10-Year Cell Phone / Cancer Study Is Inconclusive

crimeandpunishment writes "A major international (retrospective) study into cell phones and cancer, which took 10 years and surveyed almost 13,000 people, is finally complete — and it's inconclusive. The lead researcher said, 'There are indications of a possible increase. We're not sure that it is correct. It could be due to bias, but the indications are sufficiently strong ... to be concerned.' The study, conducted by the World Health Organization and partially funded by the cellphone industry, looked at the possible link between cell phone use and two types of brain cancer. It will be published this week."

Comments

It's all relative

[phantomfive]

At least from this we know that cell phone radiation isn't causing some massive epidemic of brain cancer, and the affects, if there are any, are relatively small. That's not the biggest comfort you could have, but it's something (considering most of us are not going to give up our cell phones anyway).

Re:It's all relative

[WarJolt]

Most people who have high cell phone usage also share other behavior. CEO use cells a lot and have high stress. Stress is a key factor in a lot of cancers. It's hard to track the roots of the problem.

Re:It's all relative

[bjourne]

And some stress could certainly be caused by cellphone usage. Not that I'm disagreing with you. Creating fair studies that takes into effect all independent variables is hard.

Re:It's all relative

[JustNilt]

It's difficult to be sure. The fact they could find neither a conclusive link nor disprove one indicates they missed something which is likely associated. While it's rather difficult prove a negative, you usually can do well enough.

My personal opinion is there's no direct link but since this is such a politicized issue people pretty much think what they want. The closest analogy I can think of is the vaccination/autism argument. The real

Re:It's all relative

[vlm]

cell phone radiation isn't causing some massive epidemic of brain cancer

Even if there were a high percentage of brain cancers from phone users, how would you tell the difference between cancer caused by RF wave, which has no theoretical basis or past proven medical experience/documentation, or cancer caused by weird plastics, weird dyes, lead paint, weird petrochemical outgassing from the plastic phones, which has a reasonable scientific biological basis for causing cancer, and unfortunately plenty of medical experience/documentation?

Correlation Causation...

Re:It's all relative

[frisket]

Isn't this one of those things where you have to be talking on your phone for several hours a day for several years? I use mine for an average of two calls a day, each lasting an average of 20 sec. Or is it the latent emissions (eg polling the nearest tower) or the non-voice work (texts, emails, tweets, etc) that do it?

Re:It's all relative

[sznupi]

And this small possible influence all the while people generally don't use BT headsets. They might do that, for a start.

Re:It's all relative

[WarJolt]

It could be caused by the stress of talking to people on the phone and perhaps some effect of the radio waves. Nothing has been proven.

Re:It's all relative

[Darkness404]

The problem with "stress" is that it is hard to define. For some people, yes, cell phones could cause stress, for others such as me cell phones probably reduce stress by keeping me connected. If something major happens I'm easily notified via cell phone or can notify others. What causes stress for some people might not cause stress for others. For example I tend to get stressed out when things don't arrive quickly, mailed test scores for standardized tests used to stress me out much more than the test generally did because there was uncertainty and delayed consequences. So while some people might be stressed out because of constant access to information there are others who stress out a lot more because of lack of information.

Re:It's all relative

[jibjibjib]

My phone's emissions when idle are for something on the order of a few seconds an hour. Non-voice work is also intermittent. And if the phone is 10 times further away from your brain, the received power at your brain is 100 times less.

I believe that if you make one short call a day, the energy your brain receives from that call will probably still be enough to make all the other network traffic negligible in comparison.

Re:It's all relative

[defaria]

Ugh! How stupid are people!! Really!!! Reminds me of the silly "You gotta turn of your cell phone and portable devices" bullshit. Only in America (well maybe the stupid hysteria has spread to stupid European countries too by now). I never - I repeat NEVER - turn off my cell phone. No plane has ever crashed as a result. It's a myth foolish people - just like this one. See http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=debunking+cell+phones+and+cancer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Re:It's all relative

[phantomfive]

You seem to act like people should never study to understand this effect deeper. That is silly, more research is always good.

Re:It's all relative

[AusIV]

How much difference does it actually make if you're the one using the cell phone vs being anywhere in the vicinity of a cell phone and tower? I'm not asking about cancer risk, because we've already seen those results were inconclusive, but I'm assuming we have some way to measure exposure to radiation. I would guess people who live closer to cell towers are exposed to more radiation than someone who is using a cell phone all day, but that could be a completely false assumption. If that guess is correct, however, I doubt there would be much correlation to radiation exposure and lifestyle factors.

Re:It's all relative

[blueg3]

Are you talking about brain cancer from the plastics and dyes in a cell phone? (Lead paint doesn't cause cancer.) I think brain cancer caused by the RF radiation (which does have an unproven theoretical basis) has a stronger argument behind it than getting brain cancer from touching a cell phone.

Regardless, it's easy to differentiate between them -- that's why people came up with the clever idea of control groups.

Re:It's all relative

[jeff4747]

The fact they could find neither a conclusive link nor disprove one indicates they missed something which is likely associated.

They did disprove it. However, the study author and the reporter really, really, really wanted to prove it so it was reported as "inconclusive".

Re:It's all relative

[GWBasic]

Even the "cell phones cause cancer" camp isn't going to give them up. My friend who believes in the cancer theory also says that using a headset is fine as long as the phone is about a foot or two away from your head. Furthermore, so many people prefer low-bandwidth text messages over holding a phone to the head. In short, even if phones DO cause cancer, we'll figure out a safe way to use them.

Re:It's all relative

[AK Marc]

The study did not find a statistically valid link between cell phones and cancer.

That's not the same as saying "the study proves cell phones can't cause cancer."

This study was not done to disprove anything, but to find something if it existed. There isn't a statistically significant link between cell phones and cancer, according to the data. That's all they found. And that doesn't prove the contrary.

Re:It's all relative

[sjames]

Unless it's a cumulative effect that takes a couple decades to show up. Generation Y might start dropping like flies in their 50s.

Re:It's all relative

[AK Marc]

Perhaps you could come up with an example where there is no correlation, but there is causation?

I always wonder when I get these "challenges" whether someone really doesn't understand how statistics work, so they are wandering around in a constant state of confusion (or worse, confident ignorance). Or whether they are all pedantic asses who are too lazy and/or stupid to have an independent thought.

I can think of trillions of examples of a causation without correlation. I'll stick to something related to this topic. People who use cell phones have different habits than those without. Perhaps, because people aren't tethered to the desk phone, when they take calls at a desk, they push away or are more likely to walk around. If the CRT radiation has a greater effect than the cell phone radiation, then you'll find a result that correlates cell phone usage with lowered cancer, even though cell phones cause cancer.

The short answer is "confounds." They are everywhere, and you eliminate as many as possible in a study, but you never know what you missed, and you find what you can, publish what you find, and if anyone else identified a confound that wasn't accounted for, they can re-run the study with that in mind to see if it had any effect.

But, that you can't think of even one possible solution to the question you asked means you are too narrow minded or too stupid to worry about. I'm just posting this for those that have reasoning skills left. It's like all the people here, especially when I see people talking about voting and balloting systems, where if they can't think of a solution to a problem, then it's somehow proof that the solution doesn't exist.

Re:It's all relative

[jeff4747]

Perhaps, because people aren't tethered to the desk phone, when they take calls at a desk, they push away or are more likely to walk around. If the CRT radiation has a greater effect than the cell phone radiation, then you'll find a result that correlates cell phone usage with lowered cancer, even though cell phones cause cancer.

It's fairly safe to say that heavy cell phone users are such because they don't work at a desk - that's why they're always on the damn cell phone instead of their desk phone.

While you've created a masking effect, there is still a correlation that you should have measured. The cell phone users, despite their lower CRT exposure, would show a correlation vs. non-cell phone, non-CRT users.

But, that you can't think of even one possible solution to the question you asked means you are too narrow minded or too stupid to worry about. I'm just posting this for those that have reasoning skills left.

No, you're just attacking me because I asked a question you can't answer well.

So once again, how can you have causation without correlation? You claimed there's trillions of examples, so you can come up with one that's not nearly as lame.

Re:It's all relative

[gmhowell]

And it's a poor analogy. There was never a plausible scientific reason why thimerisol would lead to autism. Junk science from day one, and the initial finding has been repudiated by just about everyone involved with it.

Re:It's all relative

[JustNilt]

You're correct. I just noticed I managed to delete most of my last sentence. It should have read: "The real sad part there is that even though the originator of the autism/vaccination crap has been thoroughly discredited, many never figure that out and freak out about vaccinations to this day.

The difference between the vaccine/autism thing and cell phone/brain cancer as I see it is there's not yet any demonstrably bad study's claiming a link when there isn't for cell phones/brain tumors. doesn't stop folks freaking out, though. As I said, though, it's difficult to be 100% sure as you really cannot prove a negative, just fail to find a link.

That said, I don't believe in any real link (other than coincidental) between either vaccination and autism or cell phone use and brain tumors. Hell, many people with brain tumors also lay their heads on pillows. They probably even do so more hours out of the day (or night ... hehe) than they spend on a cell phone! Maybe someone should study that!

Re:It's all relative

[kumanopuusan]

You should probably consider the inverse-square law.
Cell towers transmit at higher power than cell phones, but only a minuscule portion of that reaches even a person standing at the base of the tower. With a cell phone against your ear, about half of the transmitted rf energy is going through your skull.

Re:It's all relative

[rtb61]

Of course if you want to look at it that way, how about if you are using a cell phone, while standing underneath major power lines, close to an airport radar, just up the street from a police officer using a radar gun pointed in your general direction, standing along side ten other people also making a cell phone calls, just after having a x-ray taken and all of this while close to a cell phone tower, hmm, your likely to be pretty much fucked if you do that to often.

The whole problem is cell phone usage is not happening in a vacuum, all these other contributing factors are there and they are real and they have to be taken into account.

By frying you brain with your cell phone you are adding to your risk because it is impossible to isolate yourself from all the other risks. Just as for example you don't use your cell phone on your own, every other users in that cell is also using their phone adding to the background radiation level.

So genetics, total radiation exposures (not just cell phones), duration of exposures, maximum intensity of combinant exposures and, most importantly age at which exposure commenced, all define your risk of suffering a lethal or significantly debilitating cancer. So the reality is focus upon your risks and fuck corporate advertising and profits, when you decide how many more risks you will take and how much more unhealthy behaviour you will or allow others to combine into your life or possible lack there of.

Re:It's all relative

[thegarbz]

for others such as me cell phones probably reduce stress by keeping me connected.

My survey of 15 year old girls conclusively proves that not having a cell phone causes untold stress.

As a side note it also proved that Britney Spears is still in fact hugely popular... or maybe I confused that with just plain huge.

Re:It's all relative

[gmhowell]

Fair enough. There are still some (Jenny McCarthy) who are clinging to vaccination as the reason for her autistic child. It's so outrageously incorrect that sometimes the faintest hint of crediting this view with any legitimacy is something I feel I need to stomp on.

Your intended post reads much better, and certainly makes a clearer point.

Although, since it wasn't a car analogy, it's still not a good one for Slashdot.

Re:It's all relative

[vlm]

I think brain cancer caused by the RF radiation (which does have an unproven theoretical basis) has a stronger argument behind it than getting brain cancer from touching a cell phone.

Wikipedia brain tumor page "Apart from exposure to vinyl chloride or ionizing radiation, there are no known environmental factors associated with brain tumors."

Vinyl Chloride is the monomer that is polymerized into PVC. Once polymerized its inherently harmless, no reactive double bonds left, that being the definition of polymerization (more or less). Not an issue for American made products, well, at least since the 70s/80s, but Chinese quality control is not exactly the best. Plenty of real research with strong statistical results from real MDs. I would not fool around with something made of polymerized VC unless I trust the manufacturer literally with my life (i.e. not Chinese).

On the other side you've got a couple flakes that don't understand 1/r^2 or what a wavelength is, but they're sure the cellphones are bad via some mystical non-scientific experience, and wonder of wonders most of them are looking for money from rich corporations or trying to gain fame or power.

The main problem with the theoretical basis of RF cancers is it must follow 1/r^2 laws... if theres a detectable effect from wimpy 600 mW handsets, then cops, firemen, ham radio guys, RF engineers, transmitter techs, radar techs, they should all be dropping at a several orders of magnitude rate compared to the general public. But they never have and currently don't... Even assuming theres something mystical or numerological about cell phone frequencies and waveforms, if a 600 mW handset a couple hours a week is barely measurably dangerous, then being a celltower base station tech 40 hours a week at a hundred watts or so must be a guaranteed immediate death sentence, like cancer and death to 100% of personnel exposed within a year. But it isn't, its not even measurable.

There are folks whom will never let scientific reasoning stand in the way of a strong belief, and not just as regards the cellphone issue.

Re:It's all relative

[Kilrah_il]

Somehow, your comment got modded Interesting, so I have to reply. What AK Mark meant, is that if (hypothetically) CRT monitors also cause cancer and the researchers do not know it beforehand when the study is undertaken then CRT monitor usage will affect the results, in essence confounding them. Hence, sitting in front of CRT monitors is a confounder.
If the researchers would have known about the CRT issue they would have done a the study like you suggested ("The cell phone users, despite their lower CRT exposure, would show a correlation vs. non-cell phone, non-CRT users"). But because the researchers do not know about this confounder they do not take it into account and thus you might get the same (or lower) rate of cancer in cell phone users compared to non-cell phone users. You would get no correlation in the study although you have causation.
Now this example was hypothetic, but it is possible that a real confounder is present, which is a big problem in any study, especially in medicine.
I for one don't believe that cell phones cause cancer, and the bulk of researches up till now support my opinion, but I admit the shortcomings of the studies done till know (mainly, that they are all retrospective) so I try to keep an open mind.
Please try to understand the replies given by people to your comments before dismissing them, especially in a difficult subject such as statistics.

Re:It's all relative

[blueg3]

I don't think 1/r^2 applies here quite like you think it does. It applies to large-area transmitters: RF from a radio antenna, a WiFi AP, or a cell tower is unlikely to cause harm (at least, at a reasonable distance from them) because many people are close to them (and thus subjected to enormously more energy).

Here, you're talking about the effect of a cell phone on the person holding it -- the phone-to-brain distance r is small. (It's a valid point that some people carry RF transmitters around almost constantly, though a lot of those use different frequencies.)

There is actually a paper on the medical basis for thinking that cell phone radiation could cause brain cancer. It's published in a legitimate medical journal. It has nothing to do with ionizing radiation (since cell phones aren't) and freely admits that there's no evidence suggesting that the proposed mechanism actually functions or that cell phones actually cause cancer.

Re:It's all relative

[vlm]

Here, you're talking about the effect of a cell phone on the person holding it -- the phone-to-brain distance r is small

Fair enough, I'll see your argument and raise it. How about nerve to nerve interference? Nerve to skin cell? Contact interval is much more severe being constant 24x7 since before birth. There should be a dramatic difference in say, skin cancer levels directly over the spine vs an area with few nerves. But there isn't. There should be a dramatic difference in skin cancer levels between skin with lots of nerves and skin with few. But there isn't. Cardiac electrical rhythms causing lung cancer? I think not. Nerve cell unit area density should correlate directly and strongly with tumor location, but it doesn't.

It's a valid point that some people carry RF transmitters around almost constantly, though a lot of those use different frequencies.

Fair enough, I'll see your argument and raise it. The AMPS analog cell phone frequencies were taken away from the top of the UHF TV channel spectrum. Not "different frequencies" but actually reassigned, reused frequencies. Cell phones operate at 600 mW, aka about a half watt. Your theory is there is some "effect" from that particular frequency of EM radiation that causes brain cancer. Lets say its a believable result if it increases the odds by 1 in a million. Thats a couple hundred extra brain cancers per year, far in excess of any claim, but I'll give generously concede. Now, thousands of UHF TV transmitter engineers, techs, ops, tower workers, spend/spent 40 hours per week (far in excess of cell exposure) in constant UHF TV fields ranging up to 1 megawatt. Lets assume the ever popular linear dose theory. So, thousands of UHF TV transmitter folks are exposed to a one-in-a-million cancer causing signal at almost 2 million times the intensity... Some multiplication later, and every single UHF TV engineer / tech / op / tower climber dude should have died of brain cancer within six months of being hired. Yet, they don't. There are plenty of career folks with amazing lifetime theoretical dosages whom expire of a heart attack after 40 years on the job.

The inherent problem with all "RF causes cancer" arguments is they assume there are not thousands to tens of thousands of control cases with exposure intervals orders of magnitude higher, field intensities literally millions of times higher, and lifetime-dosages orders of magnitude higher. Either tens of thousands of "industry" people have to drop like flies, which they don't, or the real true impact has to be in the single digit deaths per trillion range.

There is actually a paper on the medical basis for thinking that cell phone radiation could cause brain cancer.

"A" paper. Not exactly authoritative.

freely admits that there's no evidence suggesting that the proposed mechanism actually functions or that cell phones actually cause cancer.

Well, "A" paper says something could happen, but it almost certainly does not happen.

Re:It's all relative

[AK Marc]

While you've created a masking effect, there is still a correlation that you should have measured. The cell phone users, despite their lower CRT exposure, would show a correlation vs. non-cell phone, non-CRT users.

I'm asserting there is (in this hypothetical example) a negative correlation between "cell phone users" and "people diagnosed with cancer" despite an actual causal relationship between cell phone use and cancer. That you think a confound should have been corrected doesn't mean it was. I'm asserting that there are an infinite number of confounds such that they all can't be corrected for, so you must, by the nature of statistics, only correct for those you know, and then only the ones you know that you expect have some effect.

It's the finite nature of statistics that the results are as I describe.

No, you're just attacking me because I asked a question you can't answer well.

No, I gave an example. You can have confounds that are stronger than the measured effect. That's happened many times. It's handled by publishing, then having people guess as to reasons, then test for those. Eventually, the confounds are discovered. But the original correlation isn't "wrong", it's just meaningless. For the same reason people chant "correlation does not mean causation" you can have the result where "lack of correlation doesn't prove lack of causation." Yes, it's statistically less likely, but it's possible, and happens quite often.

Re:It's all relative

[blueg3]

I don't actually claim that cell phones cause brain cancer, only that your claim that there's no proposed mechanism of action turns out to be untrue. (I remember this mostly because I used to say that there's no proposed mechanism of action, so I thought this paper was particularly interesting.) I also claimed that your invoking of 1/r^2 wasn't quite appropriate.

Now, invoking occupational exposure is quite appropriate. Usually when you're working on RF equipment, it's powered off or you keep a good distance. But a good distance is measured in feet; cell phone to brain is inches. That's, roughly, a 1/r^2 difference of thousands. So exposure to a half-watt phone is like exposure to a half-kilowatt transmitter. A half-kilowatt transmitter is weak; some people are regularly exposed to much higher-power transmitters.

Re:It's all relative

[ceoyoyo]

It's not difficult to prove a negative, it's impossible. What they did do is show that there is no reason to think cell phones increase the risk of cancer more than a particular (small) amount. From the sound of it, they found a very weak correlation between heavy cell phone users and a particular type of brain tumor on the side nearest the phone. Not significant, and likely a fluke, but enough to make a news story out of.

Re:It's all relative

[ceoyoyo]

Fortunately neither microwave radiation nor plastic cell phones is causing an epidemic of brain cancer so you don't need to worry about either one.

Re:Limited study

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because surveying all those people would be ABSOLUTELY FREE and take NO TIME. Also, it's totally necessary to check everyone. Sampling and statistics don't exist.

How silly.

Re:Limited study

[goose-incarnated]

To get statistical significance, you don't need to sample the entire population. Beyond a certain number for a certain confidence level, you don't get very much more.

Too bad

[balsy2001]

I was hoping that all those tools using blue tooth headsets were going to get prostate cancer as punishment.

Re:Too bad

[arielCo]

I was hoping that all those tools using blue tooth headsets were going to get prostate cancer as punishment.

Hmm... they would have to wear their headsets on the wrong head for that ;)

Re:Too bad

[sznupi]

Those not realising there are plenty of other places to keep your cellphone (also not quite so close to the body), certainly should.

Re:Too bad

[chromas]

No, see, it grows in the upper head and then on erection, the bloods head south and trasport the tumoroids and cancerolies and possibly Cross the Border(tm) to setup new infestations. Seen it happen.

Re:Too bad

[balsy2001]

I usually keep my phone in my pocket. The article was about the cell phone it self giving you cancer. You would be right when the article "blue tooth may give you cancer" comes out.

Re:Too bad

[arielCo]

Doh! I forgot about the other, bigger transmitter. Brain glitch - happens from time to time. ;)

Anyway, I still don't get who the "tools with headsets" are and why wish them such ill. I must be really sleepy.

Re:Limited study

[The Snowman]

It seems silly to limit the study to 13,000 when the test pool is potentially in the millions.

Not really. Sampling can give accurate results even when sampling a small percentage of the total population. If U.S. political polls select a sample size of between a few hundred and a thousand out of 300 million with only 3% error, it sounds reasonable that 13,000 would be a good sample size of a population 20 times that, giving the same margin of error.

Also remember that, assuming the sample is chosen well (it is a good cross-section of the population and not confined to one specific subgroup), the benefits of adding additional samples drops off. It is essentially logarithmic: at first, adding samples is a huge benefit: after a certain point, the incremental gain from one additional sample is only a tiny fraction of the first samples.

No answer is sort-of an answer

[Kohath]

Cell phones cause so much cancer that ... the most widespread studies cant tell whether they cause cancer at all. That is good news for cell phone users.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Kohath]

There's an even bigger difference between inconclusive and a strong positive result. If cell phones caused a huge number of cancers, studies would not be inconclusive.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[beakerMeep]

Well it sounded like they found some alarming correlation with some specific rare cancers. So like the other poster said, inconclusive is not the same as a negative result. I'm not sure why you are pretending that inconclusive somehow fits your ridiculous argument.

What you're saying is just not how statistics work. If the general population has a 1% chance of getting a specific type of cancer over 20 years, and a study found that people using cell phones seemed to have a 2% chance of getting cancer, then that group is twice as likely to get cancer as the general population and that would be huge news that consumers would want to know. However, a lot of these small percentages often fall near margin of error, and are thus are inconclusive. I'm not sure why, but you make it sound like in order to prove a link with cancer they needed to show 80% of people using cellphones had cancer or something. That's just not how it works.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[uglyduckling]

Actually, it kind of does. If you have a null hypothesis "there is no link between cellphone use and brain cancer" then an inconclusive result would fail to disprove the null hypothesis and therefore affirm it. This is based on choosing a null hypothesis that is based on the sensible default position, which in this study is fine as long as you're the kind of person who is willing/capable of understanding that we are constantly bathed in all sorts of EM radiation of which cellphones only play a small part and that the default position from a conventional understanding of physics is that they're likely to be harmless.

It's also based on the idea that, for a risk factor for cancer(s) significant enough to be worth worrying about, we would expect to see an obvious and conclusive result. For instance, when testing the null hypothesis "there is no like between smoking and lung cancer", the observed data would overwhelmingly reject the null hypothesis. The reality is that there's all sorts of things that people think cause cancer, and many of them may do (e.g. drinking hot drinks regularly is linked with oral cancer) but most of the risk factors aren't significant to be worth worrying about.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Entropy2016]

It wan't about whether cell phones cause a huge number of cancers. It's about whether cell phones cause cancer at all, even in small numbers.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[blueg3]

No, rejecting the hypothesis is a conclusion. An inconclusive study neither confirms nor rejects the hypothesis.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Eric S. Smith]

If the general population has a 1% chance of getting a specific type of cancer over 20 years, and a study found that people using cell phones seemed to have a 2% chance of getting cancer, then that group is twice as likely to get cancer as the general population and that would be huge news that consumers would want to know.

On the other hand, if it were reported in terms of your chances of not getting that hypothetical, specific type of cancer being reduced from 99% to 98%, everyone would conclude that there was nothing to worry about.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[SetupWeasel]

Yes, but the best outcome possible for this kind of study is "inconclusive." There is never a "No" just outcomes that are not statistically significant. Basically, how you "disprove" a link to a disease is by doing a bunch of studies. When the majority come out without any statistically significant link, we can be more and more sure that there is no significant link.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[dudpixel]

exactly.

So we can conclude that mobile phones can potentially reduce your life expectancy, just like almost anything.

Actually I think a study showing the chances of getting hit by a car compared to getting cancer from your cell phone might prove interesting.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Kohath]

That's still quite a low risk. That's the point.

If the number went from 1% to 100% or even to 10%, the studies would not be inconclusive. Everyone would worry.

But it doesn't. It goes up an amount small enough that we can't tell for sure whether it's even a positive result.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Ginger Unicorn]

Occam's razor dictates that the null hypothesis be maintained in the face of inconclusive results.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[blueg3]

No, it really doesn't.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[ceoyoyo]

That's not really how it works. Your null hypothesis is dictated for you by the statistical test you're using, not what you think is going to happen, or what the "sensible default position" is. Most statistical tests have the general null hypothesis "there is no effect" or "these things are not different." For example, the normal experiment to test whether people who are given a 2000 calorie per day supplement of pure lard gain more weight than people on a normal control diet would have a null hypothesis that the groups are the same - the 2000 calories of lard has no effect.

Usually a negative result indicates no significant departure from the null hypothesis. That is NOT the same as showing that the null hypothesis is significantly likely. That takes different stats, and most studies are not powered to do so.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Kohath]

If the numbers are small enough, the number of lifetimes spent seeking the link will be fewer than the number of lives lost to cancer.

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[Ginger Unicorn]

why?

Re:No answer is sort-of an answer

[blueg3]

Occam's Razor is only a heuristic; it can't make any demands.

What is selected as the null hypothesis is fairly arbitrary (determined by how the question is stated). If inconclusive results meant the null hypothesis was validated, then the same inconclusive results would also validate an entirely different null hypothesis.

Occam's Razor really addresses avoiding assumptions and complexity. There's no guarantee that the null hypothesis, solely by virtue of being the null hypothesis, is the conclusion with the least assumptions. The Razor does suggest (though not demand) that in the face of inconclusive results, conclusions with fewer assumptions are more likely to be true.

So each side calls success?

[T Murphy]

So people who are convinced cellphones cause cancer are going to take their "possible increase" and declare scientists just definitively said cellphones cause cancer.

On the other hand, cellphone companies may try to take "we're not sure that it is correct" and declare no link to cancer.

whether or not there is any risk...

[ravenspear]

The whole question seems kind of silly because there is another source of radiation people are exposed to every day that is far more likely to cause cancer...the sun.

You have a much higher likelihood of developing cancer from UV light than from microwaves.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[ShakaUVM]

>>You have a much higher likelihood of developing cancer from UV light than from microwaves.

Depends. It's probably better to be out in the sun than hiding inside in your parent's garage.

Forest Rangers have an abnormally low level of skin cancers, and they absorb as much UV light as anyone. (Hint: It's called a tan.)

Sunlight has lots of other benefits as well, not the least of which is you're probably exercising instead of playing WoW all day.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[sparrowhead]

I don't know about the rest of the people on slashdot, but despite being light skinned and red haired, the sun poses no threat to my health!

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[T Murphy]

It shouldn't be too hard to reduce exposure to cancer-inducing cellphone radiation if any such radiation exists- it helps to know definitively so we can take action as needed. Given we already have measures to reduce the risk of getting cancer from sunlight (limit exposure, use sunscreen), we can safely move on to seeking out other means of getting cancer and dealing with them.

I would be very careful using the "why worry about X at all when Y is a bigger problem" argument. It is useful if you have to choose one thing or the other, but falsely implying you have to make a choice or distorting what the choice is just makes the argument misleading and hurts your credibility. Sure, sunlight is a bigger cancer risk (if cellphones pose any risk), but I don't see what study we should have done with regard to sunlight that would be more insightful than studying cellphone/cancer correlation. Sun-induced cancer is fairly well understood, so it makes sense to move on to what we don't know.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[0123456]

The study says what nearly all other studies have said: we don't know.

No, it says that if there is an effect then it's so insignificant that we can't find any valid evidence for it. And I'm sure any effect that insignificant could be completely eliminated at minimal cost by wearing a tin-foil hat.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[sznupi]

It's definatelly better to be outside. Some people take "in the sun" too far though... And I would guess Forest Rangers aren't one of those; at least the equivalent in my place has sensible clothing, given the place they usually work in (plus - often trees). But those specific places are generally damn healthy, too.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[interkin3tic]

You have a much higher likelihood of developing cancer from UV light than from microwaves.

Citation needed. You're saying it's silly to investigate the likelihood of cell phones or microwaves causing cancer because you're more likely to get it from the sun. What is that based off of? Gut feelings about the relative likelihood?

In science and especially health-related scientific questions, you test a hypothesis, you don't just assume. At some point someone thought the question of "could the sun's rays be causing cancer" was silly because obviously the sun, giver of all life, could not be causing ill effects aside from some sunburn. We needed to investigate whether or not cell phones were causing cancer because we didn't actually know.

Furthermore, even if the sun did cause far more cancer than cell phones, you might want to take all the steps you can to avoid cancer, as most of us do. If cell phones -were- linked to cancer, you could stop using one and still reduce your threat of cancer, much like how we've taken steps to ensure we don't get skin cancer from UV rays.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[Urkki]

You have a much higher likelihood of developing cancer from UV light than from microwaves.

No problem, just cover your head with tin foil, and stop worrying about UV light causing brain cancer.

And if you replace top of your skull with a transparent glass dome, don't be a cheapskate like I was, invest in glass with proper certified UV filtering! I mean, what's the point of transparent dome if you have to cover it with tin foil when going outside...

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[sjames]

It says that the lower 2000 levels of exposure are not enough to increase the incidence of cancer enough for the study to find it conclusively. The slight increase they noticed did not rise to statistical significance given the size of the study. It doesn't promise that there is no effect when people talk more (such as teens today).

At the same time, it's certainly not bad news.

Re:whether or not there is any risk...

[gmhowell]

I thought Cartman took care of you people?

easy

[Anonymous Coward]

in the given (not yet proven) chance that cellphones do give cancer, why not purchase a wired hands-free headset and be done with it?

-arc

Re:easy

[bjourne]

Cause people who use handsfree looks like tools and annoy bystanders who think they are psycotic maniacs talking to themselves.

Re:easy

[sparrowhead]

If i'm not mistaken, the wire of those headsets acts as antenna in the majority of cell phones. It will, however, certainly act as antenna for the radiation around you, so if that radiation increases the risk of cancer, the antenna will add to that.

Re:"Survey"?

[ph1ll]

And even if there is some correlation, people need to put it in perspective.

The last time I talked to a flat-earth-er about their fear of cell phones causing cancer, they had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Now that, Alanis Morrissette, is irony.

Problem with surveys

[Chicken_Kickers]

I have a problem with "medical surveys" in that they a prone to make correlation-causation errors. This seems to be a measurable problem that can be tested in the lab. Why don't people do this instead. Put a lab monkey next to an active mobile phone and keep them there for several years. After that, dissect the monkey for any signs of cancer. If there is, then alert the public. You then look into how it happened, i.e the biochemical interactions that caused it. Just "surveying" people introduces biases, other factors like diet and lifestyle and also crackpots.

Re:Problem with surveys

[vlm]

Put a lab monkey next to an active mobile phone

Don't forget to put a "control" lab monkey next to a Chinese made kids toy.

Polymerized plastics are vaguely believed to be safe, unless they're the scare tactic of the month like plastics containing BPA. Partially unpolymerized monomers are vaguely dangerous. Some of the initiators / mold releases / dyes / lead paints used in the plastic industry are downright hazardous. Basically, if its plastic, and it smells when it's new out the of package, its probably dangerous to your health. The only question is how dangerous.

Re:Problem with surveys

[0123456]

Why don't people do this instead. Put a lab monkey next to an active mobile phone and keep them there for several years. After that, dissect the monkey for any signs of cancer.

But that wouldn't let you rake in tens of millions of dollars of funding to keep yourself off the dole queue for the next decade (doesn't take a gaggle of scientists to feed a monkey every day).

Plus the 'animal rights' nutters would burn down your house.

Re:Problem with surveys

[iammani]

You still can. For a better accuracy, use a 1000 monkeys instead. And to make sure it is *only* the cell phones that could cause the cancer in the monkeys, build a highly controlled environment, and feed carefully controlled food that is guaranteed not to cause cancer.

And there you go, you could easily spend millions for such a setup.

Re:Problem with surveys

[syousef]

Why don't people do this instead. Put a lab monkey next to an active mobile phone and keep them there for several years.

Are you crazy? Do you know how much the phone bill would be man???

After that, dissect the monkey for any signs of cancer.

Why? We have so many teenage girls permanently attached to their cellphones that it seems like a waste of a perfectly good monkey. Of course some of the dads might object if their angelic daughters were dissected, but hey you have to sacrifice for progress.

Re:Problem with surveys

[AnonymousClown]

Well first, where do you find monkeys who use cell phones, Mr. Smart guy!

Re:Problem with surveys

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have a problem with "medical surveys" in that they a prone to make correlation-causation errors.
No they aren't. The people who conduct medical surveys such as this are invariably qualified epidemiologists who don't need to be told the difference between correlation and causation by some guy on slashdot.

Now, the media reporting of such surveys quite often conflates correlation and causation; see:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

The final stage, not illustrated in the above diagram, involves some guy on slashdot conflating the actual surveys with media coverage of said surveys.

Re:Problem with surveys

[idealego]

It's not that simple. You're ignoring statistics. You'd need a certain number of monkeys and some of them would have to be controls. If the effect is predicted to be small you may need thousands of monkeys. Animal rights groups would have a fit over this.

The monkeys would also have to experience the cellphone radiation in a similar way that humans would. The radiation would have to be emitted as if a cellphone were pressed up against their ear, and it would have to be intermittent as to simulate a human taking calls throughout the day.

Different cellphone systems run on different frequencies. If there was strong evidence to suggest that one caused cancer we couldn't necessarily assume that they all do, including future networks running on different frequencies. The same could be said about the power of the transmitter--different phones transmit at different levels of power, and future phones may be very different.

Some researchers believe that some cancers may take much longer than 10 years to show, so a thorough experiment may need to last 30 years or more. By the time good data is collected the cellphone networks would probably be using different frequencies and possibly lower power transmitters.

I'm sure there are other factors that I'm not even thinking about. Setting up a bulletproof experiment of this nature and getting solid results in a reasonable period of time is at least difficult and maybe impossible.

Re:Problem with surveys

[drfireman]

Both experimental and non-experimental studies are useful for this kind of thing. Neither is perfect, neither is useless. One of the great advantages of non-experimental studies here is that you can get enough data to estimate the size of a relatively subtle effect with enough accuracy to be useful, while taking into account numerous other potentially interacting factors. As a practical matter, you can't run a study of thousands of monkeys using cell phones, even if it were a good idea (which it isn't). If you're worried about researchers conflating correlation and causation, or in general making errors due to confounded analyses or obvious sources of bias, then you're probably reading too many journal articles by researchers who don't know what they're doing. It happens sometimes, but the problem is less epidemic in better journals.

Your plan with the lab monkey and a mobile phone is amusing, but of course not useful for anything more important than the local news. Perhaps not even that, the local news is probably high on the list of disseminators of misinformation.

Re:Problem with surveys

[dissy]

If the effect is predicted to be small you may need thousands of monkeys. Animal rights groups would have a fit over this.

I suppose we could use thousands of animal rights group activists instead of monkeys. Kill two birds with one cellphone!

Re:Problem with surveys

[John Hasler]

> Well first, where do you find monkeys who use cell phones...

The high schools are full of them.

Re:Problem with surveys

[jeff4747]

This seems to be a measurable problem that can be tested in the lab. Why don't people do this instead.

Because to perform such a test in a lab, we'd have to come up with a mechanism by which cell phones cause radiation. Since nobody's been able to do that, it's very hard to design a lab experiment.

On the other hand, one can just postulate that cell phones cause cancer and then survey a bunch of people to see if that's true. No mechanism nor pesky experimental design required.

Re:Problem with surveys

[jeff4747]

Whoops.

"which cell phones cause radiation."

should be:

"which cell phones cause cancer."

Re:Problem with surveys

[oiron]

Before going to monkeys, they could start with in vitro tests: Pulse radiation into a petri dish of cultured brain cells and see if they react. If they do, then go with the simians...

Re:Problem with surveys

[sjames]

They tried but the monkeys all got fed up with the dropped calls, locked phones, and hidden charges. One morning the researchers came in and found the monkeys had all switched back to land lines.

Re:Problem with surveys

[LongearedBat]

Plus, think of the enourmous phone bill!

Re:Problem with surveys

[thegarbz]

Why would it be insufficient to extrapolate the data? I mean other than reporters reporting nonsense when the results come out why do you need to simulate the use of a phone exactly?

Beef the power up to 3W, pick the most popular 2.4GHz band. Subject the subjects to it 24/7/365. If you don't get cancer from that how could anyone justify stating that the few mW used 10min to 3hours per day can cause cancer? Yes I am ignoring your statical point because that is certainly right, you'd need a decent population size, but there's nothing stopping you inferring results providing the basis for doing so is sound. i.e. What's more likely in a study about cellphones, that the exposure to radiation causes cancer, or the 21hours per day we're not exposed to causes it.

Re:Problem with surveys

[noidentity]

The monkeys would also have to experience the cellphone radiation in a similar way that humans would. The radiation would have to be emitted as if a cellphone were pressed up against their ear, and it would have to be intermittent as to simulate a human taking calls throughout the day.

Or you could just test the equivalent of a cellphone at maximum transmit power 24 hours a day. If this shows no ill health effects, then you can assume that a phone cannot either. If this does show effects, then you do further testing.

Re:Problem with surveys

[ceoyoyo]

The effect, if there is one, is so small that you would need a prohibitively large number of monkeys over a prohibitively long period of time. Fortunately, ordinary people have been conducting these experiments on themselves.

You also can't "look at how it happened" based on the result. You first have to know how to make it happen, then have an idea about why it happens, then you can look for indications that you are correct. You can't just look at some tumor tissue and say "oh, THAT's how it happened!"

Oh noes...not radio!

[Stenchwarrior]

Have they done this study against other types of radio frequencies like cordless land-line phones? What about emergency services workers that carry radios on their hips until needed...are they being checked for hip-cancer? Doesn't Nike or some other shoe maker have a device that fits inside a shoe so people can listen to FM whilst jogging? Watch out for heel-cancer! The point being, why are cell-phones being singled out as possible culprits where then are so many other devices out there that use radio technology?

I think the media has way too much control over what is allowed to scare us into taking action. It seems that our efforts could be better directed toward something that actually makes sense. Let Mythbusters handle this type of shit.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[JRHelgeson]

Cell phones get singled out because it is a multi-billion dollar industry that has "deep pockets" for tort lawyers to sue out of existence.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[T Murphy]

I agree with the sentiment, but if we were to single out one thing, it makes sense for it to be cellphones. Cellphones emit radiation that has to be picked up miles away, so a large portion is going through you. Most of what you mentioned receive radiation from miles away, so you are being hit by only a fraction of the radiation the source emits. Cordless phones only have to transmit a few feet- maybe a few hundred at most, so they can be low-power compared to your cellphone. Two-way radios would be emitting when talking into it, but generally aren't used for extended conversation like with cellphones.

I don't know the relative power of all these devices or sources so I don't know how well the above argument holds, and in the end I am skeptical that heavy cellphone use causes cancer, but cellphones are so common it makes sense to make sure. I would rather we do dozens of studies that simply confirm our expectation of no correlation, than to decide not to do a study that would have proven our expectations wrong.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[black3d]

These other devices you've named are all low-Hz radio devices, operating at levels which occur naturally in nature. You can test this yourself by tuning to a non-existant station. What we call "static" is naturally occuring radio waves. FM radio is simply the modulation of those radio waves. Cellular technology operates at frequencies usually reserved for cosmic events, and do so right next to your head.

Comparing FM radios to Cellular phones is like comparing iron to uranium. They both decay, however the radiation from one is a lot more dangerous than the other.

That being said, I don't care either way in the debate. If people do use cellphones for 2 hours a day and get cancer from them, their problem. I use a cell phone for less than 2 hours a quarter. If they don't, hey - nobody's problem. Just answering your question for you. While you mock, the difference between radio and cell technology is quite marked.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[Hurricane78]

1. Hype?
2. They have the highest frequencies.

By the way: I always find it stunning that they think a radiation that is literally 1000 times weaker than freaking visible light, and also not remotely as intense, is what could create cancer.

Hell, if that were the case, then we’d all die of cancer after a short time in the sun!

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[jeff4747]

I don't know the relative power of all these devices or sources so I don't know how well the above argument holds

Not at all.

Those radio stations you pick up from miles away? They tower is located somewhere, and somebody lives right next door. They get hit with 50,000 watts of RF, and are not getting cancer. Your 4w max (and usually in the hundreds of mw) cell phone is nothing.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[BatGnat]

And now that we are using 3g, and almost at 4g. How does the differences of the frequencies effect the survey?

Myth Busters tried the "Mobiles interfere with aircraft" Myth, and found the newer mobiles normally don't interfere, older one interfere more.

Has the threat dropped, or increased. A ten year study wont exactly be current.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[oiron]

The "theory" is that that since cellphones operate in the microwave spectrum, with more energy in each pulse, this can cause cancer.

Yeah, ionizing vs non-ionizing and all that, but this is what I've heard about the theory.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[sjames]

If you had to choose one would you rather have hip surgery or brain surgery?

The FM radio isn't a transmitter, so it's not a problem. The radios used by emergency workers only transmit when the mike is keyed and they tend to be too busy for a lot of chatter. As on the job risks go, getting shot or burned are probably higher on their list of concerns.

Finally, most of the two way radio sets are VHF rather than microwave. We have decades more experience with that.

Then of course, the media IS scare mongering as usual. Fear is good for ratings apparently. Vague fear of things most people don't really understand is really in style currently, so the media is happy to cater to it. They're not interested in two way radios because most of their audience doesn't use them.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is some increased risk. I also wouldn't be surprised if that increase is fairly small. I won't be surprised if the stress related to not having a single quiet moment where the phone can't interrupt without warning causes more cancer than the RF emissions. If it gets people to quit yacking away on their cellphone ear implants when they're supposed to be watching the movie, talking to the cashier, etc, I'll be happy.

Re:Oh noes...not radio!

[Stenchwarrior]

The one thing everyone wants to point out is that the other "comparable" devices do not transmit RF. Is the EMR still not there, whether something else is transmitting? I'm able to pick up the frequency in my car because it's projected out from a tower somewhere, right? That means it's already in the air and potentially creating changes to cellular division, thus possibly causing cancerous cells, no? I just don't see how one device over another can cause a higher degree of "bad" cell division when the EMR is all around us, all the time. The only people NOT getting cancer are those that live in a Faraday cage and even those people have the same chance as the rest of us, assuming they are genetically predisposed.

Re:Limited study

[zippthorne]

If U.S. political polls select a sample size of between a few hundred and a thousand out of 300 million with only 3%..."

I'm not so sure those percentages are accurate. You'll often see different polls differ by much more than that (far more often than 5% of the time or whatever the confidence level is).

I have a suspicion that the math works out with a lot of "if a1 through aN are true, then..." and then no one going to the trouble of working out how likely each of those is to actually be true because they're hard to measure.

Certainly actual elections tend to fall well outside the +/- 3% accuracy claimed by many of the election-day pollsters.

What it means

[roman_mir]

So you know what that means, right? We are all going to die horrible deaths. (Or at least some of us).

There, I have concluded the inconclusive study.

Re:"Survey"?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

It was also based on people searching their memories to estimate how much time they spent on their cell phones, a method that can throw up inaccuracies.
It analysed data from interviews with 2,708 people with a type of brain cancer called glioma and 2,409 with another type called meningioma, plus around 7,500 people with no cancer.

They only asked people how much time they spent on the cell phones. Risk of getting cancer was based on hard data (medical diagnosis).

WTF?

[beakerMeep]

Why in the world would they ask someone if they felt ill effects from their cell phone? They probably asked how much a person uses their phone, if they use a hands free device and what medical conditions they have among a host of other questions. They dont go around surveying what a bunch of laymen think are the causes of diseases.

Seriously, what the hell kind of comment is that? How does this idiocy get modded up?

Re:Limited study

[Threni]

No, you get a smoother, more natural bass and just generally a warmer...uh, sorry, wrong thread!

USA Today

[Nidi62]

The article in USA Today has a nice little gem in it: "The authors acknowledged possible inaccuracies in the survey from the fact that participants were asked to remember how much and on which ear they used their mobiles over the past decade. Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible."" Now, I don't know why, but something about this statement seems kind of important.

Re:USA Today

[vlm]

Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible."

People with UNDIAGNOSED very early stage brain cancer might have problems functioning in society, equals less likelihood of cell phone ownership. Not implausible at all.

Re:USA Today

[the eric conspiracy]

What this statement, and the statements in the accompanying article mean is that the researchers clearly had a strong bias towards finding a positive result. It was quite clear that the authors don't understand what "inconclusive" means in this context.

There is a simple idea associated with this sort of study that wasn't mentioned at all - correlation does not imply causation. That is that even if a correlation WAS found it still doesn't imply that cell phone use causes brain cancer.

But the converse does not apply - i.e the LACK of correlation DOES imply lack of causation. And that is the bitter pill for those who propose cell phone use as a cause of brain cancer - this study, and its 'inconclusive' evidence is actually evidence that cell phones DO NOT cause brain cancer.

Re:USA Today

[drfireman]

With these kinds of inaccuracies due to self-report, the question you need to ask is whether or not they're liable to introduce bias or just noise. In this case, I can imagine a source of bias (cancer patients may tend to recall more cell phone use than healthy people) contributing to the effect. Given the reported findings, this doesn't sound like a huge problem. Perhaps there are other reasons to suspect bias in the other direction, which would be more of an issue. But I haven't read the study yet (doesn't seem to be out yet, will check again when I get back from vacation), so I'll withhold judgment. In any case, the fact that some groups showed a negative relationship between cell phone use and cancer is not necessarily deeply surprising, again pending the details. If there is no true relationship, then half the tests should go each way. This kind of observation may be anything from a very mild surprise to a logically necessary outcome, depending on various details of the statistical approach.

Re:USA Today

[miggyb]

They ASKED them how long they used their cellphone? That's bullshit, just get access to their calling logs. People who talked more time would be more exposed to it than someone who used it once a month to wish granny happy birthday.

Re:USA Today

[narcc]

People who talked more time would be more exposed to it than someone who used it once a month to wish granny happy birthday.

Why would anyone wish their granny a happy birthday once every month?

Re:USA Today

[Twinbee]

I remember hearing a while back that exposure to a small amount of radiation increases health (or decreases cancer risk). A bit like an 'immunization'. Would make sense here.

Re:USA Today

[miggyb]

Let's assume someone's parents got married and re-married thrice respectively.

Re:USA Today

[izomiac]

The term is "recall bias". If you go around asking people with a serious disease about past habits, they're much more likely to remember them. A normal person will just forget about things that seem inconsequential. A person with a serious disease will jump to blaming such things if you hint that they might be a possible cause. "Come to think of it, I *DID* hold my cell phone up to that side of my head more often!" (Or it might work in reverse, since they know they didn't do whatever you asked about. Either way, they'll think about it a lot harder than your controls will.)

Re:USA Today

[dudpixel]

The article in USA Today has a nice little gem in it:
"The authors acknowledged possible inaccuracies in the survey from the fact that participants were asked to remember how much and on which ear they used their mobiles over the past decade. Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible.""

Now, I don't know why, but something about this statement seems kind of important.

How can something like this be "implausible". Is it only implausible because they cannot explain it?

Sounds to me like they knew what they wanted the report to say before they began the study. All they wanted was sufficient proof before hitting the 'publish' button on the report. They never found it so it is labelled "inconclusive" which really means, "we shall try again".

Re:USA Today

[biobogonics]

The article in USA Today has a nice little gem in it: "The authors acknowledged possible inaccuracies in the survey from the fact that participants were asked to remember how much and on which ear they used their mobiles over the past decade. Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible."" Now, I don't know why, but something about this statement seems kind of important.

Using a survey after the fact is not a particularly reliable way to quantify exposure. It may also lead to "recall bias".

This type of study is usually better at finding possible risk factors rather than determining the relative effect of a particular factor.

Re:Limited study

[SoVeryTired]

The principle is correct, but you're failing to take into account the probability of an the respective events. Given that winning 60% of the vote is considered a landslide, you can think of asking someone whether they're voting Republican or Democrat as a coin flip with a small bias in one way or the other. Because the race is so close, a few extra republicans or democrats in your sample won't produce a huge error in your estimate.

On the other hand, a brain tumor can be thought of as a rare event. If the true incidence rate of brain cancer is five occurrences per thousand people over ten years, and your sample of 1,000 people has six incidences, you have a sample error of 20%. It's because of this that a small variation in the numbers can produce a large error. Therefore if you want to accurately assess the rate of cancer, you need a much bigger sample size.

Re:"Survey"?

[dj961]

From wiki: A blind or blinded experiment is a scientific experiment where some of the persons involved are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead to conscious or unconscious bias on their part, invalidating the results.
There's no real reason for this study to be blind or double blind; people either have brain tumors or they don't. I suspect that instead of asking, the scientists took a look at a persons medical history and looked for brain tumors.

Re:Limited study

[mmarlett]

It really seems silly when, in America at least, age-adjusted rates of brain cancer have fallen or held steady since the 1990s. From the National Cancer Institute:

From 1990 to 2002, the overall age-adjusted incidence rates for brain cancer decreased slightly; from 7.0 cases to 6.4 cases for every 100,000 persons in the United States. The mortality rate from 1990 to 2002 also decreased slightly; from 4.9 deaths to 4.4 for every 100,000 persons in the United States. The incidence and mortality rates for cancers that originate in the brain and central nervous system have remained relatively unchanged in the last decade.

It would seem to me that falling cancer rates are no reason for assuming that widespread cellphone use has been a health concern.

Re:Limited study

[goose-incarnated]

If U.S. political polls select a sample size of between a few hundred and a thousand out of 300 million with only 3%..."

I'm not so sure those percentages are accurate.

They look accurate to me. From me undergrad stats classes, I seem to recall that to get 5% confidence level out of population of 10k, one needed a sample of around 850. For populations of 1000k, the sample size only went up by a few tens (perhaps to 900). Sampling is not linear, and it drops off the higher you go - IIRC (and I think I do), their is very little difference in the sample size for a population of 100k as there is for twenty times that number.

Re:Limited study

[sznupi]

Certainly actual elections tend to fall well outside the +/- 3% accuracy claimed by many of the election-day pollsters.

Because for many of those pollsters accuracy isn't main goal; swaying people, untill the last minute, to vote for the "winners" is.

Sunlight is life-supporting in many ways

[nido]

Sunlight has lots of other benefits as well, not the least of which is you're probably exercising instead of playing WoW all day.

Human skin synthesizes Vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Vitamin D is anti-cancer, anti-rickets, anti-birth-defect, anti-flu (flu season takes place when the sun goes away for the winter), etc.

So basically, Vitamin-D is the Medical-Industrial Complex's worst enemy.

With that said, regular sunburns aren't good. It's usually best to stay out of the sun during the hottest parts of the day, approx. 12-2pm, and avoid sunscreen no matter what (which prevents the synthesis of Vitamin D).

Re:Sunlight is life-supporting in many ways

[nido]

This is the substance that can't be patented, is free for most of the year, cures cancer, prevents the flu, etc etc. Vitamin D single-handedly makes high-priced medicine as archaic as bloodletting and quicksilver.

Re:Sunlight is life-supporting in many ways

[MichaelSmith]

This is the substance that can't be patented, is free for most of the year, cures cancer, prevents the flu, etc etc. Vitamin D single-handedly makes high-priced medicine as archaic as bloodletting and quicksilver.

What about the other 10 million things you can have go wrong with you which have nothing to do with Vitamin-D?

Re:Sunlight is life-supporting in many ways

[nido]

Stress is the biggest killer of all, and they don't make a drug for that one. Cancer responds well to Vitamin D, but stress is frequently the original cause of that condition.

Accidents are the best use of allopathic medicine. Degenerative disease is best treated before it becomes overwhelming. Preventative steps include proper nutrition, encouraging proper elimination of the body's metabolic waste products, keeping stress levels under control, etc. And even when degeneration takes place, there are gentle approaches that address the original cause.

I recommend this book: Healthy Medicine: A Guide to the Emergence of Sensible Comprehensive Care

HTH, HAND.

Re:Sunlight is life-supporting in many ways

[AhLung]

There is a medicine for stress, its called: cannabis sativa, also known as weed. It's even better then regular medicine because it prevents stress, and doesn't just take away the symptoms.
Ever see a pothead stressed out ? Neither have I.

Re:Limited study

[T Murphy]

The uncertainty in the study is due to the low precision of their data- they asked people to try and remember how much they were typically using their cellphones. Surveying more people isn't going to get people to provide more precise data.

Also, unless the needed data is already available somewhere, gathering more data costs more money. As someone else mentioned in a sibling post, there are diminishing returns when increasing your sample size. Eventually the cost of the data will exceed the benefit to the certainty of your results.

Too late

[arielCo]

To stop these buncha creeps from making a pretty dollar. This one in particular cracked me up:

Our small, family business produces ceramic dielectric resonators which are individually made, by hand, with love and intention to absorb harmful emanations and rebroadcast the energy in neutral to beneficial ranges.

Charmion McKusick, Biomagnetic Research

(Good thing they rebroadcast bad waves into good waves, or they'd be violating some law)

But then again, people will believe what they will

Re:"Survey"?

[leenks]

I'm guessing they did it properly. From TFA:

"The study received 19.2 million euros ($24.4 million) in funding, around 5.5 million euros of which came from industry sources. It analysed data from interviews with 2,708 people with a type of brain cancer called glioma and 2,409 with another type called meningioma, plus around 7,500 people with no cancer.

Participants were from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Britain. ($1=.7872 Euro) (Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Reed Stevenson)"

Re:Limited study

[Vellmont]

I'm not so sure those percentages are accurate. You'll often see different polls differ by much more than that (far more often than 5% of the time or whatever the confidence level is).

Election polling is just especially difficult, since what counts is if you actually vote and who you vote for, neither of which have been determined at the time of the poll and could change. Election polling isn't simply an opinion poll, but is obviously supposed to reflect the population of people who will actually vote on election day. The polls have differing models of selecting "likely voters", and will thus have numbers that differ more than the margin of error for any single poll. In other words, taking the margin of error for a single poll and comparing it among multiple polls is invalid, since the differing polls used different means of sample selection.

Certainly actual elections tend to fall well outside the +/- 3% accuracy claimed by many of the election-day pollsters.

I guess I haven't found that to be true if you mean "tend to" is more than 50% of the time. Sure, you're going to find some that are outside of the 3% error bars, but you'd also expect that to happen, statistically speaking.

Re:Limited study

[thrawn_aj]

While people in large numbers are essentially predictable (and therefore boring, which is why statistics - for the most part - works), those theorems are strictly valid only for true random variables. As GP pointed out, the differences between different polls sometimes like far outside the error bounds set by the poll itself. Kinda makes the error bound meaningless since it has been repudiated by empirical means. As always, observations reign supreme and if there's a conflict with theory, it is usually a case of unjustified assumptions - in this case, taking the approximate equivalence between mathematical random variables and real world people to be exact.

Also, you are right about more not being any better. At some point, you are just adding more and more precision to an inaccurate answer. It's like a calculator fetish - getting predictions to the 18th decimal point using a flawed model and wondering why they don't match reality.

Picking up women.

[AnonymousClown]

I'd like the names and phone numbers of the women to answered in the affirmative that the cell phones are causing them health problems so I can give them a call!

Hey baba! I use a cell phone, live by power lines, have electrical wiring all around me in my home, I'm constantly bombarded by electromagnetic radiation. I'm one bad-ass mo fo and you want me, don't ya!?

Women: "Oh, you're so, so, DANGEROUS!"

That's right! I'm talking to you right now on my CELL PHONE!

"Oh, I think I'm cumming....Oh! Oh!"

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION!

"Come over now and do me!"

That's what will happen!

Here is the survey used

[RJBeery]

Question #1: Do you have brain cancer? (Yes/No)
[If respondent answers yes to question #1, then continue]
Question #2: Do you have a cell phone? (Yes/No)

The results were quite astonishing.

Don't be so dismissive

[beakerMeep]

Surveys don't try to prove causation, only correlation. I'm not really even sure what a correlation-causation error is, actually. The problem lies in what people think they imply.

Still, you shouldn't discount a survey as a useful statistical tool. Especially for mapping trends over time. Most of what you dismiss as introduced biases is accounted for, and factored out. If you have ever read one of these types of studies they are careful to give results with various factors included as well as removed to control for. Such as demographics, family history, smokers, etc etc. This way the reader can judge for themselves.

Re:Limited study

[thrawn_aj]

Yes. Because a brilliant person wanting to be rich decides on research physics as ticket to the pot 'o' gold. If that's what you truly believe, I have this bridge I'd like to sell you ...

Oh yes. Nearly forgot - 2/10 (needs a better username)

Also, I suspect GP was being sarcastic and your detector (or possibly mine) was broken :p

Relative and irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, what does it matter if cellphones cause cancer or not?

Modern society is pretty dependant on everyone being part of the information loop and being available all the time. Yeah, we were able to survive long before this happened - just like we were able to survive long before computers - but it would be practically impossible to return to how things were (just like it would be practically impossible to return to the time before computers and TV). Hell, we can't completely rid the society of smoking, etc. though they have little to no positive sides. How in world could we ever make people stop using cellphones? Devices which are very useful. Even if we found out that they increase the chances of cancer by a large amount, it would probably still be orders of magnitude easier to go after less useful things that still cause more health problems.

I'm not saying that this shouldn't be researched. I'm all for us finding out more about human body, etc... And perhaps this could be useful some way (if the current technology is found unhealthy, perhaps we could put more resources into researching alternatives that would offer the same functionality with lower health risks, for example. And those technologies could become useful in unforeseeable ways, too.). It also allows people to make more educated decisions (such as parents deciding whether to wait one more year before buying their child a cellphone, etc.) But even so... Whenever I see news about studies that concern cancer and cellphones I can't help but think "So what? It's not as if we were gonna go back to the time before cellphones even if they do cause cancer..."

Re:Relative and irrelevant

[hannson]

Isn't the point of this kind of research to determine if we need to find a safer alternative (like switching data transfer methods), not whether we should put an end to these kind of devices or not?

Re:Limited study

[thrawn_aj]

I'm confused by your last statement. Are you saying that falling cancer rates do not let cellphone use off the hook for other health concerns? It seems that your quote from the NCI does exactly that as far as cancer is concerned (no more or less cancer with or without cellphone use would imply a lack of correlation there). Sure, that doesn't mean it couldn't raise other health concerns. For instance, I'd be worried about a faster approach to senility considering the mindless babbling on cellphones you get to hear in public, but that's another story. Besides, since we're essentially marinated in wifi signals all the time, I doubt the wireless genie can be put back in its box ever again. Even if it was found to be dangerous now, for all practical purposes, it's here to stay, so I really hope it's safe.

Re:Limited study

[mobby_6kl]

So from 1990 to 2002 cancer rates decreased slightly, while cellphone usage increased significantly? It looks like cellphones are actually a cure for cancer!

Two chicks at the same time, here I come!

what?

[drDugan]

Science isn't inconclusive. There is statistically significant, or not. In this case, not.

Test another hypothesis or test again if data looks fishy.

Re:Limited study

[mmarlett]

I mean that if cell phones cause cancer, you would expect the rate of cancer to raise along with the use of cell phones. Instead, cancer rates have fallen or stayed the same for 20 years.

Statistical significance

[icebike]

To get statistical significance, you don't need to sample the entire population. Beyond a certain number for a certain confidence level, you don't get very much more.

Exactly right.

There was no statistical significance, which means that the cancers (or absence there of) were distributed over cell phone users and non-users (controls) with no preference for either group.

Normally this would be the end of it.

But by the way the reporter worded it (Inconclusive) and (to a lesser extent) the way the Researcher phrased it, indicates a clear predilection toward finding a positive correlation, which they could not do.

The takeaway is not that the study "inconclusive". The scientific takeaway is that there is yet again no evidence of correlation between cancer and cell usage.

Its over. The absence of evidence destroys this theory. Time to move on.

Re:Statistical significance

[Runaway1956]

I don't care what they found or didn't found - I'm still not buying a god damned radiating device to hold up beside my head. I only have about two or three million grey cells left, and if there's a very very very very VERY small chance that the radiation might kill a couple hundred of them, IT ISN'T WORTH IT!!!

Re:Statistical significance

[PopeRatzo]

Time to move on.

I'm not so sure. Cancer is a funny thing, and "cell-phone use" is kind of a broad behavior. I have seen so many items get shifted from the "causes cancer" to "inconclusive" to "completely safe" category and then back again, that I've got something of a jaundiced eye toward "moving on" based upon one study.

Even if you remove the obvious data-cooking by the industry, there actually were studies in the 50's that showed that the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer was "inconclusive". Better-designed studies, honest studies, showed later that the connection was real. We see this back and forth with dairy products and cancer in women, with certain chemicals in insecticide, with the ground water near industrial sites, with thalidomide. Sometimes it takes a whole bunch of studies before causal relationships are exposed. Sometimes, it takes a lawyer digging up studies done by the companies themselves and then supressed.

A few days ago, there was discussion here about h. pylori and ulcers. The first studies done by the Australian researchers came up inconclusive. Twenty years later, they got the Nobel Prize for later studies that proved the connection was there. Now, nobody has to suffer with ulcers any more, and ulcer surgeries are practically unknown.

No, you don't "move on" because of one study or maybe even ten studies. Science doesn't just drop an issue because of one researcher's findings. The reason this issue with the cell phones is even being looked at is because when you've got entire populations holding microwave transceivers next to their noodles day in and day out, you want to make sure it's really safe.

Re:Statistical significance

[timmarhy]

No. they have studied cell phones and links to cancer to death well and truly by now. no one, even those who have actively set out to find a link between them has been able to establish anything of substance.

The fact it's in the microwave band means nothing and is just FUD. they don't transmit with any great strength, you'd have to duct tape one to your head and set it to transmit 24/7 for a long time to do any damage.

Re:Statistical significance

[Curunir_wolf]

Time to move on.

I'm not so sure. Cancer is a funny thing, and "cell-phone use" is kind of a broad behavior. I have seen so many items get shifted from the "causes cancer" to "inconclusive" to "completely safe" category and then back again, that I've got something of a jaundiced eye toward "moving on" based upon one study.

Even if you remove the obvious data-cooking by the industry, there actually were studies in the 50's that showed that the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer was "inconclusive". Better-designed studies, honest studies, showed later that the connection was real.

Yes, because this study was by the World Health Organization. They always do studies that favor Western and American corporations. Obviously a flawed study, nothing but a whitewash from the conspirators at the WHO.

Re:Statistical significance

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what they found or didn't found - I'm still not buying a god damned radiating device to hold up beside my head.

Then I sure hope you stay out of direct sunlight.

Re:Statistical significance

[dudpixel]

Not sure if anyone has anything to add to this, but I have heard from a reliable source of a study done on mobile phone use that found evidence to suggest that mobile phone radiation could actually fight cancer. As soon as these results showed up, the study was cancelled. Because of this, all it does is raise further questions. The study was done by a reputable university.

Re:Statistical significance

[Vlado]

You don't travel with airplanes then or do any mountaineering either, I presume?

Re:Statistical significance

[RoFLKOPTr]

I'm still not buying a god damned radiating device to hold up beside my head.

I hope you realize that the radiation emitted from cell phones is not ionizing radiation (which is what's emitted by radioactive substances). And the electromagnetic radiation that cell phones emit is somewhere in the range of 200 milliwatts. The radio tower that is a 5 minute walk from my house is probably pushing 10-15,000 watts. There's towers like that all over the place. There's cell towers that run at 1000 watts or so all over the place. There's satellites out in space that are beaming their electromagnetic radiation right at us in a focused beam. If you're truly worried about radiation poisoning and getting cancer from radio waves, then a cell phone is the least of your worries. Just because it's right next to your brain doesn't mean it's subjecting you to more radiation than the hundred transmission towers that you're probably absorbing radiation from this very moment.

There's also the sun. That's right, every time you go outside you better wear a polarized globe over your head because you're absorbing huge amounts of radiation from that which gives you life.

I hope this doesn't give you nightmares.

Re:Statistical significance

[bjourne]

Wrong. The intensity of the radiation decreases with the square of the distance. OP is rationally more concerned about cell phones than cell phone towers.

Re:Statistical significance

[Runaway1956]

Occupational Exposure of Police Officers to Microwave Radiation
  From Traffic Radar Devices

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiofrequencyradiation/fnradpub.html

Re:Statistical significance

[Kilrah_il]

They didn't take a random sample of 13,000 people and found ~5,000 cases of cancer between them (which would be a very high percentage). They took ~5000 cancer patient and 7,500 people with no cancer and surveyed their cell phone usage. This is why it is called a retrospective study.
The major problem with this kind of research is that you ask people about their usage, and some don't remember correctly:
Q: You have brain cancer?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you use the cell phone a lot?
A: Well, now that you mention it, I did!

Of course, I am oversimplifying it. The interviews are usually more elaborate, but the example serves to clarify the problem. And that's why the Europeans are launching a prospective trial (from TFA).

Re:Statistical significance

[captaincinders]

".......discussion here about h. pylori and ulcers. The first studies done by the Australian researchers came up inconclusive......." Er No. http://nyp.org/health/helicobacter-pylori.html "In 1982, Australian researchers Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered spiral-shaped bacteria in the stomach, later named Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). After closely studying H. pylori's effect on the stomach, they proposed that the bacteria were the underlying cause of gastritis and peptic ulcers. In their studies, all patients with duodenal ulcers and 80 percent of patients with stomach ulcers had the bacteria. The 20 percent of patients with stomach ulcers who did not have H. pylori were those who had taken NSAIDs (such as aspirin and ibuprofen) which are a common cause of stomach ulcers. Although the findings seem conclusive, Marshall and Warren's theory was debated and disputed for some time. However, further evidence linking H. pylori to ulcers mounted over the next 10 years as numerous studies from around the world confirmed its presence in most people with ulcers. Researchers from the United States and Europe proved that using antibiotics to eliminate H. pylori healed ulcers and prevented recurrence in about 90 percent of cases. To further investigate these findings, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a panel to closely review the link between H. pylori and peptic ulcer disease. At the February 1994 Consensus Development Conference, the panel concluded that H. pylori plays a significant role in the development of ulcers and that antibiotics, with other medications, can successfully treat peptic ulcer disease." A single study that came up with a result that 'seemed conclusive' is somewhat different from the numerous studies (of which this is only the latest) covering many hundreds of thousands of people which showed no correlation (or possibly very small) between cell phone use and increased cancer. (I know it then tok a further 10 years for the result to be 'proven', but those 10 years were spent gathering further data to prove the link)

Re:Statistical significance

[icebike]

The results do not necessarily contradict themselves.

And their statements that the results were unreliable were simply their way of stating they found no statistical significance.

All of this points to some other source for brain cancers, something totally unrelated to cell phone radiation.

There is no correlation with cell phone use.

Continuing to look at cell use in the face of failed findings in study after study is driven by those who have some sort of axe to grind.

You are just as likely to find correlation with the type pillow they use in bed or the amount of fish they eat.

Re:Statistical significance

[Myopic]

You are yelling as if anyone is opposed to you eschewing cell phones. We don't care. It's perfectly fine not to use cell phones, if it isn't worth it to you.

Re:Statistical significance

[Myopic]

You made a lot of statements that need citation -- any citation of your numerous big claims would be nice. I totally believe that a thing like that could happen, but "a reliable source"? "reputable university"? those don't suffice.

Re:Statistical significance

[sarkeizen]

Phullleeeez.

based upon one study

It's not "one study" in the sense that we have only one study showing no conclusive evidence. It is merely "one study" in the context of the article (i.e. that they are referring to "not two or more" studies) - http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=5207#more-5207

No, you don't "move on" because of one study or maybe even ten studies.

Without any bounding condition (which if you have one, you don't state). You could make the selfsame statement for ten studies, one hundred studies or a million studies.

I could go on and show how you're kind of off-base on the medical cases you're citing too but I doubt you're worth it.

Re:Limited study

[thrawn_aj]

*Nod*

Re:Limited study

[Skippy_kangaroo]

Here are some additional details for those of you so inclined.

Consider a simple binary choice question. This is easily modelled by the binomial distribution which has well understood distributions. (Other distrbutions may be relevant but the principles remain pretty constant across them all.) The standard deviation is given by sqrt[np(1-p)] where n is the sample size and p is the probability of the observation you are interested in (the mean is np so in what follows I will be dividing by n to talk about percentages if you are taking notes). For example, are you male? If the true p is, say, 75% then you need a sample size of approximately 833 to get a 95% confidence interval (2 s.d.) of +/- 3%.

You might also note that the closer the true p is to 50%, the larger the sample size needed. If the true p is 50% you need a sample size of approximately 1100 for the same confidence interval. Furthermore, if you want to get it within 1%, the sample size goes up dramatically - to 10,000.

The population size is pretty much irrelevant. The population matters for ensuring that your sampling is truly random, but political pollsters can use the same sample sizes in Australia (pop ~20 million) as in the US (pop ~300 million) for similar accuracy. (Sampling bias is the reason that political polls can be out by so much - if you call households during work hours you are going to get a very different sample of people than if you call at dinner time.)

Number of cellphones vs. Cancer patients

[Mike216]

Given the number of people that use cell phones, if they do cause cancer often enough for it to be declared a problem I don't think we'll need a study to show it. I for one will continue to use my phone confident in the fact that it's still a net gain between the ways science artificially increases my otherwise natural lifespan versus the stupid decisions I tend to make that would act to decrease it. (not really referring to cell phone use there. more like that time I played the snowboarding video game and thought "psh, how hard can that be in real life. do you SEE that score?!")

Re:Number of cellphones vs. Cancer patients

[Joce640k]

+1 Insightful, came here to say the same thing.

DNA doesn't break until you get into the UV-light range of electromagnetic waves, cell phone frequencies are orders of magnitude away from being able to do it....but don't let the pesky facts get in the way of anecdotes and scaremongering.

Re:Number of cellphones vs. Cancer patients

[EmagGeek]

I concur with this statement. It's called "nonionizing" radiation for a reason.

Re:"Survey"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I talked to Alanis Morrissette, she had one hand in her pocket and the other hailing a taxi cab.

natural experiment should be considered

[oddTodd123]

This topic screams for a natural experiment. Cell phone usage has grown at different rates in different countries. Compare the rate of brain cancer to the rate of cell phone usage in each country and how they change over time. This is how many public health problems are studied. It is not a foolproof method, but it's much better than a survey. The biggest challenge will be knowing brain cancer rates in developing countries, although I imagine hospitals in the big cities will have some useful data.

Industry funded studies

[Turzyx]

Cellphone companies find cellphones pose no health risk.

Yes the survey was conducted by the WHO, by then there is this gem

Data from the IARC study showed that overall, mobile telephone users in fact had a lower risk of brain cancer than people who had never used one, but the 21 scientists who conducted the study said this finding suggested problems with the method, or inaccurate information from those who took part.

Sounds like it was a bit of a waste of time really...

Re:Industry funded studies

[jeff4747]

Sounds like it was a bit of a waste of time really...

Or that the scientists really, really wanted a positive result.

Scientists are human. You go down in the history books if you prove cell phones cause cancer. You are forgotten if you prove they don't. Which would you aim for if you were conducting the studies?

A huh.

[ErikZ]

pffft.

The conclusions of their 10 year study were crystal clear. "Send us more money to do another 10 year study."

"the indications are sufficiently strong... to "

[Joce640k]

... to ask for more money for 'further research'.

Re:Limited study

[General Wesc]

I mean that if cell phones cause cancer, you would expect the rate of cancer to raise along with the use of cell phones.

Yes, after controlling for hundreds of other factors. What causes do we know for brain cancer and how have they varied? We've increased public awareness of causes of other cancers (smoking, UV, etc.) and taken steps to reduce causes (smog, the worst pesticides, second-hand smoke, etc.) I wouldn't be surprised if some of those affected brain cancer, and there are countless others.

Re:"Survey"?

[Hurricane78]

And a extremely-high-powered radiation source (>1000x that of cell phones, with incredibly high intensity) aimed right at their faces: THE SUN! THE FUCKING SUN! ;)
Oh, and outside there were at least a 1000 cars driving around.

Re:Limited study

[pipedwho]

Absolutely, the sample size is inversely relative to how close the differential result is to the 'noise floor'.

In this respect, your first example is slightly flawed. As the expected determinant gets closer to the noise floor (ie. if the margin for a Republican or Democrat victory is going to be 0.01%, or 50.01% vs 49.99%), then a much greater sample size is needed to maintain confidence in the resultant prediction.

As you say, 60% is a landslide. So if that is the expected result, then a few percent error either way isn't going to change your final determination of the winner.

Re:Limited study

[SpeZek]

If your sample size is huge, then it's not statistics.
It's counting.

Re:Limited study

[mybecq]

They look accurate to me. From me undergrad stats classes, I seem to recall that to get 5% confidence level out of population of 10k, one needed a sample of around 850.

If you upgrade to the new Total Recall (TM) solution, you'll have 95% confidence in what you remember.

Re:"Survey"?

[dudpixel]

Did you forget about this line?

"I've got one hand in my pocket. And the other one is flicking a cigarette."

or is my sarcasm detector broken?

Re:Limited study

[oiron]

It could still be a general drop in cancer rates, but a specific rise in the rates for people who use cellphones (in certain conditions, given that pretty much everyone uses them these days?). Looking at simple numbers like that is inconclusive

Cancer maybe. Pain definately.

[LongearedBat]

When I first started using a mobile phone, I didn't know it was going to affect me. But very soon I discovered that whenever it was switched on and in my trouser pocket, I'd get a severe hip ache after half an hour. If I talk for more than 5-15 minutes, I can feel my ear being affected, and after an hour I'll have a headache. This does not happen if I'm using a cord-phone or headset, as I can talk for hours on end without any of the symptoms that I get from using a mobile phone. (Bluetooth seems fine to me.)
And I'm not alone.

I don't know if mobile phones cause cancer.
I don't know why only some people seem affected.
I don't know how it happens.
I don't know if it's even harmful at all.
But I do know that, when switched on and close by, mobile phones do cause aches to some people.

(And the irony is that I write software for mobile phones.)

Re:Limited study

[mmarlett]

Not really. I mean, I struggle to find anyone over the age of 75 that doesn't regularly use a cell phone, and I live in Wichita, Kansas. We are not bleeding-edge technology adapters. [i]Everyone[/i] (in a statistically significant way) uses cell phones. For the number of instances of brain cancer to fall and or hold steady in the last 20 years AND for cell phones to have a statistical impact on brain cancer rates, there would have to be some great "holy shit, this causes brain cancer so let's stop doing it" that went on at the same time. And is there any great holy grail of brain-cancer prevention going on? No. Not according to the American Cancer Society. There's just no evidence of any rise whatsoever despite the massive public experiment involving holding these devices to hundreds of millions of heads.

Oblig. Thank You For Smoking reference

[GBC]

Nick Naylor: "Gentlemen, practice these words in front of the mirror: Although we are constantly exploring the subject, currently there is no direct evidence that links cellphone usage to brain cancer."

Irresponsible quote

[anorlunda]

There are indications of a possible increase. We're not sure that it is correct. It could be due to bias, but the indications are sufficiently strong... to be concerned.

Isn't that kind of statement extremely unprofessional and irresponsible regardless of the actual topic. The researcher must have known that only the "indications are sufficiently strong to be concerned" will be the only part remembered for years to come by millions of people who will conclude that the study confirmed actual danger.

Or should we blame the journalist? There is a ... in the middle of the quote. Might the actual words have been cooked to make it sound scary?

Report Summary

[EmagGeek]

"The study was inconclusive because it did not come to the conclusion that we wanted."

I'm starting to see a pattern here...

Re:Limited study

[Meumeu]

The fact that most people don't understand statistics doesn't mean stats are bullshit. It just means people are dumb.

Re:Limited study

[V!NCENT]

Depends...

Humans are all more of less alike. If you take thirteen thousand humans and you do double blind research then you can be somewhat sure that if damage is done due to cellphone use a lot of other humans would suffer from it too. Sure you got different DNA maybe, but you still have the same cell structure and it is all about damage done or not done to human cells.

In general it realy depends of what subject statistics repressent reality. If you take thriteen thousan US citizens and ask them who they would vote then I'll happily go "Lol statistics" with you...

Re:"Survey"?

[L4t3r4lu5]

The last time I talked to herself, my head exploded. Then again, I wasn't immortal as I'd just had my wings blown off by a gangsta with a Mac 10. Sucks to be a fallen angel, but the flaming sword kicked ass.

The pivotal point

[assertation]

The study, conducted by the World Health Organization and partially funded by the cellphone industry,

That is why the study was inconclusive.

At least the cell phone industry is settling for a spin of neutral. The US dairy industry routinely settles for nothing less than a complete inversion of the truth such as "cows milk helps you lose weight" and "cows milk helps prevent colon cancer"

Re:Limited study

[mmarlett]

They actually don't have any idea what causes most brain cancers. "People receiving radiotherapy (high-dose ionizing radiation) to the head during childhood are at increased risk for developing brain tumors, as are people with certain rare genetic disorders such as neurofibromatosis and Li-Fraumeni syndrome." (From the American Cancer Society) So, awareness about head radiation and genetics aren't really going to be huge gotchas that effect brain tumors. The things you mention effect cancer in people, but not brain tumors.

And, to be clear, we are talking about brain tumors that develop in the brain first, not malignant cancers that developed somewhere else and traveled to the brain, which is actually how both my grandmother (kidney, originally) and one of my mentors (lung, originally) both died. It's a horrible way to die. It undoes you.

But there's not only no evidence that cell phones cause cancer, there's no evidence that brain cancer rates are rising. And no one is doing anything to make those rates fall because they don't know what causes it to begin with. It's a totally fictitious concern.

Re:Limited study

[ceoyoyo]

One of the problems with political surveys is that they are not random samples. Many are much closer to convenience samples: they include people who are at home at a particular time, answer the phone, and are willing to participate in the study.

On the other hand, a decently organized cell phone/cancer study would involve a much better sampling methodology.