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NYC Subway Cell Service, No Cell-Related Cancer
Luke PiWalker wrote to mention a CNN article discussing a bid process for offering cell phone service to NYC subway stations. The contract is only to wire up stations; moving trains will not have service. Those New Yorkers will also be safe from their phones, as the BBC reports on a study indicating cell phones don't cause cancer. From that article, submitted to us by Dan Hope: "She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on."
I'm curious to hear from someone who knows--how difficult would it be (in terms of what kind of technology would it require, and relatively how expensive compared to stantionary-wiring would it be) to have service in the trains, too?
Instead of:
"Cell phones cause brain tumors," they could look into "Brain tumors cause cell phones."
Maybe people who already have a tumor in the side of their head are naturally attracted to using that side to hold their phone.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
I still would rather have my cell to my ear, than sitting in my lap while I am using a headset, for obvious male reasons.
The Metro in DC has had Cell service for quite sometime. As much as the NYC subway is nice because it is free from Cell yell, I can'y imagine not being able to use my wireless services while commuting.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
It's worth noting that a good 40% or so of what we call The Subway is actually above ground, on elevated and surface lines, and you can blab on your cell all you want while riding.
Well, It's a good beginning, but in downtown Montreal we have cell services even in the Métro (subway) train !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
This reminds me of that Family Show bit...
111-1111... Lois? (train starts moving and enters tunnel) Damn!
111-1112... Lois? (train starts moving and enters tunnel) Damn!
Since terrorists have shown they like to bomb the subway systems (see Madrid, London), and since they have shown they like to use cell phones as trigger points for their bombs (see Madrid), isn't putting cell phone service in the New York City subway system giving potential terrorists a new weapon to use? Now instead of having to carry a backpack bomb and then die in the blast themselves, they can rig up a cell phone detonator and be safe when the bomb goes off.
While I don't relish the thought of hearing people chattering away on their phones while waiting for a train, the idea of being able to reach people I'm trying to meet up with sounds good. Especially when going outside to get service means being out in the rain.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
So, now that you can choose which side of your brain is more likely to get a tumor, decide which hemisphere you need more and use the other ear for your cellphone.
Logical. Artistic. Logical? Artistic? Logical! Artistic!
Choices, choices.
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
I hold my phone on the outside of my head. Does that mean I have a reduced risk of getting brain cancer inside of my head? This is good news for people who use my cellphone usage technique.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
One of the biggest problems with studies, including cancer studies, is biased sampling. Some people are more likely to volunteer. Some people can't, because they are dead.
The one-sided cancer is damning either way you look at it.
A. The sample is horribly biased. People with cancers on the cell-phone side volunteered.
B. The sample is horribly biased. Despite cell phones causing cancer, they managed to find enough non-cancer people to hide the facts. Perhaps people who get brain cancer are unavailable for study...
You can't imagine it? Seriously? You truly can't imagine not being able to talk on the phone while you ride the train? Assuming that you're older than 10, you're old enough to remember life without widespread mobile communications. Give it a shot...
I'm not trying to put you down because I'm well aware that you're far from the only one with that viewpoint, but it genuinely upsets me how attached people are to their mobile devices these days, and I see no end to it. Was live really that unlivable when we didn't all walk around with cellys, pdas, laptops, etc...?
Why should we listen to studies? Shouldn't we believe that cell phones cause cancer if that belief meets our emotional needs?
After all, all studies are funded by someone. So we can decide they're biased based on what we wish their conclusions were. And then we can continue to believe what we want.
C'mon. Everyone's doing it.
According to Swedish scientists, people should be more worried about the subway air they breathe, than their cell phone use.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
OK, I think the editors have finally lost it. First one Tripe after the other and then an apache story, title "Woof!" without sensical content appears and disappears again? What are you smoking, I hope nothing toxic is burning in that server room, you know? This wasn't funny in the first place, get your act together, you're paid for that job, ok?
I doubt there was a conspiracy. More likely, people drive with the phone on their left if they drive manual transmission, and they drive with the phone on their right or left fairly equally if they have automatic. Further, people have tended to shake with their right hand for a very long time, which is a hard habbit to break. The right hand has been left as the "free" hand for openning doors, etc. The left hand has tended to be the hand that carries things. So the right hand then became the cell phone hand for most non-driving people (NYers, for instance).
What would be necessary is a controlled enviroment with no cell phones for several decades, and then checking to see if the sort of people who have been using cell phones a lot and have brain tumors - what side those tended to be on (tumor-wise) back pre-cell phones. People that hold phones on the left side of their head tend to be those without a briefcase, those who drive manual transmission cars, blah. Those with it on the right tend to be male, drive automatic, carry things, etc. There's actual tendencies there that could be looked at.
And maybe they have been looked at, and as such any tendencies for the phone to be on the same side as the tumor can't necessarily be said to be because fo the cell phone, instead of just a behavioural issue of some sort. There really isn't enough evidence either way.
Since a good number of bombs are triggered by cell phones, is it possible this may be a very bad idea?
I mod every other week, but metamod every day. I don't get the math...
The ratio of metamodders to modders is > 1
Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.
That's not a bug, it user error!
nah, if you're living in a city big enough to have subways, you're exposed to all kinds of carcinogens in air, water, food...above and below ground
Foil underwear would stop any conserns about nut cancer and as an adder bounou the goverment mind controll devices for males would be disabled.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Leaky Coax would likely be a cheap way to handle it. You would still need "towers" at regular intervals, but then you run a copper line along the train line for each antena. This is a pretty common trick in large buildings. You let the carrier install antenas on your roof line and drop leaky coax off one of them so that the signal inside the building is just as strong as the signal outside. The expencive part would be getting the pipe to support the volume. I road the DC blue line a few times during rush hour, there are ALOT of people in a very small area. Running that many people on one antena might not work so well, expecially when they are all getting handed off every 45 seconds. You might need some type of redundant line of antenas to handle the call volume, hand offs, and load balancing. And then likely a fiber line to carry the data from the antenas back to the junction. -Rick -Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Buenos Aires had coverage in the whole subway (it's called "Subte" over here) network for the last 5 years, they have upgraded to GSM last year, the cell equipment underground is provided by Nokia.
Did you even read the blurb? All the things you're saying wouldn't cause a _decrease_ in the chances of cancer on the LHS of your brain. You've explained very well why there might be an increase on the right side, but that's only half the equation.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
This might enable the next terrorist attack though.
Well, it sure worked (at the technical level) in Madrid. Thankfully they didn't plan/execute it very well, though, as apparently their initial plan was to have all of the onboard backpack bombs go off at once, aboard trains that were all in the station (this didn't work too well, since some went off outside) - with the intention of bringing the entire terminal down on all of the commuters inside. That would have been hundreds more or thousands dead. And they did use a collection of anonymously purchased disposable cell phones to do the job. Which makes this sort of thing pretty unsettling.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So we can decide they're biased based on what we wish their conclusions were. And then we can continue to believe what we want.
This is totally unrealistic in this case. We're not talking about Linux vs. Windows TCO studies!
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
...So what you're telling me is, the one place in New York City where I'm guaranteed NOT to be aggravated by some yuppie asshole yelling into his phone at the top of his lungs is soon to be a cell-friendly environment? You're telling me that I can't avoid these people by hiding out thirty feet underground?
Sometimes I hate technology.
You can read how they wire tunnels for cell phones here:r efer=promotion&c=digivance
PDF file warning!
http://www.adc.com/Library/Literature/100557.pdf?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Don't be so hard on our frined from the north. We have the same ability on the DC Metro. Regardless of how much it cost it was well worth it.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
This is totally unrealistic in this case.
Your view of what's realistic insensitively disregards my feelings about the reality that works for me.
I'm not sure that's officially considered a hate-crime yet though.
No, he is PlayfullyClever.
The Montreal Metro has has cell service for a good while now. They initially started the service as a partnership with Bell Canada in only some of the most heavily frequented stations, but they have slowly been expanding the service and the plan is to have the whole system wired up. I do seem the recall the service working even in trains, but don't quote me on that.
Well, maybe that's intentional, to reduce unemployment ...
:-)
</conspiracy-theory>
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The right, more creative side, or the left, more analytical side?
(Note to moderators. This was my attempt as humour. Obviously what I said above is based on how some people use their cell phones against their left or right ear, which if it were to cause cancer, would cause cancer on that hemisphere of the brain, if you see what I am saying.)
Hey, that's great news. If cancer was the only thing to worry about. How about other diseases (mad cell phone users disease) or other imparements? How about testing IQ (or your test of choice) before cell phone use, and then 1-5 years later for those who are "heavy" users? Seems to me there could be a whole litany of potential issues that have nothing to do with cancer that are being ignored.
Aren't some of the Improvised Explosive Devices used in Iraq triggered by calling a cell phone strapped to the bomb?
Blowing up a military convoy as it drives by requires precise timing. Blowing up a subway car full of people does not. An egg timer set to go off two minutes after you get off the train or leave a subway platform would be sufficient to kill quite a few people.
Maybe the problem isn't that the phone cause the tumors, but rather your hand preference. Think about it. Most people will, a majority of the time, use their dominant hand to hold the cell phone when talking on it. So of course the tumor that supposedly is caused by the phone is also going to match up to their dominant had as well. So maybe this is about your dominant hand being the deciding factor in the location NOT the phone!
What percent of persons using a cell phone have developed a tumor in the first place? I think that with the massive use of cell phones in our culture, and the lower numbers of tumors in the same population, we are going to find that there is probably not a real strong correlation.
Here I come to save the da... *thud*
I gotta get me a shorter cape.
I actually HOPE cell phones cause brain tumors.
This space available.
Cell phones physically suck? So can I use then as vacuum cleaner?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
also as events in Iraq and London 7/7 shows there are more reliable methods of detonation that terrorists are prepared to use.
We're better fed now than we've ever been -- but there are still people with eating disorders, and there isn't a single foodstuff that is agreed by all experts as safe to eat. Crime is at the lowest level it's ever been at for years -- but the Authorities are stoking up the fear of crime as an excuse to invade our civil liberties. I'm reminded of a lyric from a song by Del Amitri: It seems that Doom and Gloom just make for better news than boring nice stuff. Nobody is interested in fluffy kittens unless they're being brutally hacked to pieces, or trees and flowers unless they're deadly poisonous. And never mind about all the lives that have been saved just because someone had their mobile with them
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The non-users are likely to have a different economic situation. It's well-known that people with crummy economic situations have different health than those who are better off. For example, they smoke more.
If you look only at the cell phone users with one-sided cancer, that bias goes away. There might be some remaining issue related to people being left-handed or not, but that is probably minor.
So let's figure that the side without the cell phone is normal, and the side with the cell phone has extra exposure. This is true unless the call phone affects the opposite side more, which would be very strange. We should exclude the non-users, because their economic situation (and thus eating habits, smoking habits, work environment, etc.) will be different. What you have left is simple: does the cancer happen on one side more than the other? Well, yes it does. That's enough to say that cell phones are almost certainly affecting the cancer. (the alternative is that cancer affects choice of cell phone location)
WTF?!? Maybe this is an example of why I'm not a scientist, but doesn't that prove the connection? It seems to suggest that the cancer isn't caused by the phone's cell transmissions (as those would almost certainly pass clean through the head). However, the fact that there's increased risk on the phone side and decreased risk on the other side would seem to suggest that the phone itself is emitting some sort of localized field that increases the risk. No?
Dude, that means it causes cancer.
There is more to "causing" cancer than the original mutation. There may be many mutations, suppression of immune system responses, and who knows what else. It all counts. Let's not split hairs.
Considering that even under the worst case scenario, only a small fraction of tumors are caused by cell phones, using total tumor frequency has far more uncertainty than using the ratio of left and right head tumors.
I can't conceive of a way of creating a proper control for an experiment comparing total tumor counts, while a control for an experiment comparing left-right imbalances is much easier.
I'm happy there's no reception down there. We need a little less yelling down there, and a little more shut the hell up. Though I guess it would come in handy when your friend gets really drunk on his birthday and wanders around the subway system, and it's up to you to find him (yes, true story).
Having got and read the study in question in its entirity, the conclusions given by the media are extremely misleading. The study itself looks only at a specific subset of brain cancers, known as "gliomas". Now these constitute approximately 50% of all brain tumours, but the research to date that has found links between mobile phone usage and brain cancers found a doubling in acoustic neuromas, a totally different form of brain cancer simply not covered by this study. In that respect it is very irresponsible to make the conclusion that mobile phones don't cause brain cancer.
It is also interesting to note that the media failed to comment on a critical issue mentioned in the summary of the report: brain cancers typically take 10 - 25 years to diagnosis after the exposure to the initial suspected cause. The authors themselves noted that they simply did not have the data to draw any conclusions on long term mobile phone users (greater than 10 years of use). This would indicate that they were unable to assess the subset of mobile phone users likely to have developed the brain cancers in the first place. An example of how important this fact is is that the paper in 2005 showing the 1.9-fold increase in acoustic neuromas only found it in those exposed to mobile phones for greater than 10 years (where they had sufficient data to make the statistically significant analysis).
All in all this study is reassuring that short or medium term usage of mobile phones do not have a significant effect on a subset of brain cancer types, but it says absolutely nothing about long term use or other brain cancers. As some other cancers still have a signifant published increase that has not been refuted by this study or any others to date, and as there are a number of reported health effects aside from cancers attributed to mobile phones, this certainly doesn't reassure me.
This Powerwatch page shows a good summary of the shortcomings of the report, and raises a couple of interesting points not in this post.
I was just thinking about the favorite remote-detonation switch: the cheapy, throw-away cell phone.
There was some discussion about a no-cell zone in movie theatres, if there was one in the subways, it would make remote-detonations impossible....
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I wish the MTA and the City would concentrate on actually improving subway service and MTA accountability. I don't care about talking on the phone on the subway, I care about the subway system being more useful and reliable.
Come on guys, focus! 2nd Ave line. Update terminals and technology. Open up your books.
Then talk to me about frills and sweetheart corporate tie-in deals like cell service for the subway lines.
No overall increased risk vs. what? People who have absolutely no exposure to similar sources of radiation, including wireless home phones? If that's not how they controlled it, then I don't buy their logic.
Their system doesn't attempt to decode or interpret the signal. It digitizes designated RF bands from analog receivers and sends the digitized RF waveform over fiber where it is converted back to analog and retransmitted. This is supposed to make the system immune to changes in Cell protocols. However, I wonder how it would handle spread spectrum?
You just explained politics and religion!
I want to use my cell phone on the subway. I don't care if a terrorist might use it to blow me up. I don't see that terrorism is a significant threat to my person.
However, terrorism will become a threat to my way of life if the fear of it prevents me from using my cell phone on the subway.
May the Maths Be with you!
You know you want to. You are a troll moderator if you don't. But if you do, you are a good man and should not be abolished or exiled from the face of the earth. Please foster my opinions, ideas. My onions as well because we all know that most mods are not as cool as you for modding the parent insightful as he is not a troll or a flamebaitor.
Thank you for your kind and gentle consideration and admiration of your fellow Slashdotters' posts.
This's somewhat misleading. While they're basically related, this is two separate articles. No sir, I don't like it.
To my knowledge, I think verizon is the only carrier that you can make calls on the train and in the stations, I know that people have had problems with Cingular but their overal coverage sucks I think. I call my wife from the train to pick me up at the station so It would be a pain to have wait the call her when I get there.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
I'm sorry, but if you have a manual transmission and use the phone on the left side of your head... Wait, does your insurance company know about this? Highway driving and traffic jams notwithstanding, there's no way you can have a free hand to drive with. Much less drink a mochaccino.
:P
Also, this sentence infuriates me:
The right hand has been left as the "free" hand for openning doors, etc.
Just thought you should know that
The brain tumor survey looks like shaky science. As someone in the article pointed out, it was based only on a survey of *living* subjects and most with serious brain tumors die within 18 months and were therefore omitted from the study. From reading the article, it looks as though they asked 1,000 people with brain tumors how much they used a cell phone and then went and asked 1,700 people who didn't have a brain tumor how much THEY used a cell phone. Then they used the results of this survey to claim that the amount of cell phone use between the two group was the same.
.0005% of exposed individuals after
3 years of use with the percentage rising to 5% after 20 years of
use? The cancer-sufferers in the study might just be falling into
that .0005% group but that doesn't mean that the non-sufferers get a
free pass but only that their time isn't up, yet. Lots of
people smoke cigarettes but don't get lung cancer until 30 years, or
more, later, and many never get lung cancer. Using similar
methodology, we could survey 1,000 lung cancer sufferers and 1,700
non-lung cancer sufferers in the age range of 25-35 in some country
such as South Korea where most everyone smokes and both groups would
probably report about the same amount of smoking. Then we could
say 'See...there's no link between smoking and lung cancer!'
Says the article: "The study of 2,782 people across the UK found no link between the risk of glioma - the most common type of brain tumour - and length of mobile use."
Presumably, they were looking for a higher proportion of the brain tumor sufferers to say 'Omigosh, yes, I use the cell phone 8 hours a day.' while the non-sufferers would say 'Cell phones? What are those?' Instead, they probably found both that both groups used cell phones about the same amount of time and from that comes their 'conclusion' that there is no link between cell phones and cancer. Suppose, though, that cell phones really DO cause cancer but that they only cause cancer in
Also, there are negative cognitive effects that have been demonstrated in cell phone users. Unless more data becomes available, the best approach to cell phones is probably the same as that used for exposure to ionizing radiation which is to minimize your time and distance and don't give them to kids.
It's really amusing that this guy doesn't understand how research works, especially in this case. I know, it's a little confusing sometimes.
The best part though, is that so many other people are ignorant as well, and found a way to display it by modding him up.
RTFA was never more appropriate than in this case.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Its great that the NYC subway system will allow cell phones to work. I can't use my cell phone from my apartment which is 4 miles from a university. Before you think its entirely the building, consider that outside I only get 2 bars on a good day. Its not just my cell phone. I miss analog phones...
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I'm sure that this study is reassuring to those that have cancer from cell phone usage.
They are reassured to know that there is less chance of getting it on the other side of their head.
Yes, I know one person that had a "hot spot" where his cell phone antenna was. And that's where they found and removed a tumor and installed a metal plate.
all the subways I've been to in Europe have coverage, and you can (unfortunately) talk inside the trains as well. U.S. comming a little late in the game, heh?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I'm not sure which I'd rather have... a 100% chance of cancer on the right side of my head and zero on the left; or a 50% chance of cancer on either side. I think I'd prefer the option that leaves a chance of no cancer on either side.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
My major problem with this, is that I'd like to see how they came up with the idea of the drop in cancer rates. There are multiple ways to figure this, and some of them are flawed.
Did they separate out the cancer inflicted people and see if the same proportion of people who already had cancer in one side of the head had cancer in the other side of the head as everyone in the general populace would have cancer in that side of the head? If so, that seem correct.
If not, then it seems like you're trying to say that people who win the lottery once are less likely to win the lottery again since the aggregate probability of winning the lottery twice is less than of winning it once. I mean, brain cancer is pretty rare, so "double" brain cancer is likely to be even rarer. If they didn't properly isolate the two events, then they'd get a biased result.
Given the rarity of "double" brain cancer, I'd like to know what their sample size is of people that had it. Given that only 17000 people die of brain cancer in America per year, they can't have had more than a handful of people that met the requirement. A couple more or less patients could've changed their results dramatically.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
They sell worthless junk along the same lines as aluminum foil hats, and magic-crystal healing devices. They aren't protecting people from EMF, they are getting rich of scaring people into believing that it's going to destroy them and their families.
They completely disregard the fact that we have been, and continue to be bombarded by radiation from natural sources such as the sun, celestial events, and the Earth's magnetic core. Making our homes into faraday cages just means that we won't be bombarded by EMF in our houses, but wait! Every single electronic device emits some amount of EMF, from your toaster, to your microwave, to your vibrator, it's all going to emit some amount of EMF and you really can't escape it without becoming a Luddite and living in a sealed hovel in some remote location.
It's also important to note that there are different kinds of radiation, at its purest definition, it's the transmission of energy via waves. In that case, sound is radiation, ripples in water, also radiation. What most people confuse, however, is electromagnetic radiation versus particle radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is the oscillation of magnetic fields, particle radiation is caused by nuclear decay and the two are quite different. Electrons moving around is a lot less invasive than a red hot proton ripping through the nuclei of your cells which leads us to how cancer is caused by radiation. Particle radiation, caused by nuclear decay, shoots off ions at high velocities which actually shoot through your body and kill cells. Sometimes, in the process of doing this, they will damage the nucleus of a cell but not so much that the cell dies, just enough to mangle its DNA. This can cause faulty reproduction of this cell which can, in turn, cause tumors, or even cancerous growths. This kind of radiation is fundamentally different from the kind of radiation that makes your microwave and even oven (yes, heat is radiation!) work.
It's this lexical confusion that throws a lot of people off, yes it's radiation, no it's not dangerous unless at very high energy levels. And even then, it just cooks you like so much hot dogs. You don't grow tumors, you don't get cancer, you don't turn into a hideous fly-man, you just pop like a big water-ballon.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
Let me guess, you still believe in the boogie men made up al-queda and tarrrist are coming to get you and they hate you for your freedoms. Well, onward gullible soldier, get over to Iraq and play your part.
But remember the slashdotted research that reports evidence of cumulative genetic brain damage from using electromagnetic devices such as hair dryers and electric razors around your brain.
They keep reporting that cellphones do not cause cancer, but I have yet to hear that cell phones do not cause cumulative genetic damage in the brain.
Anyone else come across such a study? Does the lack of such research speak volumes about the topic or is it just not interesting info to researchers?
They've only had this in the Moscow metro for like five years! In Russia, on subway, mobile phone calls you! Etc. etc.
my GSM phone (nokia, bands 850/1900) already works at a few Manhattan subway stations, depending on their depth. for instance, it usually works at a 1-layer station, but if i have to walk 3 layers underground at a major interchange, well, yeah ... it stops working. at some of them i get full GPRS, others just basic voice and sms. sometimes i even get sms messages while blowing by a station on an express train...
so this doesn't seem that exciting, unless if it means the jackasses who stand on the stairs at the subway entrance can talk underground and stop blocking the steps, oh...
hey wait, i guess i'm all for it, then.
See, these retrospective studies of cancer are always skewed by what people think they must have done to give themselves this terrible disease....alternatively, people without cancer try and attribute it to something they did right...but neither bit of info is reliable. For instance, I have to keep telling myself...putting mountain dew bottles in my ass didn't give me cancer...but...you know, there was a bottle I used for years with a bump on one side...a scratchy deformation in the plastic that kept cutting me...and you know, that's the side my rectal tumor was on. I can't shake the feeling...you know...?
> Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour
> sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on
Reminds me of the studies of evil silicon breast implants, where the two groups had identical rates of lupus onset, joint problems, auto-immune problems, etc.
Also reminds me of the studies of evil Olestra potato chips. Turns out they have slightly less incidence of abdominal cramping than real potato chips. Didn't stop the common bozo from imagining problems, placebo-style, or from frauds selling themselves as talking heads on TV.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And that's why we're introducing the brand new stereo cell phone! It actually reduces risk of cancer on both sides of the brain. Amazing!
But, there was no overall increase in cancer rates.
That is the core assumption of the study, but it can't be objectively proven from the sample groups involved. If they had selected people who used cell phones as the "test" group and people who did not as the "control" group and then checked for cancer rates you could make that assumption.
However over a third of the people involved in the study had glioma. You can't tell me that glioma is prevalent in 1/3 of the population. Instead, what they did was find cancer patients first as the "test" group and people without cancer as the "control" group. Unless they proved that cell phone usage rates were identical between the two groups, then identical risk is not proven. The article made no real mention of either group containing significant numbers of people who did not use cell phones.
I still want to see their numbers. I just can't find the study on-line.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's precisely what the study found. Cell usage patterns of both groups were the same. You're allowed to come at such a problem from either direction. You can either divide the groups into "cell" and "no cell" and look for higher cancer rates, or you can look at "cancer" and "no cancer" and look for higher cell phone usage. Correlation is correlation regardless of which side you approach it from.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Suppose there are no other factors. We can conclude that people without cell phones will get cancer more than people with cell phones!
Now, what if cell phones actually do cause cancer? The above bias will hide it.
So we really need to throw out the "control group". The simple fact of one-sided cancer is all we have left. Hmmm. There is a very slim chance of reporting bias, so we can't make a firm conclusion, but it sure looks like the phones play a role.
To properly decide this, we need phones that record which side they are used on. This can be done with the existing accelerometer hardware. (measure the direction of gravity) Note how people hold their phone at an angle so that the mouthpiece is near their mouth. We can classify phone angles as left-side, right-side, and indeterminate.
So tumors were more likely than average to appear on the cell phone side and less likely than average to appear on the phone-free side. Obviously, cell phones attract tumors. If the subjects of the study had just used their cell phones *more*, they could have sucked the tumors right out of their heads!
-Rich
Or, it could simply be that Glioma is statistically more common to occur on the right hand side of the brain rather than the left.
Looked around a bit, didn't find much on it, but noted all the images and samples of glioma that I found were either central.. or on the right hand side of the brain.
That's precisely what the study found. Cell usage patterns of both groups were the same.
Quote me a line from the article that would indicate the truth of that statement. I've reread it four times, and I can find no such evidence.
I want to see their math.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Quote me a line from the article that would indicate the truth of that statement. I've reread it four times, and I can find no such evidence.
Evidence of what? The specific evidence that cell phones probably don't cause cancer or that you can measure correlation between two activities? If you want the former, you'll have to dig up the study. The latter is just basic statistical survey technique. Find a 101 level college textbook on the subject. Or, you could read the part of the article where they spell it out:
As the article points out, the only flaw in this method is that many past glioma patients are dead, so that leaves open the possibility that cell phones only cause a special kind of glioma that kills you too fast to be surveyed and only kills you if the tumor appears OPPOSITE the side you use your phone. Possible, but not likely.I want to see their math.
Ya, OK... But if you're original quarrel with the survey was based upon not understanding how they could survey a "cancer" group so much larger than the general glioma rate than their "no cancer" control group, I suspect your grasp of survey methodology is far too weak to spot any potential flaws.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Now you're just getting nasty-tempered for no good reason. You have not shown that there was any evidence cited anywhere that the two groups actually have equivalent rates of cell phone usage. Without that piece of knowledge you cannot say that the risk was equivalent. I was merely pointing out that you were assuming that they were because it was the only way that their claims held out. In other words, you're arguing from the conclusion since there is no evidence presented in the supporting text to uphold your claim.
I would point out that the person who claimed that there was a methodological flaw was an member of a political advocacy group and not necessarily a scientist. Furthermore, no one said that it was "the only flaw." You cannot use his words as supporting evidence that a methodological flaw in determining relative risk did not exist.
My point is that this is fluff journalism, and I treat it with a grain of salt since the evidence as presented proves nothing. I suspect that they're probably correct. I suspect that patients interviewed after the fact are more likely to misreport which side they used their cellphones on in favor of putting where the cancer was thanks to the news coverage of the affair. I just don't think the scant evidence presented in the article proves it thanks to incomplete information.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
point is merely that there's no possible control group, no way to tell which of the multitudes of enviromental factors cause the increased chances.