Study Shows Cell Phones Safe 210
PreacherTom writes "In a move worthy of the Mythbusters, scientists in Denmark tracked over 420,000 cell phone users over the course of 21 years in an attempt to determine if the urban legend that cell phone use causes cancer is true. Their results: the RF energy produced by the phones did not correlate to an increased incidence of the disease. Please note that this doesn't make chatting on the highway at 85 mph any more safe." From the article: 'This so-called Danish cohort "is probably the strongest study out there because of the outstanding registries they keep,' said Joshua Muscat of Pennsylvania State University, who also has studied cell phones and cancer. 'As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,' Muscat added."
They didnt let the facts get in the way before, (Score:5, Interesting)
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***
sigh...
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Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before, (Score:4, Insightful)
My question is - who paid for this study? Was it Nokia (caveat, I own shares in them) or some other cell phone firm?
Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before, (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on the study...most importantly, on its size. 21 years and 450,000 subjects makes for a pretty damn solid conclusion. And where are the studies that show any other conclusion?
Chris Mattern
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This one was reported by slashdot some time ago. The Swedish Cell Phone Study [slashdot.org] said there was a 240% incerease in risk for heavy users.
It was done over ten years, and was considered better than previous studies. I think this debate is not over yet, and we'll probably see more studies claiming cancer causing and non-cancer causing over the next ten years plus till something completely conclusive happens, or we humans start using a new form of c
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Could you show me the three independent studies that prove this fact?
Actually, what has been more often proved is that it doesn't matter how many studies you do - some people are terminally clue resistant and will continue to believe whatever the hell they feel like [wikipedia.org] regardless of evidence.
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Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before, (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before, (Score:2, Funny)
_other_ parts of the body (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:_other_ parts of the body (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:_other_ parts of the body (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:_other_ parts of the body (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I do too, but only because I keep it on vibrate mode
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Er
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I carry my cell phone in my pants pocket. Is it safe?
I know this gets said a lot, but I can't imagine a situation where it will ever be more appropriate. RTFA
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Well, if you are a female, one interesting finding the study came up with, was that cell phone use brings a 30% increased risk of Cervical cancer [wikipedia.org], which is usually caused by the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus [wikipedia.org].
The researchers suggest, while stressing that this is pure speculation, that women who were quicker to adopt cell phone use, might have been more sexually active with multiple partners than average women, for whatever reason.
The announcement, in Danish, along with some of the statistics, c
Misleading title... (Score:4, Insightful)
And what of it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Young Sebastion... (Score:2)
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-process hangs-
Somtimes... (Score:2, Funny)
Mabe worrying about cell phones causing cancer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, at least there's a mechanism. Stress has been implicated in contributing to a lot of other diseases, why not cancer?
Re:Mabe worrying about cell phones causing cancer. (Score:2)
What about for driving? (Score:4, Insightful)
minor correction (Score:4, Insightful)
Fixed.
Mythbusters? (Score:5, Funny)
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Mythbusters != science (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had an important paper published in a respected scientific journal and someone told me my work was 'worthy of the Mythbusters' I'd punch them in the face.
Mythbusters == science lite (Score:4, Insightful)
Mythbusters is probbably the only show on TV that actually DOES science and shows what it is rather than just acting as a mouthpiece for science. The do everything that other scientists do, albiet within the confines of a television show. They repeat experiments, they accept "peer review", they establish controls. They do everything but publish a paper in a journal. Tell me how what the Mythbusters do isn't science?
It might not be something you'd want to site in a research paper, so it's not really up to the standards of acadamia, but calling what they do not science is simply wrong.
Completely (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like scien
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Damn fun show.
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Now, they're getting dramatically better. The episode I watched today they actually repeated their experiment a few times. Then they took the results to an actual statistician who told them their results weren't significant. Of course, then they went on to talk about how they'd seen a small difference, but not as big as the myth would indicate.
So they're learning, but they've got a w
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They actually do more than that--they often show stuff that does not work. In my applied physics papers I always try to include a section called "Things that did not work so well". Referees sometimes kick at the language, but the spirit is correct: every paper should include at least a mention of the stuff the experimenter tried that did not pan out, because if it seemed like a good idea to YOU, it is going to seem like a good idea to others, and by men
Sure it is. (Score:2)
For example, with the helium football myth, where a football filled with helium apparently will kick farther than one filled with air, they took a collection of standard footballs into a large indoor room to eliminate the effect of wind and kicked and threw them in customized machines to eliminate any human bias, then took their collected data to a professiona
People plain just don't like cell phone users (Score:4, Insightful)
Or perhaps any less safe than chatting with a passenger while drinking a soda at 85 mph, unless we have data to show otherwise.
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Not at all like MythBusters (Score:5, Insightful)
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for the obvious reason that sifting through hundreds of thousands of medical records accumulated over many years and applying complex statistical models to them does not make for compelling television.
I don't know. Have you ever watched Nova?
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Evil Cancer Death Radiation! (Score:3, Interesting)
and other bullshit.
People want to believe in this stuff cause it sounds dangerous. Advocacy groups get funding, lawyers make money, politicians can scare people. Who's gonna listen to a bunch of boring Danish statistics?
Even the WHO subscribes to the 'precautionary principle'. Forget about it - its all futile! [webhotel.tut.fi]
What a HUGE crock! (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. I've come across some biased Wikipedia articles before, but the one you referenced sets a new low. It's current version, (with a single exception in non-bolded typeface buried in a paragraph), only mentioned studies which illustrate the safety of cell phone tech, and it does this using bolded headline entries. This is a shamefully poor representation of the available data on the subject. The article also fails to mention any of the many cases of conflict of interest which pollute many of the studies which claim safety. That's just pathetic and Wikipedia needs a solid re-write on this one.
I don't think the claims being made are bullshit, as you suggest, and I certainly am not motivated in my opinions because I like 'dangerous' sounding things. I just don't trust the telcos or the military, and there is plenty of reason not to. Anybody who argues differently is, in my opinion, either ignorant or willfully ignorant. It's the second variety of ignorance which baffles me.
-FL
Sweet Bleeding Jesus! (Score:3)
>'As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,' Muscat added."
I am just flipping appalled at the number of people in academia who have not internalized the concept that You Can't Prove A Fucking Negative! Can you prove that Neandertals are extinct? Can you prove that space aliens aren't controlling Bush and Blair with mind rays? Hell no! People seem to spend a huge amount of time worrying about shit that just might maybe could be true because, even though there is absofuckinglutely no evidence FOR it. On the other hand, they will blithely put up with 50,000 automobile deaths per year in the US and god knows how many deaths from tobacco and alcohol. Sheesh!
Speaking of which, I think I'll go have a medicinal gin and tonic and calm down.
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Sure you can. I can easily prove that I'm not in Fiji right now. The oft touted axiom that "you can't prove a negative" is a bad short hand for "you can't prove the universal non-existence of something". The key word is really 'universal' not 'negative'.
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You are right to be frustrated by the kind of reasoning that the OP was using, but not because it's impossible to prove a negative, but because it is impossible to completely prove anything so broad as 'Mobile phones do not cause cancer'. The article talks about taking the best bet, which is just looking at the evidence which is of course what everyone does every day with just about every action.
Pedantry regarding provability is pointless
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Of course not (Score:2)
I would think not. If the final word was "there", the government would have no reason to continue funding his research. One thing I've noticed about these kinds of studies is the automatic "... but more study is needed" caveat at the end of every article. Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age, but is it really possible that no scientific study is ever
The Control Group did not use cell phones? (Score:3, Funny)
If cellphones caused cancer... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not about Cancer. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about fuzzing the brain.
Please pardon the bold face, but it seems this subject calls for it. . .
The blood-brain barrier becomes permeable when exposed to EM cell phone frequencies. This is shown by injecting dye into the blood of rats and exposing them to cell phone EM. The short version: control groups don't end up with dyed brains while the exposed groups do. This experiment has been repeated numerous times.
--Now aside from an artificially permeable blood-brain barrier making your brain more susceptible to whatever agents happen to be in your blood at the time, the really interesting question people should be instantly asking is, "How does cell phone EM cause this to happen?"
And better yet, "What OTHER cellular responses are stimulated by cell phone EM?"
This isn't rocket science. It's simply a matter of taking the data as it comes, remembering it as you read more articles, and applying it in a logical fashion to form more questions.
Why the heck is everybody so caught up by the Cancer question when there is OBVIOUSLY something else important going on?
-FL
Citings. . . (Score:3, Informative)
However, blood-brain barrier permeability due to EM radiation has been demonstrated numerous times.
here [blackwell-synergy.com]
here [ehponline.org]
and here [216.239.51.104]
and here's an actual post [bio.net] from an
Re:21 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But the US is almost entirely digital (Score:2)
It's like europe was in 1993.
Re:21 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not always correct to assume that USA is on the edge of technology development and deployment.
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1983 was when the system finally went national. It's a big country, it took a while to get all the cells up. More important were the regulatory issues; AT&T was being split up at the same time.
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From one of the sources to the Wikipedia article/URL? [milestonespast.com]
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The article do discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the study, any blame on putting things in a better
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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I kind of thought it was common sense that radiation is harmful. I didn't think we still needed studies to prove this.
It's the dose that makes the poison. (Score:2)
A small piece of material the emits alpha particles isn't very dangerous at all.
Also, duration plays a large role.
Now the amount of 'radiation' emmitted from a cell phone is incredibly tiny. And looking at 20 years of use they didn't find any evidence of cancer.
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
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You know what? I'm really getting tired of having to explain this over and over again to people who can't be bothered to understand it. So I'm going to let Wiki do it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiatio n [wikipedia.org]
Cell phone emissions fall squarely into the latter category, and while there is some debate as to whether certain non ionizing
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No, actually it NOT common sense. Go read something besides a friggin comic book.
You are ALWAYS exposed to radiation. The only way you will stop that is to cease to be.
The good news is that much of this radiation is harmless. The bad news it that you won't be getting super powers any time soon.
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Ah, I see. You've been granted this piece of knowledge by divine inspiration, and thus you, personally, are in posession of a truth that has eluded thousands of research scientists. A mere 420,000 person study is dismissable -- after all, since you have been granted absolute truth, any research that contradicts it must be wrong, no matter how compelling. I apologise for doubting you, sir.
P.S. could you tell me what religion you are? I just want to know
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In fact, if it found anything at all that would have been absolutely horrifying, given that, as I said before, it's really only looking at 10 years of data.
I would heavily dispute that claim (which I will reproduce here for convenience):
"10 years ago cell phone usage wasn't nearly as high as it is today. Probably half, if not less."
Maybe, but the mobile phones 10 years ago were considerably more powerful and less efficient that the ones today (and used 360 degree arials) so would have significantly more 'effect', even if usage time was less.
"15 years ago it was too expensive for most people to even consider, let alone use on a daily basis."
Well,
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In a scientific argument, requiring citations for well know facts might be overkill. The grand parent didn't do so because who would sound pedantic. But if you insist, there are plenty evidences on Pubmed [nih.gov]. In particular, the thyroid cancer [nih.gov] is highly correlated with exposure to radiations.
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Whats wrong with using common sense? During the days of Audrey Hepburn (who's dress is now worth thousands of dollars, can't be that bad) it was quite common to smoke. Guess what people told the scepticists of smoking during those days? Better yet: guess who is laughing last? (this isn't meant as a sick joke. its not my fault the truth is unforgiving).
Uhhh, you do realise you've just proved my point? Back in those days it was, as you say, "common sense" that smoking was good for you -- after all, it made you lose weight, and helps you relax, and those are medical benefits, right? Well, wrong. So who's laughing last? The people who decided not to listen to common sense and go out and do scientific research into whether smoking really was good for you. And guess what? It wasn't. So now who's laughing? Anyone who listened to the scientific research
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I don't think it was every common sense that smoking was good for you. It was common sense that it was bad for you, but people did it anyway because no one explicitly came out and said, "Hey, this is bad for you, don't do it."
As far as I can tell from adverts from that period, smoking in that period was certainly generally perceived as good for you, mostly due to the efforts of tobacco companies, who portrayed it as a relaxant, weight loss agent, something active people do etc. I could of course be wrong as I have no first hand experience with that period, but I figure if smoking was generally perceived as bad for you then these ads would not be prevalent, any more than an alcohol company could realistically come up with an ad
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Today people need to be told that coffee is hot, inhaling smoke is bad for your lungs, guns are not toys, and putting a transmitter next to your head and hitting transmit for hours every day all year long might be bad for you.
Another appeal to common sense? As I've said elsewhere, If your common sense says one thing and a large body of scientific evidence says another, maybe it's time to reevaluate whether your common sense is really that common.
While I'm at it, other things that are common sense... Clearly, light is a wave. It has a wavelength, it must be a wave. If it was a particle, how could it diffract? And the idea that it can exhibit duality behavior is just stupid; it's either a wave or a particle, not both. El
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Way to pick the exceptional case mentioned in passing because it's interesting but not important at all to complain about. If the article is vaguely accurate then it looks like what they did was pull data from the cancer registry, pull data from the phone company, mush it together and shock horror people who use mobi
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The VAST majority of them also use some sort of surrogate endpoint -- measuring something OTHER than cancer.
With all that worrying, you're going to get cancer (Score:4, Insightful)
Also according to my made-up numbers, 10 years ago people used to only worry about cell phones causing cancer 5 minutes a day. These days with people like you around people worry about cell phones causing cancer 20 minutes a day! Maybe the worrying wasn't detectable back then, but it is now! We'll only know in 30 years!
Putting a device that emits radiation next to your head is harmful. How much? Who knows.
Worrying about dangers that don't exist is harmful. How much? Who knows. But if I state things as if we don't know anything about it, that totally false sense of uncertainty sure sounds scary.
My prescription includes making fun of people that don't understand science.
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Funny)
The question now is... Are you giving your mobile phone cancer?
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There's only one solution. Cut off your head and allow it to cool to ambient temperature. If you're really parano
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There is no serious study that can be 100% conclusive. If anybody comes to you preaching 100%-fool-proof numbers that is a sure tale-tale sign you are dealing with a wanker. What you can do is set extremely low chances for your study to be wrong (less than 2%, less than 1%, etc). Unfortunately the closer you get to zero, the more effort (read size of your case study) you must put into it. At some point you have to have some faith in probability.
There will always be incredulous people or con
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Case studies, otherwise known as anecdotes, aren't scientific. That's why businessmen and doctors like them so much.
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So no, you do not need to study "every mechanism by which cellphones interact with human biochemistry." The point is that you don't need to know the mechanism.
You're right though, they study can't possibly prove that cell
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I didn't mistake the type of the study. As we seem to agree, any scientific study cannot "prove" anything. It can only disprove, or fail to disprove a negative ("null") hypothesis. As I said, proof that they're safe would require disproving each way in which they could be unsafe. Not going to happen, not in the lifetime of our planet.
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However, you can show that something is safe to any arbitrary likelihood, and you DO NOT n