Many things can affect human judgment, including emotion and bias. For example, Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, has an opinion about the magnitude of a potential public-health risk that must be shown before she will accept a report of the work for publication in her journal. "As a general rule of thumb", says Angell of the New England Journal, "we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more (before accepting a paper for publication), particularly if it is biologically implausible or if it's a brand-new finding." See D. Taubes: Epidemiology faces its limits, Science 269:164-169, 1995. Angell is an outspoken critic of suggestions that man-made or environmental factors cause disease. For example, she appeared on talk shows and strongly opposed suggestions that ruptured breast implants cause disease. In spite her general view that risks greater than 3 are needed for publication, she published an article involving powerline EMFs where the risks found were less than 3. See M. Linet, E. Hotch, R.A. Kleinerman, L.L. Robison, W.T. Kaune, D.R. Friedman, R.K. Severson, C.M. Haines, C.T. Hartsock, S. Niwa, S. Wacholder and R.E. Tarone: Residential exposure to magnetic fields and acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children, N. Eng. J. Med. 337:1-7, 1997. One possible explanation for why Angell disregarded her general rule and published the study is that Linet and her colleagues adopted an interpretation of the data that was consistent with Angell's general philosophy (Linet and her colleagues concluded that their evidence provided "little evidence" that would suggest that powerline EMFs affect human health). This explanation is supported by the fact that another editor of the New England Journal editorialized emotionally in support of a definitive interpretation of the Linet study showing that powerlines are safe ("it is sad that several hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into studies that never had much promise of finding a way to prevent the tragedy of cancer in children." See E.W. Campion: Powerlines, cancer, and fear, N. Eng. J. Med. 337:44-46, 1997).