Cell Phones Aren't Killing Bees After All 253
radioweather writes "A couple of weeks ago, there was a nutty idea discussed in The Independent that claimed the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones was causing bees to become disoriented, preventing them from returning to the hive. The flimsy cell phone argument was used to explain Colony Collapse Disorder. Today the LA Times reports that researchers at UC San Francisco have uncovered what they believe to be the real culprit: a parasitic fungus. Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country."
occam (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone repeat after me: (Score:4, Insightful)
Repeat 100x.
Apply to all the other dumbass pop-sci suburban "crises". Cell phones cause brain cancer. MMR vaccine and autism. Etc.
Concider this (Score:5, Insightful)
Article doesn't claim cause found (Score:1, Insightful)
"Uncovered...the real culprit." Oh, really? From TFA:
"But the results are 'highly preliminary' and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. 'We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved.' "
So basically there's as much evidence in support of this fungus theory as the cell-phone theory.
Criminy, sensationalize much?
Re:Cellphone don't kill bees... (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. Incidentally, this is why Exxon and the republicans can manipulate the debate on global climate change so easily, they prop up one loony with demonstratably false data or assertions and now global climate change is "in debate" when the reality is that the population, nor the reporters disseminating the falsity can be bothered to distinguish between good scientific work and bad.
Don't think too hard ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I see more and more in common media that everybody tries to blame everything on new technology going from cancer to depression, blamed on cell phones to video games. Yet, they don't bother looking or trying to understand the deeper reasons like our old friends in the mushroom... euhm, fungi world. Is it an artifact of ancient religion or superstition maybe? (Like the sun and moon worshipers, or offerers of livestock and enemies, witchhunting?)
Did it occur to you that human stupidity has a lot to answer for? Individually we are quite clever animals, but we're also the only creature which will pollute our own drinking water, our own air and poison our own food.
We give the rule of unintended consequences meaning.
Re:Well, DUH (Score:2, Insightful)
A. Flies do not "happily" buzz around inside running microwaves. Not for long anyways.
B. Do not lump "vegans" in with "deluded hippies." It is not our fault PETA paid some assclown to burn down animal testing facilities and spray paint VEGAN POWER on the ashes. The majority of vegans are not stupid protest mongering hippies.
Re:Cellphone don't kill bees... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why blame everything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
News: Bees are dying in great numbers!
Reaction: What's changed recently? Ahah! Global warming! Cell phones! VoIP! AppleTV!
It's really natural to think "What's different?" when something bad happens for the first time in memory. Even if the whole world was atheist I can't imagine things would be much different. Unless you assume everyone would automatically have an I.Q. of 150. Not all atheists are intelligent after all.
Re:Well, DUH (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why blame everything else? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the real story here is how poorly the media are equipped to deal with science or technology stories. They don't have enough scientifically literate reporters. They apparently can't find any reporters who are even interested in science or technology.
Anybody who takes Science News, which every journalist should has been aware of the bee fungus story for years now. Stories about cell phone radiation have been around for decades.
But somehow, when it comes time to cover a story like this, the only people they can find to send are people whose familiarity with these issues is limited having heard that cell phones cause brain tumors from somebody they can't remember.
Re:Nosema Ceranae? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the results are "highly preliminary" and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. "We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved."
N. ceranae is "one of many pathogens" in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University. "By itself, it is probably not the culprit
This doesn't refute anything that was put forth before. It doesn't demonstrate any causality whatsoever.
Moving bees the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Monsanto's fault (Score:2, Insightful)
Some are saying [zmag.org] (not me, I don't know enough about it) it could be genetically modified food crops.
The rationale being that genes have been demonstrated to jump species, specifically, even, from crops into microbes in the guts of bees (RTFA).
Just posting this because I heard about it and it sounds somewhat reasonable, not because I'm advocating against genetic modification of anything.
Re:Why blame everything else? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are extremely numerous examples of old behavior whose results have finally stacked up sufficiently to cause a problem. Global warming is one of them. The destruction of the Southern coastline of the US, the destruction of the flora that causes drainage to work properly, and related issues made it possible for hurricane katrina to wipe new orleans mostly off the map. Mercury mining in Lake County, California, eventually (but not immediately) made it unsafe to eat fish or drink water from the lake. (This one's a local example, sorry.) Deforestation of the amazon has led to decreased rainfall - it's been going on for decades but it's only now that the amazon is in danger of drying up and going away.
Anyway, it's really not reasonable at all, it was a knee-jerk reaction from people who don't understand physics, just like my girlfriend won't let me put my microwave in the kitchen because she thinks that it's going to harm her somehow, even if it's never in use while she's in the room.
Re:More proof of global warming (Score:3, Insightful)
While blaming everything on global warming is stupid, taking the opposite position that global warming is harmless is equally, if not more stupid.
Re:Nosema Ceranae? (Score:2, Insightful)
This doesn't refute anything that was put forth before. It doesn't demonstrate any causality whatsoever.
Neither did the cell-phone argument. The cell phone argument can't be refuted because it didn't put anything solid forward to begin with, it was more or less self-refuting. At least this, although inconclusive, is still a lot more solid that what we had before.
Re:Cellphone don't kill bees... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cellphone don't kill bees... (Score:3, Insightful)
Global Warming has become an accepted idea in scientific circles, and any who say otherwise, or even attempt to be rational about new research, or saying otherwise are tossed without even examining the results, or just flat-out attacked. Both sides are completely abhorrent to the thought that either could be wrong, and due to that, we'll all just have to wait another 30 years or so when the climate takes a downturn. The process begins a new, 30 years more of empirical data to skew either way, and by then, media will be even better at spinning it.
Re:Swing that razor one more time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bee colonies have been under stress in recent years as more beekeepers have resorted to crisscrossing the country with 18-wheel trucks full of bees in search of pollination work. These bees may suffer from a diet that includes artificial supplements, concoctions akin to energy drinks and power bars. In several states, suburban sprawl has limited the bees' natural forage areas.
So we have a number of possible factors implicated here: (1) the bees aren't properly nourished, which will make them more vulnerable to infection, (2) lots of hives are being crammed into tight quarters, which makes it easy for disease to spread from hive to hive, (3) bees are being moved from place to place, so the infection is being spread all across the country, rather than being localized.
It actually seems remarkably similar to the kinds of issues that are thought to have led to the emergence of epidemic diseases among humans after the rise of civilization: you started cramming lots of people together into cities so transmission was easier, lots of them were poor and malnourished, so they were easier to infect, and then they were able to travel very long distances (boats, horses, roads, etc.)and spread the infection much faster.
Sifting through the facts and sensationalism. (Score:2, Insightful)
With the climate change issue, people often claim that there exists a consensus among scientists that indeed climate change is real and is a result of human activities, however again you almost never get any citation or way to verify these claims.
Not is all lost though! It can be very easy to find out the facts for yourself, unfortunately very few people realize this in large part because of the inadequate education provided in the mandatory science classes in high school...but that's another matter. In the case of the bees, and the public health risks of cell phones that the article assures us are real and very scary, you can go to a website like http://aps.org/ [aps.org], click on "Policy and Advocacy" and then, "APS Statements" where you will see a statement titled, "Electric and Magnetic Fields and Public Health" (http://aps.org/policy/statements/05_3.cfm [aps.org]) click on it and you'll get a very clear, concise, nontechnical, authoritative stance on the issue at hand. Statements like these, by societies such as the APS, define scientific consensus. You aren't likely to get much better or more satisfying or useful answers than that unless you spend 10 or so years getting a PhD in the field and then a few more years after that researching the topic.
I know this wasn't exactly a short post, but I hope it is clear and helpful for you. Finding out the facts on your own is the best way to go about things dealing with science. In this case it took me about 30 seconds to find what I was looking for to make this post (the APS statement) so it isn't like there is a big time investment to find out for sure. You can probably find statements like this in less time than you would otherwise spend thinking "who should I believe?" Remember, journalists usually aren't scientists, they usually have no idea what they are writing about but even so some do an excellent job; don't trust articles that don't back up claims with verifiable sources. The New York Times generally does a pretty good job (even though their journalists need to learn to stop using the word "theory" in the vernacular).
*They do cite some sources in the article, but they make many claims that go without any citation.
Wikipedia article on the APS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Physical_So
Re:Change the headline (Score:3, Insightful)
By the same token, too many enviromentalists are far too quick to attribute ill effects to cell phones without any evidence to backup their opinion. My guess is that because cell phone users can be quite obnoxious it befits their sense of justice if the could cause cancer or kill bees.
Re:Why blame everything else? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Show me the results of your double-blind trial. If you personally know "a number of people" who can do this, it should be quite easy to perform. After performing it, you reasonably claim that you have evidence. After getting your study published in a peer-reviewed journal and your results reproduced elsewhere, you can reasonably claim that it is well-known. Until then, stop saying crazy things.
Re:Nosema Ceranae? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) A parasite, known to kill bees, and found widely in bee-hives, is killing bees, contributing to their declined population.
or
2) Despite a complete lack of evidence, despite the sudden decrease in population, despite years of low populations having happened before the introduction of cell phones; cell phones did it.