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Study Hints Ambient Radio Waves May Affect Plant Growth
dwguenther writes "A Lyons (Colorado) area woman with no academic pedigree has published a scientific paper in the International Journal of Forestry Research about the adverse effects of radio waves on aspen seedlings. Katie Haggerty, who lives north of Steamboat Mountain, found in a preliminary experiment done near her house that aspens shielded from electromagnetic radiation were healthier than those that were not. 'I found that the shielded seedlings produced more growth, longer shoots, bigger leaves, and more total leaf area. The shielded group produced 60 percent more leaf area and 74 percent more shoot length than a mock-shielded group,' she said." This was not a definitive study, as its author readily admits — it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area — but it was refereed.
Mine prefer Drum and Bass
... that one day AM radio would be the death of us all.
some plants grow really well when exposed to blue/red light combination from LEDs in a closed room. also, way cheaper and more unobtrusive than using incandescent lamps. (disclaimer for the well-informed slashdotters, i grow hot peppers for my pizzas).
Otherwise the plants would be dead!
Have the plants taken care of by one person and judged/reviewed by another who only sees them when they are moved to the review area. Since this is just seedlings using large plant pots should be fine.
it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area
In the medical field, it means that both the patient and the doctor evaluating the symptoms don't know who received a placebo.
For this experiment - setup two antennae in front of some seedlings, have a different dude turn one of them on. The person measuring the seedling growth doesn't know which were exposed to radio waves. That's all you need to make sure the study doesn't have some bias in it.
Why not create two sets of identical-looking Faraday cages, one metal and the other non-conducting plastic. Randomly hand them out to experimenters and let them figure out which is which after the results are in.
While that may be true quite often in the media, nothing in the story suggests that's the case here. She had three sets of plants, one shielded with a Faraday cage, one shielded in fiberglass, and one completely unshielded. Her results aren't simply a lack of insect damage.
In spring 2007, she planted the aspen seedlings -- one group in a shielded Faraday cage, another group in a cage wrapped in fiberglass that did not block radio waves and a third set was unprotected altogether. By the end of July, there were measureable differences in growth, and at the beginning of October, she noticed differences in coloration.
It's one thing to criticize a study, but at least try to READ it first.......
Qxe4
Remember, Louis Pasteur only finally disproved the theory of spontaneous generation with a simple experiment involving meat broth and a long necked decanter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
There's no reason to doubt that the certain frequencies we consider harmless are in fact slowly destroying delicate parts of our biosphere. We're the same scientists who didn't think lead paint or asbestos were a problem, and discovered germ theory only a short time ago. The article itself is not sensational, and even the DIY scientist is modest in her conclusions.
It's a nice enough preliminary study. I'm usually quite skeptical about "OMG teh ebul microwaves are killing us" studies but this one seems sensible enough and it doesn't go overboard in its claims like so many do. Good for the lady for doing things systematically enough to get published in a peer-reviewed journal (that's also serious).
This shit has been going on forever. They keep changing their target, but it is always the same tune: Radiation is bad, X is radiation, so X is bad.
When I was a kid the target was high voltage distribution lines. They said those were bad for kids, caused cancer. They had a data point, kinda, in terms of one community. Of course upon further study there was actual radioactive shit there (Radon IIRC). At any rate because of the serious nature of this, it was looked in to. Long term studies were done, looking at kids who grew up near these lines. I am probably a data point in one of those studies as our house was under some large lines when I was young (that's why I know about this shit, Mom was worried).
Well, now there's many decades of results compiled and guess what? There's no difference at all. They don't do shit.
Now any scientist could have told you that, the radiation is non-ionizing, hell the waves are millions of meters long from 60Hz power. The nuts weren't doing science, they were just being nuts.
So this is more of the same shit, same as the "cellphones kill honeybees" and so on. They do not consider it logically, they are just reactionary.
For someone outside of academia to get reviewed and published is news enough.
I dunno if your results will, but your lynching might.
I have a deep concern about over-stating the dangers of RF radiation... honestly, though, I don't see anything wrong with the PAPER and would say that Haggerty
approached the experiment in an appropriate scientific manner.
Come back and talk to me when you have a more definitive study.
This is not a perfect experiment... no experiment is. But the methodology is laid out. The experiment is reproducible, and that's what matters. I think it may spark interest in study... very likely from people who are VERY skeptical that RF could be the cause, and that's perfect.
I think that it's probably the case that something else is the cause, not RF. There are things that aren't controlled for. But you or anyone else can do a better experiment. You're right to be skeptical of a single one, but that doesn't mean Haggerty's work wasn't valuable.
You might be able to double-blind the Faraday cage if the screen material consisted of (for the active cage) wire overcoated with plastic and (for the inactive cage) fiberglass threads overcoated with the same type of plastic, the intent being to provide two cage materials that look and feel alike (bump into them and they both have the same stiffness) but only one of which provides the RF shielding function.
Light was controlled for within 5% of that received by the un-shielded plants. There were three groups, and it was simple... fiberglass screen shaded the "mock shielded" group from the sun the same way the aluminum screen did.
I personally think further experiments will discover some other cause besides RF, but Haggerty controlled for and measured a lot of other things... light, air circulation, etc. That doesn't mean her results will turn out to be correct, but she did present everything anyone would need to do to repeat her experiments to verify or refute them.
Just how unbiased was this person? If they were hoping for a specific result, there are a lot of things they could do in an "experiment" like this, even without thinking that they are doing such things.
Do the experiment yourself and find out. You're skeptical so if anything, you'll have the opposite bias. That's how this works.
No human being is 100% free of subconcious bias. A good scientist will do everything they can to perform objectively identical actions on all members of their various experimental organisms. IN that way, they will minimize the effect of their own biases. And others can reproduce the same objectively identical actions to gather more data.
Haggerty's paper suggests that she attempted to be careful in this regard. She explicitly presents her method. That's one way we know that she was trying to avoid her personal biases.
A double blind study is to prevent placebo effect as well as experimenter bias. I guess they are worried that the trees might feel compelled to grow more if they were told that there are no radio waves...
Once it's shown that radio waves are detrimental to aspen seedlings, there will be:
1. Signs posted around transmitter towers saying "WARNING -- Radio waves can be detrimental to your leaf area development". In both English as Aspenic.
B. Pictograph version of the same for Aspens that read yet.
Three. Non-animal subjects committees at arboreal research centers defining then testing for proper and ethical treatment of seedlings, such informed consent.
IV. Radical vegans, rejected Greenpeace applicants and overly sensitive hippie hangers-on 'rescuing' seedlings from Torture Hothouses because they're being tested 24 hours a day and not allowed to sleep.
Cinco. Smarmy, crooning, sexy but aloof modern folk singers moaning out a somewhat relevant lyric while you see pictures of abused seedlings, then their eyes tearing up as they beg you "Won't you please help? Think of the seedlings."
=== 100 years pass ===
99. Members of the Poplar* Peoples' Front forming a picket line around the Deciduous Students Union, carrying signs made of rock (no living material was harmed in the making of these signs) in their branches, demanding representation of their own kind among elected officials (Vote Yeast, Not Beast) and protesting the deplorable treatment of some of the more 'culturally mature due to greater experience evolving' and 'third forest' species (Smile Mold Is People Too) while Jefferson Floodplain sings "Up against the wall... Up against the wall, Carbonizers" from their hit album 'Nothing Can Stop The Shape of Leaves To Come and then giggle when you start to turn blue and gasp because you have cyclic respiration and can't read sentences this long without stopping for air whereas their constant bidirectional respiration means they can talk for hours straight without stopping once.
* Not misspelled, you meat chauvinist pig.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/96252.htm
Danger! Corrosive. Harmful if inhaled. May be absorbed through intact skin. Causes eye and skin irritation and possible burns. May cause severe respiratory tract irritation with possible burns. May cause severe digestive tract irritation with possible burns. May cause liver and kidney damage. May cause central nervous system effects. This substance has caused adverse reproductive and fetal effects in animals. Inhalation of fumes may cause metal-fume fever. Possible sensitizer.
Target Organs: Blood, kidneys, central nervous system, liver, brain.
Just ignore that. Go play with some, preferably in the room where you sleep.
Whoeever came up with this "study" is a moron.
Whoever calls a researcher a moron without bothering to read a short, easily accessible article about the research ... is a moron.
In this case, that would be you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
... particularly that with wavelengths between around 350 and 700nm.
I think that the journal publishing and the amateur scientist published should attempt to grow their seedlings in complete absence of electro-magnetic radiation between 350 and 700nm. That'll teach them something that every troglobite population on the planet learned millennia ago.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No, I'm serious. My suspicion is that she shielded the successful plants with something that contains trace nutrients that are lacking in her local soil.
For example, if her shielding was composed of steel chicken wire, then rainwater will pick up iron and zinc from the wire before it falls on the ground, both of these are essential trace nutrients for plant growth. In particular the rich red colour of the leaves in the experimental group speaks of a good supply of iron.
Alas, I've not seen the paper. If she's doing it properly her control plants should be growing through a layer of what she's using for shielding, instead of inside it. I suspect this is not the case.
Or, shield all plants with a metal cage (one cage per plant), put an antenna in every cage and choose randomly which antennas you turn on. That way, not only you're pretty sure you control everything but you can easily vary the amount and kind of EM radiation you submit the plants to.
The Sun is among the other sources of radio waves streaming down to the surface of the earth. I would suggest that man made radio waves are not automatically the cause. Although we broadcast strongly on particular frequencies in most areas background radiation drowns out total human output but across a wider spectrum. Plants may be sensitive to changes in background radio sources, for example we're in a period of unusual solar activity. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate/
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Great a 3 kdawson-story day. What next? Ouija boards cause cancer in mice? Perhaps we could have an article on the risks posed by heavy electricity, or homeopathic remedies for Autism (One lady in wisconsin swears that her little jimmy is much better after his injections). Perhaps we should change the slogan for Slashdot from "News for Nerds" to "Alternative Health monthly", or "News for Arts Graduates who like Apple Products", or "Anti-Globalisation Discussion Group". As someone with a science degree and a basic grasp of statistics, general science and economics I'd rather eat my own excreta, thanks. Faraday cage. Pathetic.