISBN 0 8595 1412 9).

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