Should I no longer be carrying around my cell phone, or wearing a smartwatch, or using a bluetooth headset?
Are there any health effects?
A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.
It is not disputed that electromagnetic fields above certain levels can trigger biological effects. Experiments with healthy volunteers indicate that short-term exposure at the levels present in the environment or in the home do not cause any apparent detrimental effects. Exposures to higher levels that might be harmful are restricted by national and international guidelines. The current debate is centred on whether long-term low level exposure can evoke biological responses and influence people's well being.
Conclusions from scientific research
In the area of biological effects and medical applications of non-ionizing radiation approximately 25,000 articles have been published over the past 30 years. Despite the feeling of some people that more research needs to be done, scientific knowledge in this area is now more extensive than for most chemicals. Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields. However, some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.
Electromagnetic fields and cancer
Despite many studies, the evidence for any effect remains highly controversial. However, it is clear that if electromagnetic fields do have an effect on cancer, then any increase in risk will be extremely small. The results to date contain many inconsistencies, but no large increases in risk have been found for any cancer in children or adults.
A number of epidemiological studies suggest small increases in risk of childhood leukemia with exposure to low frequency magnetic fields in the home. However, scientists have not generally concluded that these results indicate a cause-effect relation between exposure to the fields and disease (as opposed to artifacts in the study or effects unrelated to field exposure). In part, this conclusion has been reached because animal and laboratory studies fail to demonstrate any reproducible effects that are consistent with the hypothesis that fields cause or promote cancer. Large-scale studies are currently underway in several countries and may help resolve these issues.
Summary of the ICNIRP exposure guidelinesICNIRP, EMF guidelines, Health Physics 74, 494-522 (1998)
European power frequency Mobile phone base station frequency Microwave oven frequency Frequency 50 Hz 50 Hz 900 MHz 1.8 GHz 2.45 GHz Electric field (V/m) Magnetic field (µT) Power density (W/m2) Power density (W/m2) Power density (W/m2) Public exposure limits 5 000 100 4.5 9 10 Occupational exposure limits 10 000 500 22.5 45
Cellphones have been around for long enough now that I suspect we'd be seeing some really clear cause-effect data if they did indeed cause health problems. More likely the increases in some conditions are due to an increase in correct diagnosis whereas previously many people would have died simply of "natural causes".
Oh, where to begin?
I've watched about half of the video and from that I got the following - Very little scientific research has been conducted in to the safety of cellular phones or other microwave transmitting devices on the human body.
Conclusions from scientific research
In the area of biological effects and medical applications of non-ionizing radiation approximately 25,000 articles have been published over the past 30 years. Despite the feeling of some people that more research needs to be done, scientific knowledge in this area is now more extensive than for most chemicals. Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields. However, some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.
I've watched about half of the video and from that I got the following - Very little scientific research has been conducted in to the safety of cellular phones or other microwave transmitting devices on the human body. THAT's IT. Perhaps you are all reading way to much in to it, clearly the lecture was dumbed down for the audience.
On paper, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, she is very accomplished in her field so why do the above commentators presume some kind of trickery?
For example arguments like 'cell phones have been around for 20 years and half of the worlds population has not died' or the 'surely we would have seen an effect by now' ideas are just about as good of an argument as someone saying the world is flat because they think it's true.
If no one is looking at an issue then it seems conceivable that any ill effects would go unnoticed, and I doubt she is talking about people dropping dead left right every-time they pick up the phone. It's more about how average life expectancy changes over generations, or the increase in cancers in a wider population on average, AND how all that plays in to long term government health programs, planning and regulation.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.They really do. This is the basic idea behind Bayesian inference: if a hypothesis is unlikely, strong evidence must be adduced to make it plausible. The more extraordinary the hypothesis, the stronger evidence required.
One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.Let's say you have two friends. One claims they have a pet dog. The other says they have a pet that is a furry four legged creature from a small planet orbiting Sirius. Are you honestly going to apply the same standard for the quality and depth of evidence you require when asking these two people to support their claims? The one who says they have a pet dog might really have a creature from a planet around Sirius, but if it looks and acts like a dog are you really going to probe further, unless something strange and suspicious crops up? Are you really not going to probe the friend making the extraordinary claim a lot deeper?
One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.Let's say you have two friends. One claims they have a pet dog. The other says they have a pet that is a furry four legged creature from a small planet orbiting Sirius. Are you honestly going to apply the same standard for the quality and depth of evidence you require when asking these two people to support their claims? The one who says they have a pet dog might really have a creature from a planet around Sirius, but if it looks and acts like a dog are you really going to probe further, unless something strange and suspicious crops up? Are you really not going to probe the friend making the extraordinary claim a lot deeper?
My complaint is about a phrase that involves hyperbole and your counterclaim involves more hyperbole. In what way does the evidence about this purported creature from the dog star have to be qualitatively different to the evidence of ownership of an Earth dog? You've deliberately chosen an example where the quantity of evidence required is orders of magnitude different because it requires a massive space travel program as a starting point in gathering evidence for one case, whereas for the other case common knowledge can be assumed.
Let's make a more realistic example that doesn't offer five orders of magnitude of difficulty of proof between the alternatives (we all know what a dog looks like, we don't have the super-luminal travel capabilities to assess what's a normal pet from the vicinity of Sirius).
A dishevelled man begging in the street claims to be the Earl of Iveneverheardofit, so does a well dressed man you meet walking out of the House of Lords. The former is an extraordinary claim, the latter not. Yet the ordinary evidence of a passport bearing a photograph and the man's name serves as proof or disproof in either case. An extraordinary claim, ordinary evidence.
I challenge you to come up with any realistic case, rather than a flight of pure fantasy or theology, that can only be proved with extra-ordinary evidence and doesn't (like theology) require magical thinking.
Speaking of cliches, there's also "correlation does not imply causation" -- of course it does, you just have to be much more rigorous in applying it. Namely, you need to show correlation with the hypothesized causes, and uncorrelation with a reasonable number of possible alternatives.
I challenge you to come up with any realistic case, rather than a flight of pure fantasy or theology, that can only be proved with extra-ordinary evidence and doesn't (like theology) require magical thinking.
In what way does the evidence about this purported creature from the dog star have to be qualitatively different...?
One is the public's loss of trust in public figures. Once upon a time, if public heath officials had said 'nothing to look at here', the public would have taken note and stopped worrying.
Speaking of cliches, there's also "correlation does not imply causation" -- of course it does, you just have to be much more rigorous in applying it. Namely, you need to show correlation with the hypothesized causes, and uncorrelation with a reasonable number of possible alternatives.
Speaking of epidemiology -- look back at one of the earliest examples, John Snow's work on the cholera epidemic in London. People were dying in droves. It turned out, sufficient evidence to support his claim was merely removing the lever from the local well pump. People stopped dying. Like, by orders of magnitude