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Wi-Fi Allergy a PR Stunt
ADiamond writes "There is no Wi-Fi allergy. The English DJ claiming a Wi-Fi sensitivity, chronicled earlier, was a PR stunt to promote his new album. It would appear that the stunt was highly successful, appearing in multiple high-profile media outlets like The Sun, The Telegraph, and Fox News. The article at Ars goes on to discuss the evidence, or lack-thereof, of electromagnetic spectrum sensitivity."
My work here is dung.
If you read the comments below the LAST article you would know that you didn't need to inform us.
Now this story will linger as 'common knowledge' for years and rational people will have to cnstantly explain it was a PR stunt.
Well done jackass, you've made the world a worse place.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm allergic to PR stunts. You have no idea how miserable they make life. I am dizzy all the time, and can't stop sneezing. And the rashes. And the boils. I may be going blind, as well.
By the way, I have a new album coming out, called "Craposensitive".
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It's attitudes like that which keep people reclusive when actually do experience strange things (whether medical, mental, metaphysical -- whatever strange means today).
Some people are attention-whores, for sure. And some of those people make stuff up. The rest of the world, though - they'd probably rather keep their strangeness to themselves, than to be studied like a lab rat.
You're talking about human beings, not creatures which we need to find in order to "be able to study them."
Kid-proof tablet..
Misleading and deceiving people for notoriety and financial gain. How the fuck is this not fraud?
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Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh, It burns!!!!!!!!! (Buy my new album) Arrrrrrghhhhh, AgonyAgonyAgony!!!!!!!
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
He's made the world a better place. Now anybody who claims to be suffering from this fake malady can be told to shut up with "Oh, that's a fake disease from an old PR stunt."
You have to remember, people were already claiming to suffer from it; it's already in the 'common knowledge' bin. He's brought nothing new to the table as far as claims go.
It was reported by The Sun, The Telegraph, and Fox News. I'm surprised those bastions of journalistic integrity and careful, measured reporting didn't check their facts better before releasing these reports.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The ban Dihydrogenmonoxide stunt also got the media messed up in a comical frenzy over bad science.
This site is still up for your reading pleasure.
http://www.dhmo.org/
The environmental impact of the stuff is huge. It's found most everywhere.
http://www.dhmo.org/environment.html
For those who don't get the joke the punchline is here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax
n 1989, Eric Lechner, Lars Norpchen and Matthew Kaufman circulated a Dihydrogen Monoxide contamination warning on the UC Santa Cruz Campus via photocopied fliers.[8] The concept originated one afternoon when Kaufman recalled a similar warning about "Hydrogen Hydroxide" that had been published in his mother's hometown paper, the Durand (Michigan) Express, and the three then worked to coin a term that "sounded more dangerous". Lechner typed up the original warning flier on Kaufman's computer, and a trip to the local photocopying center followed that night.
The truth shall set you free!
I mean, I would call this a stunt if the DJ did indeed acknowledge it, and said that he has no condition.
But as of now, this article is just another opinion from a journalist that the the condition is BS, and might indeed have been used as a way to promote an album.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong to promote an album based on what one believes. If the DJ really believes that he is electro-sensitive, then it makes perfect sense for him to promote an album called "electro-sensitive" by talking about his "disease" (even if everybody knows that the disease is only in his head).
What's more scary is not that its used as a PR tool, but the fact that the media was so gullible to just pass it along....
Except they don't suffer from "this" affliction.
If they can't pass a double blind test, then the affliction doesn't exist.
to hurt him even more!
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Its a fairly interesting study, I'll admit. However, after a brief reading of it, I noticed:
1) The methodology doesn't say whether the generator is in view of the subject, and the phrasing suggests that it is. The generator could have had tells.
2) Doesn't mention how the administrator was isolated from the subjects in the double-blind experiments.
3) It states that a single-blind was first conducted, then goes on to say that the double-blind was conducted with "the same parameters."
It would be nice to see these clarified and the results reproduced. If there were issues with the "double-blind" (either the administrator or the generator being observable), then the first run of the single blind, and subsequent weeding out of the test subjects, would select for those who would be able to recognize the tells.
This particular paragraph gave me a bit of pause too:
"In our experience, the patients' clinical responses could not always be reproduced completely, but the objective Iriscorder, EKG, and respirometer could be. However, the responses were definitely different from controls or placebo challenges. In our experience over the years, we have found partial reproduction of symptoms on repeat challenge to be as significant as total reproduction. Therefore, significant differences from controls in objective ineasurementa were deemed valid."
There are some other questionable assumptions in the discussion section as well.
Still, it would nice to see the experiment reproduced, since they did manage to obtain some interesting results that would be worthwhile investigating.