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Cell Phone Radiation Excites the Brain
frostilicus2 writes "The Register is reporting that Italian researchers have shown that radiation from mobile phones can excite the brain's cortex. A region that is "responsible for many higher faculties". They even claim that such an effect could be beneficial to some conditions."
From the article:
R.Mo
Whoops, I lied. That's not from the article Slashdot linked to, it's from the actual study, the link to which I found on a similar BetaNews story. Do yourself a favor--skip the writeup in The Register and read the abstract yourself: Wiley InterScience Journal - Abstract.
R.Mo
FWIW, it is illegal to use a phone while driving in the UK, unless you use a hands-free system. It's also illegal to do anything else that interferes with your control of the vehicle, including eating. Listening to music is considered to increase alertness more than it distracts. Scrabbling in the passenger footwell for tapes would probably be a no-no though...
Without having read the actual scientific journal article (but just the very unscientific coverage of it), I have serious reservations about the study
... to make the error of assuming that association of two disparate events demonstrates cause and effect.
That tells us everything we need to know. You're worried about something you neither have read nor understood, but you feel empowered to tell other people how bad it is despite your ignorance.
Don't you have the good sense to be ashamed of behaving this way?
Cell phone radiation is of sufficiently low energy that I am not sure it can even penetrate INTO the brain. I am not sure this has ever been conclusively shown.
Oh nonsense. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with particle physics knows perfectly well that if it can penetrate several dozen steel or wood walls, it can make it through half an inch of bone. If you don't believe me, find your nearest cell tower, stand between it and your phone, and see whether you get a signal. That said, that cellular radiation can penetrate into the brain has been extensively shown in other animals, so unless you want to pretend the human brain is somehow different, then the reason you aren't sure is because you've never checked. A display of ignorance is not an argument against.
The issue isn't whether it can penetrate. The issue is whether it will collide on the way through.
I am a radiation oncologist by trade.
I'm not sure I believe that someone who doesn't think cell radiation can get into a brain could possibly be a trained particle physician.
So I'm a little outside my training here.
Real radiation oncologists are required to understand particle physics and its interaction with organic tissue. Those physical systems are as valid at cellphone energies as they are at x-ray and gamma energies. You shouldn't be outside your training if you are who you claim to be.
However, even some of the treatments we use only penetrate a centimeter or less, and these are much higher energy than radiation from cell phones, as far as I know.
A real radiation oncologist would know that the primary determinant in depth of penetration is the wavelength of the radiation, not the energy, which is why you can operate your ridiculously high energy devices and get only an inch penetration, and yet why a microwave running on AC power can wholly cook things. This whole thing rings false: if you are who you claim you are, then you are dangerously ignorant of your own job, a job on which other people's lives depend. If you are who you claim you are, I very much hope you will attend new training.
This study appears, at first blush, to make the error of...
How would you know? You haven't even read it!
If you'd read it, you'd know it didn't make that error (it's called the fallacy of conjunction, which an educated person should also know.)
If the brain is more active, their study design fails to prove that it is due to the radiation.
It has no such failure, and if you'd bother to read something before you criticised it, you'd know that. Of course, as a purported doctor, you should also be familiar with single-blind testing, which is in what they engaged, and whose specific nature is to eliminate the problem you're pretending you saw in a document you admit you didn't see.
Maybe the brain becomes more excitable because the study subject just got a phone call from a friend or loved one?
The subjects weren't receiving calls. Read the paper before criticising obvious falsehoods.
It might be that the original article addresses some of these shortcomings.
I should hope that in the future you have the decency to not karma whore like this. This sort of nonsense grandstanding and ego-driven lying (yes, I'm calling you a liar - you're criticising something you've never read with things that are patently false, and feigning comprehension of things you obviously don't comprehend) is the primary basis of disinformation.
As a (supposed) doctor, you of all people should know how dangerous and unethical this is. You're lucky I don't know where you work.
StoneCypher is Full of BS