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3D Displays May Be Hazardous To Young Children
SchlimpyChicken writes "Turns out 3D television can be inherently dangerous to developing children, and perhaps to adults as well. There's a malaise in children that can prevent full stereopsis (depth perception) from developing, called strabismus or lazy-eye. It is an abnormal alignment of the eyes in which the eyes do not focus on the same object — kind of like when you watch a 3D movie. As a result, depth perception is compromised. Acting on a hunch, the guys over at Audioholics contacted Mark Pesce, who worked with Sega on its VR Headset over 15 years ago — you know, the headset that never made it to market. As it turns out, back then Sega uncovered serious health risks involved with children consuming 3D and quickly buried the reports, and the project. Unfortunately, the same dangers exist in today's 3D, and the electronics, movie, and gaming industries seem to be ignoring the issue. If fully realized, 3D just might affect the vision of millions of children and, according to the latest research, many adults, across the country." The Audioholics article is a good candidate for perusing with Readability — the pseudo-link popups are blinding.
WTF is wrong with them!? Why did they bury the findings!
I'm guessing to hide the loss of money and man hours from share holders.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Because they probably already had a few prototypes out and had a few people using them. Now, if a study comes along that tells that there is a serious health risk associated, the study gets buried. Why? Because it's one thing to not know something is dangerous that you subject people to, but it's a completely different matter if you actually know. Worse, the people you subjected to the experience will know, and they will contact a lawyer to see if they can squeeze some money out of you somehow.
Instead of chewing Sega out, we should praise them. In this day and age, and if it had been a certain other 4 Letter company, I am not so sure if such a report would have resulted in sinking a probably incredibly expensive project. Instead, I would expect them to bury the report AND release the item. Only to later "discover" that there might be some hazards attached (read: as soon as someone couldn't handle his conscience anymore and blabbed) and "immediately" cease production. By then the product will have recovered its development cost, so at least no loss incurs.
Yes, that's what I'm fully expecting from a company this day.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ten years prior to that, Sega actually did release a 3D headset for the Master System.
When I research something for my company, and find it has adverse effects, I bury the reports. More specifically, I throw my findings into the project documentation folder, and move on to something else that will work without the problems. Hopefully, nobody will need to look at those reports again. Granted, I'm evaluating software packages, not consumer products, but I'm assuming the concept's the same.
Why waste time and money making a formal report, announcing it to the world, and generally just scaring people when 99% of the time the problems are eventually solved, anyway?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
So Nintendo rolls out the best thing in handheld games since the first Gameboy, and suddenly 3D is bad for children. What a coincidence. I suspect that this is just an underhanded PR attack against Nintendo by one of its rivals.
Parents won't sue Sega for a malady that they didn't know had been inflicted on their kids.
Parents would sue Sega for releasing a product that they didn't release?
I would hope that, should you come across something that would be harmful like this (and not strictly specific to your product, but a physiological issue) you would at least make sure the appropriate people would know about it. Anonymize it and send it along to a few researchers or something.
Instead, it got shoved away and forgotten about.
Good thing this guy remembered!
I mean, I understand why they would bury it had it actually been released for mass consumption. But this was not the case. There's nothing wrong with saying "Oh, we were going to do this, but when we found out it causes harm we canceled it" - Hell, that's a positive thing to do! It shows forethought and at least the illusion of caring for your customers.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Practically the entire consumer electronics industry is counting on 3D to give them a fat, juicy pile of Christmas profits with ongoing dividends into the coming decade. Sony, Toshiba, even Microsoft, Best Buy, Nintendo, every manufacturer of flat screen TVs, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Pixar and every movie studio that's readying 3D releases of their old movies, game developers and on and on have been planning for more than a year for all of us to upgrade our old TVs, displays, DVD players and game systems to the "new 3D". Of course they're going to bury the findings, and if you're any other company, you're already working on counter-studies that are going to show how totally safe 3D actually is for kids.
Start the countdown: we're going to be hearing in the coming days about how this is all so much worrying over nothing, how in fact 3D is good for children, makes them smarter or something.
There's no way this entire segment of the market is going to lay down on this one. We're going to hear how this is "junk science" and how it's "controversial" and we'll hear from a steady stream of industry-funded experts telling us that 3D is perfectly safe for kids. How the "nanny state" is going to try to take away your god-given right to 3D and it's all liberal propaganda from people who want to turn back technology. My guess is that some of the same "grass-roots" groups (aka public relations firms and lobbyists) that were so helpful in pointing out how climate change and evolution are junk science will lend a hand on this issue.
Just watch, you're going to get your 3D one way or the other.
And by the way, am I the only one who finds this latest incarnation of 3D, even when done well (e.g. "Avatar") is garish and sort of unpleasant, like "low-fat" chocolate mousse made with Simplesse? It might taste good for a second, but after a few minutes you're in for a stomach ache (I mean this aesthetically, of course).
You are welcome on my lawn.
When using package A on system B with configuration C and test profile D, while running profiling software E and monitor F, and supplying it with data from source G and database H, throughput is roughly N% lower than using package Z on system Y with configuration X and test profile W, while running profiling software V and monitor U, and supplying it with data from source T and database S.
Supply the appropriate values for the appropriate letters, and you have most of the reports I've buried. They're absolutely worthless outside my application, unless you're trying to dig up meaningless evidence for/against any of the components.
Life is complicated. Research is, too. Note that I haven't read TFA (this IS /., after all), but I suspect the report included lovely details like viewing angles, use profiles, the specific 3D technology used, and so forth. Change any tiny detail, and the previous research is probably irrelevant.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I'm interested in strabismus because my father and my sister had it. I've been tested for it myself by optometrists with fancy equipment that required me to orient my eyes in different directions, sort of what TFA describes.
I read that whole article and the links and I couldn't find a single thing to support their claim that 3D video causes strabismus.
It looks like the whole article is based on Mark Pesce telling Wayde Robson that he doesn't have time to be interviewed for 2 weeks.
The journalism that Robson practices is a bit too familiar and colloquial for my tastes. It's one thing to read an article that sounds like a guy giving you the straight dope after a few drinks in a bar. It's another thing to read an article that sounds like a "journalist" who doesn't know what "fact checking" means.
He quotes SRI as saying, “You Cannot Give This To Kids!” but that's fiction. SRI would never use words like that in a scientific report. I don't suppose it occurred to Robson to call SRI and find out if they actually did a report like that. Or to call an optometrist or ophthalmologist.
"Children under seven are at risk of strabismus – period." Another fiction.
Let's go back to basic scientific method. If you actually found children under seven who didn't have strabismus, then used 3D video, and developed strabismus, you could raise the reasonable hypothesis that 3D video caused strabismus. I've never heard of strabismus being acquired like that, but I'm open to new evidence.
Nothing in TFA indicates that anybody found a single child under seven who had strabismus from 3D video. So there's no justification for making that statement. It's all speculation.
After that last post I did RTFA, and I still feel the same.
The headset is on the kid's head, preventing them from possibly looking away. The technology used isn't mentioned, but it is implied that the visual quality isn't great. There's also lots of little variables like exposure time, audio cues, and visual refresh rate.
What you should get from this buried report is that that specific implementation of that specific technology had the potential for causing harm. It should imply nothing about 3D technology in general, just like my report that package A is slower than Z should not imply that all computers are slow.
Go stand in front of a mirror for a while, and marvel at the 3D imagery from a 2D surface. The mirror can be considered to be emitting photons at carefully-specified frequencies, positions, and directions, just like an ideal 3D television would do. Our inferior pixel technology just can't aim photons well enough yet, so we use a variety of tricks to accomplish the desired effect of getting different images to each eye. One certain trick might have adverse health effects, but changing the parameters slightly changes the effects.
For example, the Sega headset used dual LCD screens. Todays 3D televisions generally use a single screen, usually with glasses to isolate the eyes. That's a major difference, and probably enough to invalidate the previous research for any use other than fear mongering.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Not but I would feel obligated not to release the dangerous product the report was about. Apparently Sega felt the same. If the results had been positive Sega would have 'buried' it in the same manner.
Companies normally don't release these reports regardless of the results. Leave it to other vendors to do their own testing and pay for that testing.