Who exactly are these wind farm refugees?

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When you look closely at the claims that residents have been driven from their homes by wind farm noise, they are quickly revealed as inaccurate and overblown, writes Simon Chapman.

Industrial developments like highway construction, new airport runways, tunnels and re-zoning of residential areas for industrial use often attract virulent protest. Those most affected write complaints, picket councils and parliaments, are interviewed by the media, put signs on their fences and front lawns, and sometimes engage in civil disobedience. They have strong reasons to complain and the last thing they'd want to do is to be timid, seek anonymity and not raise hell.

But it seems those claiming to be worst affected by wind farm turbine noise might be made of different stuff. There are 51 wind farms around Australia and according to the non-media shy Sarah Laurie, who heads the anti-wind-farm Waubra Foundation, there are "more than 40" families who have "abandoned" their homes because of noise from wind turbines. Public claims about home abandonment have been made by senators Xenophon, Madigan and Back, the three political champions of anti-wind-farm groups.

So where are these 40 families? If 40 families had experienced such insufferable noise that they drew stumps and walked off their properties without recompense, this is something that you would expect to be shouted from the rooftops. There would be lots of media attention. Speeches by their local members in Parliament. The wind companies involved would know about such cases. Those affected would hardly have slipped away in the middle of the night without making a fuss.

In a new research paper, I set out to check whether Laurie's statement was a fact or a factoid. A factoid is a piece of unverified or inaccurate information promoted as fact and then popularly accepted as true because of frequent repetition of its allegedly factual status.

I wrote to Laurie asking for information about her "more than 40 families" claim only to be told that the details were "confidential". They are therefore not open to any scrutiny. I looked through 2,394 submissions to three parliamentary enquiries for such claims. I searched the anonymous blog Stop These Things. I invited the three senators to provide me with any information about their claims. I emailed 18 known opponents of wind farms the same request. And I also asked wind companies, rural health specialists and acousticians if they knew of any "abandonments".

This process produced 12 cases, near seven of Australia's 51 wind farms, not "over 40". I found none that could be said to be true "abandonment" cases, where a residential asset had been literally written off forever without any sale. In nearly all cases, there was more to each case than a simple story of a family moving away reluctantly because of turbine noise. There were histories of protracted negotiations to have properties bought, sometimes involving ambit claims. There were cases of people having moved for other reasons (employment, to be near a needed health facility) and of lengthy opposition to wind farms, even before they were constructed.

Laurie has interesting form in her public pronouncements. She claims that wind turbines can make people's lips vibrate "as from a distance of 10km away" and that turbines can "perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a kilometre away from the nearest wind turbine." Mythbusters, where are you?

Last December, Ontario's Environmental Review Tribunal refused her standing as an expert witness in a case, arguing that she had no training in research, but was seeking to provide expert interpretation of research. They also noted that as an unregistered doctor, she was not allowed to diagnose health problems, but that this was precisely what much of her proposed evidence involved her doing. The judgment states that Laurie has agreed to stop calling herself Dr Laurie.

Refugees are people who risk their lives to escape persecution and war. The appropriation of this term as an emotive rhetorical device, with the numbers involved exaggerated to increase attention, is simply odious. If rumours are correct, Tony Abbott will direct the NHMRC to research Australian claims about "wind turbine syndrome", the unrecognised disease that was coined in a vanity press, self-published book by an American doctor who interviewed 23 people over the phone who claimed to be suffering. Millions of dollars could be wasted in investigating a "disease" that has never been written on a medical certificate.

Simon Chapman AO is professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney and 2013 Australian Skeptic of the Year. View his full profile here.

Topics: wind-energy, health, activism-and-lobbying, federal-parliament