I'm a bit confused:
'Research author Professor Patricia McKinney, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at the Leeds University, said: "For regular mobile phone users, there was no increased risk of developing a glioma associated with mobile phone use."
'She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone.
'The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users.
'Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.
'Another research team member, Professor Anthony Swerdlow of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: "It would be very misleading to the public to say that because there was a positive that this (mobile phones) causes brain tumours."
'He explained: "If we had found a raised risk overall and it was all coming from one side, I would believe there was a real case.
'"But as there is a drop on the opposing side - the overall risk is not raised.
'"That makes it rather unlikely that there is a raised risk."'
So, if I'm reading this correctly, using a cell phone on one side of your head increases your likeliness of getting cancer on that side of your head but decreases your likeliness of getting cancer on the other side of your head, so, because it's a zero-sum result, using a cell phone doesn't increase your odds of getting cancer?
I'm not trying to be difficult, but this sounds similar to research that shows that if you use your right hand to poke a lion, you have a higher chance of losing your right hand and an overall lower chance of losing your left hand, so poking a lion with your right hand makes you no more likely to lose a hand than not poking a lion.
Or am I missing something here?
4 comments:
The problem as the epidemiological studies are statistically problematic. It's very difficult to get large enough datasets, and data gathering often relies on the memories or subjective judgements of numerous individual doctors or even patients.
Each of those factors contributes to noise-- ie, increased margin of error. I'd regard a 4% increase in cancer risk as big enough to affect my behavior, but if the margin of error in the study is 3% (or 6%), then how is one to interpret the results.
Researchers will try to increase the size of their dataset by collecting the data from multiple studies and examining it as a whole. This has its own problems. Because different studies will use different methodologies, means of gathering data, and types of data presented, correlating multiple datasets requires normalizing the data to common scales and formats. The normalization process is inherently subjective. I asked a biostatistician friend "So what do you do about that?"
Her response was "you get depressed and think about quitting your job."
On top of all the foregoing, researchers may know a lot about their particular disciplines, but they don't necessarily have a good grasp of statistics. One study found that 11% of scientific studies surveyed contained significant statistical errors. Oosp.
Basically, we are all fucked.
OK, not really, but it means that some answers will take a lot of time and study before they become clear. The science press is prone to ignoring this point, reporting the results of a single study as conclusive, while practitioners know not to draw conclusions until the results have been replicated multiple times.
Excellent points, good sir.
My dad is a physicist who's spent the better part of his career working on the biological effects of ELF (extremely low frequency) electromagnetic fields. Further, he's just coming off of a stint as editor of Bioelectromagnetics, so he's pretty well informed about this kind of thing. I've asked him in the past what's all this about phones and cancer, and his short answer is that there's really not enough evidence either way to assert with confidence that there is, or isn't, an increased risk.
For those who are really nervous about whatever risk there might or might not be, remember the linear-square law. Doubling the antenna's distance from your head cuts your exposure to its emissions by a factor of four. Wearing a headset and keeping your phone at arm's length should drop your exposure by at least 90%.
Yah, I tend to use a headset just in case. Mad props to your father, however, for lending that voice of expertise.
I think my post may have been a little confusing; I was more pointing to the weird (and, I thought, humorous) wording in the article than to the actual dangers of cell phones. However, more people have left comments about cell phones and such.
Sigh. I'm much clearer in my spoken voice.
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