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."

Comments

Vox

[PopeRatzo]

Vox is strongly criticizing coverage of a supposed link between cellphones and cancer

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.

Re:Vox

[ArmoredDragon]

A bullshit study is a bullshit study, no matter who calls out the fact that it is bullshit. The fact that this only happens to the males and not the females is basically a dead ringer for it being a part of the rat's genome and that it's not being influenced by any environmental or other outside factors. I'm not even a scientist and that fact sticks out like a sore thumb to me. Then when you read deeper into the methodology used, and they didn't even use enough subjects to be able to come anywhere close to being able to meet statistical significance, that this is just another one of those bogus health related studies that come around every now and then because somebody is ideologically opposed to something everybody does or uses, and sets out to prove a point rather than to investigate. This is similar to studies that come around every now and then to attempt to prove that take your pick of any one of meat, GMO, vaccination, or aspartame is bad for you.