Slashdot Mirror
Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this Reuters story, from which he excerpts: "Italy's supreme court has upheld a ruling that said there was a link between a business executive's brain tumor and his heavy mobile phone usage, potentially opening the door to further legal claims. The court's decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject. 'Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,' said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital. The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand. Marcolini developed a so-called neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve, which was apparently not cancerous but nevertheless required surgery that badly affected his quality of life."
Funny how, when we finally have an independent study that publishes result not in sync with the big corps interests, a bunch of scientists (often a majority of them) are quick to call for "caution" and to declare that there is "not enough evidence" to draw conclusions.
It happened with the study on OGM recently, and is happening again.
Everybody understands that scientists have to make a living, but what happens when the result of their sponsored studies are not in their employer's favor? Scientific research becomes corrupt and misleading, a disengagement from its ethics, resulting in a loss of honesty, integrity, objectivity, and autonomy....All swept aside in order.to put their professional sponsors, big business, and government agencies in their best light.
The deceit works because most of the general public still trusts people in white lab-coats who play authority figures. Science as the servant of money, power and politics, is for the most part dedicating itself to finding the "correct" result, i.e. the desired outcome, the one that is never unexpected and always conform to the establishment's views. Real science is never that predictable.
In Stalinist Russia, in order to suppress bad news about Soviet agriculture, the "State scientist" Lysenko advocated an ideologically correct biology that led to famines. Good thing were not there... yet.