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Doubts Raised About Cellphone Cancer Study (vox.com)
Vox is strongly criticizing coverage of a supposed link between cellphones and cancer suggested by a new study, calling it "a breathtaking example of irresponsible science hype." An anonymous reader writes:
A professor and research monitoring administrator at an American medical school reported that to get their results, the researchers "exposed pregnant rats to whole body CDMA- and GSM-modulated radiofrequency radiation, for 9 hours a day, 7 days a week," and the results were seen only with CDMA (but not GSM-modulated) radiofrequency. "[F]alse positives are very likely. The cancer difference was only seen in females, not males. The incidence of brain cancer in the exposed groups was well within the historical range. There's no clear dose response..."
An emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University in Britain also called the study "statistically underpowered..." according to Vox. "Not enough animals were used to allow the researchers to have a good chance of detecting a risk from radiofrequency radiation of the size one might plausibly expect."
An emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University in Britain also called the study "statistically underpowered..." according to Vox. "Not enough animals were used to allow the researchers to have a good chance of detecting a risk from radiofrequency radiation of the size one might plausibly expect."
... I'm far more concerned with the rat bastard who knocked me up.
shoulda known
This is an outrage! Which geeky news blog irresponsibly published a story about this without reviewing the science?
Vox is a highly-leveraged company that makes money with a news site that's designed for use on mobile devices. What the fuck you think they're gonna say?
Plus, Vox is the absolute ugliest news site every on the internet. I'm not joking. If you visit their page, be careful ow whiplash when you involuntarily turn your head away in horror. And their stock in trade are these hot-take "explainer cardstacks" which is some jargon bullshit for a web page with almost no information that prompts you to click on many other pages in order to read the whole story, which inevitably turns out to be disappointing, with mostly pictures and great big infographics without labels that make you come away feeling like you learned something when in fact you are stupider than when you started.
A bunch of refugees from other hipster publications started Vox, and they stand as a shining example of bad journalism, bad design and a bad business model.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I prefer smoking rather than hanging out with a woman whose it's mouth is wider because she sucked cocks when kid.
That 1, it was the male rats affected, and two, those rats actually lived longer. So we should see headlines like this: Constant Cell Phone Use Lengthens Lifespan (in men)
and you'll be cancer free for life!
I heard it from a Dane who, heard it from a Dane who, heard it from another that that is true.
One problem with media reporting today is the perceived need to get emotional involvement.
In it's economic zeal to get eyeballs on articles, the media has resorted to sensationalizing and emotionalism. They compete for the most outrageous, most shocking headlines in an attempt to lure readers.
We only have to look at the Trump campaign to see how this happened. Taking one single issue as an example, we read all about how he hates and has a war against latinos. In reality, he said nothing of the sort, which is 'kinda why he's got such a huge support base right now.
The media is astonished that his supporters aren't leaving him in droves... he *is* the next Hitler, didn't you know?
Everything is a crisis, everything is a war on something, everything is a conflict.
(Note: You can learn how to get around this using this one weird trick!)
was facepalm worthy from the get go.
But it continues to be facepalm worthy in criticizing the study.
The study was not worthless. It failed to show a statistically significant link. But it might have. The study was big enough that a real effect would have stuck out like a sore thumb. That it didn't, but some weird weak relationships were seen in fact puts a bound on the maximum size of the problem : I.E. In some contexts (gender, ludicrously powered phone, being a mouse) the effect of cell phone radiation doesn't cause excess tumors over the expected rate with a pretty good confidence.
The press started out all "OMG! Cell phones cause cancer!!!!". Then after the criticism of the hyperbole they went all "OMG!!! That study was shite!!!". The problem is with the press, not the study.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
https://xkcd.com/882/
Explore enough subgroups, and eventually one of the subgroups will suggest a correlation.
Oh go make a really long call on a cell phone.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
> Vox is a highly-leveraged company that makes money with a news site that's designed for use on mobile devices. What the fuck you think they're gonna say?
Yeah, no, sorry, I don't buy the cellphone-cancer study. The complaints raised were legitimate scientific ones, you can't just negate that because they have a mobile site.
And the original was reported in Mother Jones, if you want to go that route. Doesn't make it untrue, but if we're trying to contest the bad journalism, well... yeah. Anyhow, find me a news org that hasn't even once reported on some stupid meme. I'd probably like reading it.
And no, I already checked out Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/02/todays-bad-memes-faulty-earpieces-and-gotcha-politics
No surprise there.
Global Warming
Fracking
Women in combat
Minimum wage laws
MMR causes autism
SDI
You must obey the makers of cellphones and wireless carriers!
Do not question anything they state as fact.
Do not think for yourself!
Give up your rational mind.
Obey!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I didn't. :) But just reading the first dozen pages...
It looks like they broke the test rats into groups with 1.5, 3, and 6 W/kg exposure, CDMA and GSM, male and female. That's 3*2*2 = 12 groups. For the brain section, they looked for two types of tumors. So now they've got 24 groupings that they're searching for possible correlations.
The statistical significance of the one correlation they found (male, CDMA, 6 W/kg, malignant glioma) was p < 0.05. In other words, due to their limited sample size, just by random chance alone you'd expect such a blip to occur about 1 in 20 times even when there is no real correlation. Well they tried 24 times and got one blip.
Same thing with the heart results. 24 groupings, one blip with p < 0.05, one blip with p = 0.052. Again, almost exactly what you'd expect by pure chance alone.
I think the big thing to remember is that humans are walking around making calls with a 1-3W microwave transmitter attached to the side of their head, rats don't. This may not be a lot of power however combined with human habit (left or right side exposure) it is certain to deliver a constant rate of microwave energy almost directly to the brain.
I've seen someone die from brain cancer and it's bad, so I think it's worth sharing a few things that make it simple to take personal responsibility for your own safety. First, it's your brain, so it is worth protecting as the most valued organ in the body and much more sensitive than the thigh or other large muscle groups or even a hand - so simple habit changes can reduce the risks, whatever they turn out to be.
Second, don't trust any information from any source that sponsored from an interest in mobile phone sales or use, we've all seen how the tobacco industry behave to protect their business model and revenue stream.
Once you are aware of the properties of the transmitter and the device it is simple to make minor changes to usage patterns that can also increase the usefullness of the device. At approximately 2.4 Ghz the wavelength is roughly 13cm, which is about the width of a human head, so if you are within one wavelength your head will absorb a portion of the energy from the phone. At 60-180 degrees of the fresnel of transmission into the head, it can vary between >0% to 50% of the power output.
If the device is pressed up against you will increase the rate of absorbtion due to inductance, this will also cause the device to increase the power output of the to maintain a clear signal, which consequently will increase the rate of exposure to the brain.
Another thing to factor is if the phone has a wi-fi transmitter operational while you are using it, as this will also contribute to increasing the rate of exposure as it is also a 2.4 Ghz transmitter.
For every wavelength away from your head the phone is this will reduce the exposure to your brain by increasing orders of magnitude. This might mean you choose to use speaker phone if you have a private moment, or to use the same headphone you are using for music to take the call. Additionally you may find that the battery life of the device is increased and you have less call dropouts as it is no longer increasing its signal output to overcome the effects of the capacitance from the water in your brain to maintain the call connection.
The long term effects from mobile use will vary however the properties and nature of the device are predictable enough to make simple, unobtrusive changes to usage patterns to avoid being someone who finds out if there is any the hard way. If it means your battery lasts longer, you appear more polite to people and you have better call quality while your use your phone this may be an unexpected benefit of erring on the cautious side.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"a breathtaking example of irresponsible science hype."
Welcome to Facebook.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
The consensus is that research causes cancer in mice. News at 11.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why don't they also post studies calling anthropogenic global warming into question?
Slashdot has posted about some of those studies... and criticized them for being flawed. It's not Slashdot's fault that you believe in a fairy tale told by people who profit from the activities that are contributing to global warming.
The energy of the radio frequency photons (waves) used in cell phones each have a tiny fraction of the energy (~1 millionth) required to ionize atoms and about (10^(-5)) required to break chemical bonds. There is no physical mechanism for cell phones to cause cancer (well, maybe eating them). The real result is with over 1 billion cell phones in daily use, there's been no uptick in brain cancer rates in recent years.
Why the emo?
From the study:
"In the heart, exposure to GSM or CDMA modulations of RFR in male rats resulted in a statistically significant, positive trend in the incidence of schwannomas. "
One of its conclusions:
"Under the conditions of these 2-year studies, the hyperplastic lesions and glial cell neoplasms of the heart and brain observed in male rats are considered likely the result of whole-body exposures to GSM- or CDMA-modulated RFR."
One of the three reviewers (all three of whom agreed with the study's conclusions):
https://cvm.ncsu.edu/directory...
What they are saying could well be true.
All of the studies purporting to show cancer risk from cellphones are BS. How do we know? Because cellphone use has skyrocketed worldwide in the past 20-30 years with no corresponding increase in brain cancer in humans. It's not a perfectly designed study, but I'm going to trust the natural experiment that's been performed on billions of humans over decades of time rather than the lab experiment that's been carried out on a handful of rats for a much shorter time.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Also, you have to wonder, what genetic strain of rat did they use? Did they collect native rats from the wild? Or use lab-bred rats from known cancer lines?
The domestic pet rat industry is literally infested with known cancer lines from research labs which are prone to getting cancer, especially females with breast cancer since they have been specifically bred to get this cancer to help the study of it.
However, if you want to test for how easy it is to get cancer, you'd need to get a strain of rat which is has not been bred to be genetically 'weak' to cancer and start there. You'd then need to expose those rats to realistic amounts and strengths of the radiation in question (which they did not do) and compare.
This study seems very flawed. How about instead you study the human population, seeing as how we ARE experimenting on ourselves on a daily basis with our phones at any rate.
Oh, and I can't remember the last time I actually used my phone to call someone. So even the way we use phones has significantly changed since the days we could only make phone calls with them.
The original report was on my local evening newscast "Breaking News - How Your Phone Could Be Causing Cancer"
I turned to my wife and said, "Tomorrow's breaking news "Study Of Cancer From Cell Phones Flawed."
nobody uses them as actual phones anymore, they're always thumbing and poking at them instead; so hardly anyone holds them up to their head long enough to get brain cancer from them (even if that was really a thing, which it isn't).
ranges including the increasing incidences of cancers years with increased cell phone usage?
For thyroid cancer:
https://www.thyrogen.com/-/media/Thyrogen/Images/Thyroid-Cancer-Overview/Figure-2.-Increasing-Incidence-of-Thyroid-Cancer-800-px.jpg
https://www.cancercare.on.ca/common/pages/UserFile.aspx?fileId=63901
For brain caner:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mobile_Phone30-300x229.jpg
Because that would seem a bit evil of them.
Maybe they're confusing cause and effect: people with serious brain cancer are more likely to be talking on their phones all the time!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Everything gives people cancer, and everything prevents cancer. Now buy my god damn snake oil so you will be cancer free, or die.
A few years while I was connected to the telco world this question was raised amongst my team, and the answer we got was: 'for every study pointing that radiations might cause cancer, we can provide 100 stating otherwise'.
With the on-going problem of having too much population in the world and the warming up of africa and middle east to 50C within the next 50 years making it unable to have human inhabitants, I would suppose this is nothing.... we need to shave off population numbers anyway... Bottom line, within 200 or 300 years someone else will verify if this is correct or not and eventually, if it is, we pay the price in blood.
Why would anything like a multi billion industry cause none the less care if they cause cancer? That would be uh bad for business, not just your health.
And perhaps the masses should consider the network more so than just a device... turn up the power output on towers, you now have a distributed weapon at your disposal. We are pretty ignorant stupid and trusting of what is now how a bulk of people access the internet.
Yeah...I totally trust shitwads like verizon, att, sprint, T-Mobile, and our government to be honest about health risks regarding cellphones...
Long live Prince and his disdain for the internet.
If you are afraid of CDMA-caused cancer, I suggest joining the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; and then don your metallic noodle strainer hat. That'll save ya! (Was a study ever don on Pastafarianists?)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.