Cell Phones Don't Increase Chances of Brain Cancer 320
mclearn sends in news of "a very large, 30-year study of just about everyone in Scandinavia" that shows no link between mobile phone use and brain tumors. "Even though mobile telephone use soared in the 1990s and afterward, brain tumors did not become any more common during this time, the researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Some activist groups and a few researchers have raised concerns about a link between mobile phones and several kinds of cancer, including brain tumors, although years of research have failed to establish a connection. ... 'From 1974 to 2003, the incidence rate of glioma (a type of brain tumor) increased by 0.5 per cent per year among men and by 0.2 per cent per year among women,' they wrote. Overall, there was no significant pattern."
extremes (Score:3, Interesting)
Are there any levels/frequencies of RF that are known to increase cancer rates? Or could I live on top of a radio tower and do just fine?
Re:extremes (Score:5, Informative)
Are there any levels/frequencies of RF that are known to increase cancer rates?
No, radio waves are non-ionizing.
Or could I live on top of a radio tower and do just fine?
You might get cooked as in a microwave, but no cancer.
Re:extremes (Score:4, Insightful)
Radio waves are part of the EM spectrum just like light, X-Rays, and Gamma rays the only difference is the color/frequency of the EM.
That being said the frequencies used in cell phones are not ionizing. At a high enough energy level they will cause harm but that level is really high. Will it cause cancer? Not that I know of.
It doesn't matter people will still fear cell phones and other things because there is money to be made scaring people.
Re:extremes (Score:4, Insightful)
because there is money to be made scaring people.
There is political power to be gained by scaring people all around. But to make money (directly) you have to offer a dubious protection device after scaring them.
The world is going to be destroyed in a super earthquake in Nov 2012. Here buy my EarthQuake Repellent Spray by Acme Chemicals.
Re:extremes (Score:5, Funny)
Here buy my EarthQuake Repellent Spray by Acme Chemicals.
I've been using that stuff for years - works like a charm - has failed less than 0.05% of the days that I've used it!! Highly recommended! A+++++++ seller!
Re:extremes (Score:5, Insightful)
What's funny is that half of the time, they seem to do this:
"Next up, are your children eating POISON with their food? Find out, after this commercial break."
{commercials}
"And now, our feature story: Are your children eating POISON with their food? Reporter Jim Smith investigates."
{Jim Smith interviews food processing plant owner}
"So no, your children are not eating poison with their food. Next up, is your cell phone giving you cancer?"
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If the incubation period of cell phone-induced brain tumors is 20 years, then this study tells us nothing other than we need to check again in 10 years.
Then again, even studies do show increased tumor rates over a couple decades, the old truism applies -
If something takes longer than 20-30 years to kill you, humans tend to feel invincible to it unless someone has scared them sufficiently (look at how much of our society eats poorly, smokes, etc.)
Re:extremes (Score:5, Informative)
> > Are there any levels/frequencies of RF that are known to increase cancer rates?
> No, radio waves are non-ionizing.
> You might get cooked as in a microwave, but no cancer.
Cooking = damage. And the damage can increase the odds of cancer.
See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7965380.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=7182731&page=1 [go.com]
Quote: "Esophageal cancer numbers rose in regions where people preferred their tea very hot, and dropped where tea was served at a cooler temperature. "
"But unlike booze and cigarettes, Malekzadeh said evidence in his study showed it's not the chemicals in the tea that matters. "
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You are suggesting that perhaps Esophageal cancer gives you a craving for hot beverages. Or perhaps there is an external factor, like eating carrots, which gives these people both esophageal cancer and a craving for hot beverages.
Or maybe we could just take the simplest explanation and concede that in this case, causation is the most likely relationship that explains this correlation.
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It looks like someone came through and modded every comment in this story as "troll". Seems these mods are being corrected as we speak.
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"Are there any levels/frequencies of RF that are known to increase cancer rates?"
No, radio waves are non-ionizing.
"Or could I live on top of a radio tower and do just fine?"
You might get cooked as in a microwave, but no cancer.
Given the sheer volume of things that appear to cause cancer besides ionizing radiation, and given difficulties in detecting some forms of subtle DNA damage, I'd be hesitant to conclude that it -can't- cause cancer.
The first part I have no dispute with, I'm not saying there is evidence that RF causes cancer. But "You could live on a radio tower and have no cancer" isn't a safe conclusion since we can't prove the negative "RF can not cause cancer."
Can RF cause cancer via inactivation of specific cell cycle
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Specifically "radio frequency," as in only those wavelengths/frequencies used to transmit sound, image and data? Probably not.
X-rays, gamma rays, alpha/beta particles, neutrons, high frequency UV, etc - these are ionizing.
Microwaves affect the kinetic energy of dielectric materials, such as water. A different effect than ionization. I also question the penetration depth of cellphone microwaves - do they get much beyond the dermis and adipose layers?
I wonder if there are other effects besides cancer that
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(this lends a lot of weight to the idea that the people that claim to be
Re:Wifi allergy (Score:4, Insightful)
I would bet money that you could not tell, in a double-blind test, whether or not there is a 2.4GHz transmitter near you. I think you are self-deluded.
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I was so sensitive that, if someone else were turning the Wifi on and off, I could be in a different room in the house and still tell when it was on.
That's rather hard to believe. Three different studies found people unable to make the distinction (see below).
I do believe Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity exists, though, in the sense that the complaints are real.
[1] Regel, Sabine; Sonja Negovetic, Martin Roosli, Veronica Berdinas, Jurgen Schuderer, Anke Huss, Urs Lott, Niels Kuster, and Peter Achermann (August 2006). UMTS base station-like exposure, well-being, and cognitive performance [ehponline.org]. Environ Health Perspect 114 (8): 1270–5. PMID 16882538. PMC 1
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Microwave radiation is not ionizing radiation (Score:5, Informative)
In WWII,
[apocryphal stories were told of]
many shipboard radar operators were permanently sterilized by RF leakage. Don't think of it as radio waves, think of it as radiation.
No!
Think of it as heat.
The tissue burn is almost the same.
No, it's not. Radiation damages you even though you don't feel it and it doesn't burn. Microwaves heat things up, but are not ionizing. In terms of damage, they are a heat source-- they can damage because they heat you up, but they most particularly do not damage the way radiation does.
(by the way, people in the US usually think of the word "radiation" as meaning "ionizing radiation", which microwaves aren't. I'm assuming you meant it this way.)
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But they do increase.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And when I was a kid, we used to send smoke signals. Of course, we couldn't just light a big fire in a restaurant, so what we'd use were these little paper tubes, filled with dried leaves, and we could control the amount of smoke by sucking on them and then blowing the smoke into the air, sometimes in a stream, sometimes in rings, or if you were really good you could let the smoke come out of your mouth and then re-inhale it through your nose.
Unlike cellphones, this form of communication was banned in rest
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So what if it did? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if it did? Would anyone really stop using cell phones? I suspect it's kind of like knowing that the odds are pretty good that sometime in your lifetime, you'll have an automobile accident. It might even be fatal. Are you going to stop driving?
Everything is a risk. It all comes down to judging how much of a risk something is versus what you gain from taking that risk. Even if using cell phones increases your risk of brain cancer, it must be by some amount that is so minuscule that it's practically non-existent, witnessed by the fact that 95% of our population isn't walking around with brain cancer.
I like those odds.
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So what if it did? Would anyone really stop using cell phones? I suspect it's kind of like knowing that the odds are pretty good that sometime in your lifetime, you'll have an automobile accident. It might even be fatal. Are you going to stop driving?
Everything is a risk. It all comes down to judging how much of a risk something is versus what you gain from taking that risk. Even if using cell phones increases your risk of brain cancer, it must be by some amount that is so minuscule that it's practically non-existent, witnessed by the fact that 95% of our population isn't walking around with brain cancer.
I like those odds.
Good point.
Here in the US, at least, folks seem pretty risk-averse. There's always a push to make thing safer, eliminate danger, etc. That's not necessarily a bad thing... If I'm going to get in a car crash I'd rather have an airbag in my car... But it isn't necessarily a good thing either, as fewer people actually get out and experience the world around them.
There is such a thing as an acceptable risk. As you said, it's fairly certain that you'll eventually get in a car accident and maybe even die fro
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Unfortunately, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction, and that's bad news for freedom.
ps. If you stop using a cell phone after years of use, you won't feel physically and mentally ill. Not the same as smoking.
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Risk is the price of freedom, and the sooner people learn this, the sooner we can move on to improving our civilization.
Taking on certain risks is indeed a price of freedom, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't reduce certain risks as much as possible and then accept the rest. Not reducing those risks that can be reduced without much negative impact on the desired outcome is simply irresponsible. However, the opposite extreme, never doing anything in order to minimize risk is indeed a problem. It's just not the whole problem. Choosing appropriately what risks to accept and which to avoid or reduce is the name of the game. Ris
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We do need to help manage risk, and we need a government that can help facilitate major risk reduction that's not possible at a personal level.
However, more and more we see this taken to the extreme and abused. We won't want to live in a rubber box. I'm willing to accept that there are crazy people in this world that will do bad things and I'm not willing to surrender my freedom to prevent these nut jobs from doing what they'll do a
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There are a bunch of very vocal people who kinda hate everything unnatural and say everything will kill you faster, try to get laws past banning such technologies although they tend to fail most of the time sometimes these stupid laws get past. And if they don't and it is found harmful they will go "See I told you I was right next time you will listen to me!", so the next time they will ban the next harmless material by using psutoscience so they can show how much of a better person they are from everyone
Procrustean bed (Score:2)
Except, apparently, cellphones.
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Would anyone really stop using cell phones?
Many who've studied brain cancer or seen it up close would. It's one of those diseases where the sheer nastiness (of the most common variants) is so bad that no matter how small the risk, it's better to avoid it.
95% of our population isn't walking around with brain cancer.
Mean survival time is about 11 months and chances are it'll eat important enough parts of the brain before that, so they wouldn't be walking around anyway.
Unfortunately, there are few readily appa
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"No matter how small the risk"? You can't mean that. How about 1 in a googol?
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"So what if it did? Would anyone really stop using cell phones? I suspect it's kind of like knowing that the odds are pretty good that sometime in your lifetime, you'll have an automobile accident. It might even be fatal. Are you going to stop driving?"
The difference is that now people who get brain cancer won't have someone to blame. In our modern culture and legal system, there simply is no such thing as "shit happens". If something bad happens, it is ALWAYS someone's fault. There is no room for what w
Re:So what if it did? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Second-hand... (Score:3, Funny)
OK, OK, I'm not totally serious with this (it's more a riff on the whole second-hand smoke issue), but still...
Invert square (Score:2)
I'm not totally serious with this (it's more a riff on the whole second-hand smoke issue), but still...
I know you're joking but...
If the person in the room with you or in the car with you is using a cell phone, does it increase your chance of brain tumors?
The law of invert square tells us that your increase in chance of having a brain tumour are infinitesimal compared to his/her (which are already too low to be considered anything but negligible according to the study).
Unless you stick your head right next to her/his, that is.
The same law dictates that you'll be much safer if you stick your (high power emitting might go up to ~2W) phone into your pocket and instead stick some low power transmitter next to your ear (like a Class2 or
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Your use of the law of inverse squares indicates you have some scientific education that you remember and still use.
Perhaps the people who are behind this myth (because I believe it is one) may not be so keen to use such concepts.
The people I have heard spouting such ideas took offence when I tried to bring logic, science or rationality into the discussion. Apparently, these are the concepts that got us into these problems in the first place...
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Look, conspiracy theorists/etc. simply like to think they're smart, that they have the mental capacity to see the reality clearer than anybody else.
Obviously they start to get unpleasant when you remind them that they're stupid, even if only by mentioning "spooky terms".
BTW, regarding this thread...is there ANY place with sensible reviews of bluetooth headsets?
Same thing as the wifi scare... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is so much potential for online news. They could be using, omg, hyperlinks to connect the topic to the relevant terms and field of science. I wish I would hear about p-values and numbers in scientific notation! I think the vast majority of people would have actually no problem understanding news that is expressed not in Libraries of Congress, but in proper SI units. I want reporters to link to the original scientific paper they are writing a piece about or what's better: ask for and pressure scientists into being able to distribute the paper itself.
I want to read news with an Atom feed aggregator, where I find the paper the article refers to as a directly downloadable content.
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They aren't dumbing it down to the "stupidest" person consuming news, just the 50th percentile. This gets the largest viewer/readership which translates to more ad revenue. Just say what the 50th percentile wants to hear and you automatically have the largest market, ala Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
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See what I did there?
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No, you are right in your analysis. Dumbing anything down to any level (be it the stupidest person, or just the 50th percentile) IS demeaning to a large number of people (the 49th percentile and above, for example). I was just saying you don't want to dumb it down to the stupidest person, because by doing that, you are missing out on a large market of just slightly stupid people out there.
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Actually, both Limbaugh and Fox News succeed because so few other outlets in the media discuss news from a non-liberal viewpoint. Maybe they are targeting the 50th percentile, maybe not, but Daily Show/Colbert Report are probably targeting the same range (just more leftward/younger/funnier). This is why Dennis Miller can't keep a show on mainstream TV, because he targets the 90th percentile.
On the other hand, the Fox News website panders to the 25th percentile. I swear, half the stuff on there these days
Perhaps you overestimate... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the vast majority of people would have actually no problem understanding news that is expressed not in Libraries of Congress, but in proper SI units.
I'm blowing an earlier moderation to a post so I can comment on this. I think that perhaps you overestimate your fellow members of society. The tolerance of most people for anything even remotely resembling detail is pretty low. You can test this by trying to have a discussion with family/friends/people on the bus about why firewalls are important o
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There is a they, I was referring to the precise group of journalists/online outlets who get paid to deliver/disseminate news. What c
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Nicely said. I once read about an interview with Steve Jobs, at around the time that the started the NeXT Computer Company, and I was impressed when he said something similar to your comment. I found the quote in WikiQuotes:
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."
And like him, I agree: that's a far more depressing thought than a mere conspiracy. It means that, as you say, there is no they; we are building the world as we want it; by inertia and laziness, not by force. That people--us--are actually that dispassionate and lethargy by our own na
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The relevance, I think is that "the networks giving people what they want" i
Good! (Score:2, Funny)
Needs "duh" tag... (Score:3, Interesting)
This story needs the "duh" tag. Radio frequency has been around much longer than cell phones. If RF caused cancer, we would have known it long before the advent of cell phones.
BAH! EXPERTS! WHAT DO THEY KNOW? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sick and tired of "Experts" telling me how to do things. When you spend your whole life studying one thing, you end up knowing nothing. Common sense is all you need.
Now I'm off to read the horoscope to see if I should buy a lottery ticket.
Re:BAH! EXPERTS! WHAT DO THEY KNOW? (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't know Jenny McCarthy had a slashdot account
Well, sure, in Scandanavians (Score:3, Funny)
This study shows Scandinavians don't get any increased tumors. Don't try to pass that off as evidence that Mericans won't. Haven't you heard all the complaints -- do you think people are crazy?
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do you think people are crazy?
Is this a trick question?
Bad Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Cell Phones Don't Increase Chances of Brain Cancer on Friday December 04, @09:23AM
That isn't a very good title. The article doesn't state that scell phones don't increase chances of brain cancer. It just says there is no scientific link. These are two very different things.
A scientific journal artical would be very unlikely to state that cell phones don't increase the chances of brain cancer. It would be more likely to say something like.. It was determined with reasonable probability that there is no link between cell phone usage and glioma and meningioma.
Credible scie
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If my calculations are correct... (Score:3, Interesting)
in a 29 year period rates have gone up:
14.5% for males.
5.8% for females.
And this isn't significant how? I'd say a steady yearly increase like that has to have SOME factor somewhere worth discovering - even if it may not be cell phones specifically.
Police RADAR (Score:2)
Seriously! If they think numbers like these are a wash then please make me 14.5% LESS likely to get cancer in the next study, since apparently they think it's all just statistical noise anyway. Also, talking about recent upward trends in use over the whole population tells us nothing. Smoking for ten years won't give you cancer either -- you need to follow the same people for many decades.
Anyway what about the reports of higher incidence of testicular cancer among traffic cops who use RADAR? That's not
My professional opinion... (Score:2, Funny)
As a loyal slashdotter, I refuse to even hover over the link of TFA, but my absolutely non-educated guess is that although cell phones may not have been around for 30 years (if it weighs over 10 kgs, it's NOT a cell phone in my book), they studied the past 30 years to get a baseline. First 10 years or so as a baseline of how the population was doing in a pre-cellphone era, then 20 years of actual usage.
PS: for those still stuck in non-metric systems, 10 kgs is like a kadzillion ounces.
Verdict: Inconclusive (Score:2)
It is possible, Deltour's team wrote, that it takes longer than 10 years for tumours caused by mobile phones to turn up, that the tumours are too rare in this group to show a useful trend, or that there are trends but in subgroups too small to be measured in the study.
It is just as possible that mobile phones do not cause brain tumours, they added.
If correlation != causation, then surely lack of correlation != lack of causation. Right?
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Long term exposure (Score:2)
That's a big increase (Score:2)
0.5%/year for 29 years is 1.005^29 = 1.1556 or 15.56% increase for men, 5.97% for women.
That leads to a few hypotheses from me:
1) Men think with their cock (the cellphone is usually kept in trouser pockets)
2) We've gotten slowly better at finding these cancers (but why is the increase that much higher in men?)
3) Some other carcinogen in
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Granted, they live longer, but I doubt the average life span has increased that much for those two groups in that short a time span. The article does say that better techniques have made it easier to diagnose the cancers, but there's still a big gap between male and female.
Actually, checking with Dansk Statistik [www.dst.dk] (Denmark's statistical bureau) the average life span in 1987-1988 was 71.84 for men and 77.70 for women, and it was 76.26/80.70 in 2007-2008. That's 6.15% for men and 3.86% for women over a 20 year
Come back later (Score:2)
There are useful things that can be a potential health hazard: Cars, mobile phones etc.
And then there are useless items that are known to be health hazards, like tobacco.
People worried about the former should take a break until we have banned the latter.
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Well, the cigarette is certainly fucking you. If your stinking smoke did not drift over to those of us who choose not to ingest poison and ruin our lungs irreversibly, and my taxes did not go toward futilly trying to heal you sick bastards who smoke away your money instead of investing in your health, you would have a point.
The "box" should not cost two bucks, not seven bucks, it should not be sold period. Do you really like to finance an industry that tricks poor children in developing countries into ruini
study bluetooth next (Score:2)
all those middle aged chunky guys walking around in corporate casual golf tee shirts and khakis (and its ALWAYS middle aged chunky guys in corporate casual golf tee shirts and khakis), with a blinking blue light permanently affixed to their ear, have to be nuking some sort of brain tissue
a desperate ploy to feel important and in touch, but just winding up looking like a wannabe lando calrissian assistant in cloud city
well they went up 0.5% per year (Score:2, Interesting)
so isn't _something_ causing them ?
Study analysed the wrong (old) tech... (Score:3, Informative)
This is an outdated study.
The 1974 to 2003 period was dominated by the old analog 800-850 Mhz AMP's tech.
Modern CDMA, GSM tech is of W2K vintage.
Same goes for higher frequencies being used, now 1.6 to 2.2Ghz..
Likewise for portable phones.. 1.7/46/49Mhz.. 900Mhz, newer 2.4Ghz, 5.4Ghz.
Each step up in frequency increases the dV across brain tissue by a cubed function.
I.E. More energy absorbed in a smaller volume(HALF WAVELENGTH).
Cell phones also adjust their output power based on received signal strength.
Longer wave AMP's frequencies had a lot more penetrating power/reduced absorption which reduces transmission power. The converse is true for higher frequencies and absorption.
Modern cell phones reduced form factor has also increased exposure.
Smaller/tiny radiating surface centered around ear, verses old bag phones with separate phone style handsets.
Likewise, per minute costs have dropped, thus increasing usage and individual exposure several fold.
Then there is nature of organically catalyzed reactions where tiny amounts of energy are used to shift reaction equilibrium's. Even small delta V potentials can affect outcomes..
Lot's of huge issues not addressed by this outdated/invalid study.
Hint: Scandinavia is not US (Score:5, Insightful)
NMT dominated the 80's (in fact, it was the biggest cellular network in the world back then...) and the beginning of the 90's there. Introduced almost three decades ago. Rapidly lost relevance with the large scale introduction of GSM networks in the mid 90's (which begun in 91 in Scandinavia BTW)
And you dismiss the most important thing - that the study didn't look at the specific hypothetical mechanisms in detail, just at the prevalence of cancer in relation to cellphones adoption.
It found NOTHING. Which is especially significant given partially sensibly sounding "complications" in the latter part of your post.
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That may be... back in 2003. As far as I know, the ubiquity of the device has increased substantially since the beginning of the decade. Back at the start of the decade, it was still a strange thought to consider giving up your land-line and keep only a cell-phone. Since then, we've seen the introduction of cell phones tailored specifically to children and the ubiquity of the devices permiating most parts of our society and culture.
This is a "30 year study" that takes into account about 10 years of actua
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a study from Scandinavia, not from the technologically backwards US.
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Hum, I think you misunderstood my point. It's not about reaching a critical mass to increase your risk, it's about reaching a critical mass to increase the incidence of cancer in a statistically significant manner.
If only a small percentage of the population uses cell phones during the time encompassed by the study, then any increase in the occurrence of cancer may not be different than statistical noise, unless that particular segment of the population was isolated in the study, which I don't think is cle
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Lots of things changed between 1974 and 2003. It could be that cell phones do increase the chance of brain cancer, but these other factors counteract it. To accurately determine whether or not cell phones affect brain cancer rates you need to control all the other variables. Otherwise, it's just like looking at the correlation between lack of pirates and global warming and saying that one causes the other.
Or it could be that the strength of the signal has changed. Or that the actual composition of the signal has changed. There are so many variables that I do not see any valid connection being made.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Or it could be that the strength of the signal has changed. Or that the actual composition of the signal has changed. There are so many variables that I do not see any valid connection being made.
Seriously? If you have several variables (as you claim) and observe no meaningful changes in the brain cancer rate it leaves you with the following outcomes:
1. Some radio waves DO cause cancer, but some radio waves also decrease it at the exact same rate, and those counteracting radio waves interacted just enough to cause the results of the study to indicate that the original waves which may or may not have been causing cancer to be cancelled out at just the right times.
2. Radio Waves do cause cancer, but something new introduced at exactly the same time is counteracting that. This new 'thing' must have occured and been adopted at the same rate as cell phones.
3. Radio Waves do not cause brain cancer.
I'll save you the trouble of trying to rationalize 1 and 2. Just pick 3.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Informative)
I'll save you the trouble of trying to rationalize 1 and 2. Just pick 3.
I'm William of Ockham [wikipedia.org], and I approve [wikipedia.org] of this message.
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Seriously I agree but ockham's razor is not a proof of anything. At best it can be used to force people to keep looking/asking questions.
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Or the most likely reason: people are getting older. Once you beat most of everything else it's basically either cell regeneration failing to keep up or cell regeneration going haywire that's going to nail you. Terminal diseases like brain cancer where we don't know the cause will simply tend to get more prevalent by default.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't control "all other variables." Otherwise you could prove a negative. It's impossible to prove that cell phones don't cause cancer, but you can say that a large number of people have been using them for the last thirty years with no apparent increase in cancer cases, so it's extremely unlikely that cell phones are responsible for cancer. Especially when their use has skyrocketed and cancer cases have not.
So what this is saying is essentially there is no evidence for cell phones causing cancer. If you want to argue that they do, you'd have to come up with a pretty strong argument.
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You can't control all variables, but conditions have to be, aside from the variable you're looking at, at least similar for the two groups. Here we don't have that at all.
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"Lots of things changed between 1974 and 2003." (Score:5, Interesting)
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Correlation is not causation
No it isn't but, the actual quote is "correlation does not imply any specific causation". Correlation does imply (not prove, that's for math) some causation. Lack of correlation, likewise strongly implies a lack of causation. It is inductive logical refutation for the theory that cell phones increase rates of brain cancer... the scientific method at work.
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Yes, and any well performed study will have accounted for those confounding variables.
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I agree, till we can prove, conclusively, that there are no giant, invisible, floating space gods looking down upon us and giving cancer to the ones who step out of their place by using 'magic talkie' boxes, I'm going with using a cell phone can lead to your painful and slow death.
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Lots of things changed between 1974 and 2003. It could be that cell phones do increase the chance of brain cancer, but these other factors counteract it.
Not bloody likely. Not only would these mysterious "other factors" have had to coincidentally lowered brain cancer rate to the same degree cell phone usage presumably increased it, but it would have had to do it at the exact same time. This theory gets cut away by Occam's Razor pretty early.
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The "exact same time" thing is not a random coincidence at all. It's because technology has been advancing so fast, which makes a whole bunch of things change at the same time.
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You can't really use "correlation is not causation" line to assert a lack of something though.
The original assertion is that cell phones can cause cancer. If the incidence of cancer is not going up in any meaningful way though then the assertion is completely baseless. It'd be like me yelling that eating tree bark makes you taller and when no data supports that claiming "Yeah but other factors might be at work making you shorter again.". Ok, yeah that's a remote possibility, but it's a baseless assumptio
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This is an abuse of the "correlation is not causation" principle. This study is showing the LACK of causation, not causation.
Lack of correlation is strong evidence of lack of causation, even if the contrapositive isn't necessarily true. The parent post said that looking at t
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Re:Which is bad? (Score:5, Funny)
The hard white part that surrounds the soft inner parts is bad. It should be removed before eating.
Re:B*S (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the f*k used cells 30 years ago?! Also, there is no constant mass to measure as the amount of cell owners 10 years ago is far from the one now, so this is pure faked corporatism support,
OK, try to wrap your little brain around this: there is no statistically significant increase in brain cancer from 1974 (when there were no cell phones) to 2003 (when there were a shitload). If brain cancer didn't change, but cell phone usage went from 0 to "a whole bunch", the conclusion is that cell phones don't cause brain cancer.
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My sister was just fine for years. Then I bought a pet rock. After I got the pet rock, my sister was bitten by a moose. How can the government allow these things to be sold?!!
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The peer review process already takes care of that. If the data is correct, and the analysis is correct, then the conclusions are likely correct. If you still think the funding matters, then repeat the experiment. If you get the same results, then repeat it again. Repeat as much as you want. If you're still getting the same results, then accept the conclusions as stated.
Complaining about who funded the research is a waste of effort. Somebody with a stake in the results funded the research; otherwise, why di
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And there is security vs payola in the way of "if you get caught, that's your career" and is generally not worth it. Also the idea is that your results are repeatable, and your reputation is severely damaged if you are publishing bad science.
I also don't know where you are seeing the conflicting views in this. Some concerns have been expressed in the pa
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Masturbate before sex.
Several times.
As a side benefit, it'll make you forget the testicular cancer!