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

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

[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.

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

[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.