OMG!! Stop using your WiFi!!!!

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#960119 1-Jan-2014 21:38

zenourn:
joker97: This can't be that hard to proof or disproof ?

Take a congested place with wifi everywhere sms I mean everywhere. measure the incidence of said condition and you have a correlation.

Singapore.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. The problem with observational studies is that there may be lurking uncontrolled variables that explain any difference observed. For example, if comparing Singapore to another country any difference in the incidence of cancer could also be attributed to the genetic makeup of the population, diet, local weather, specific pathogens in the environment, etc.

And even if you do find a strong correlation, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

This was beaten into us rigorously back in the day when I learned data analysis. One of the commonest mistakes that junk science makes, over and over, is to assert that since event Y followed event X then event Y must have been caused by event X. Or, in this case, if areas with high levels of X (ie WiFi) also have high levels of Y (eg brain tumours) then WiFi causes brain tumours. It's the good old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that we were taught to avoid. People seize on a correlation because they think it validates what they are trying to prove, even when it clearly doesn't. It the hypothetical example I used, it would be just as valid (and equally nonsensical) to claim that brain tumours emit WiFi radiation, because places where there are more tumours found have higher measured WiFi emissions.

I'm coming over all nostalgic......

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#960126 1-Jan-2014 21:47

JimmyH:
zenourn:
joker97: This can't be that hard to proof or disproof ?

Take a congested place with wifi everywhere sms I mean everywhere. measure the incidence of said condition and you have a correlation.

Singapore.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. The problem with observational studies is that there may be lurking uncontrolled variables that explain any difference observed. For example, if comparing Singapore to another country any difference in the incidence of cancer could also be attributed to the genetic makeup of the population, diet, local weather, specific pathogens in the environment, etc.

And even if you do find a strong correlation, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

This was beaten into us rigorously back in the day when I learned data analysis. One of the commonest mistakes that junk science makes, over and over, is to assert that since event Y followed event X then event Y must have been caused by event X. Or, in this case, if areas with high levels of X (ie WiFi) also have high levels of Y (eg brain tumours) then WiFi causes brain tumours. It's the good old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that we were taught to avoid. People seize on a correlation because they think it validates what they are trying to prove, even when it clearly doesn't. It the hypothetical example I used, it would be just as valid (and equally nonsensical) to claim that brain tumours emit WiFi radiation, because places where there are more tumours found have higher measured WiFi emissions.

I'm coming over all nostalgic......

Correct, however if there is a risk that x causes y and that risk is such then risk mitigation should be considered .

zenourn

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#960128 1-Jan-2014 21:48

And even if you do find a strong correlation, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

This was beaten into us rigorously back in the day when I learned data analysis. One of the commonest mistakes that junk science makes, over and over, is to assert that since event Y followed event X then event Y must have been caused by event X. Or, in this case, if areas with high levels of X (ie WiFi) also have high levels of Y (eg brain tumours) then WiFi causes brain tumours. It's the good old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that we were taught to avoid. People seize on a correlation because they think it validates what they are trying to prove, even when it clearly doesn't. It the hypothetical example I used, it would be just as valid (and equally nonsensical) to claim that brain tumours emit WiFi radiation, because places where there are more tumours found have higher measured WiFi emissions.

I'm coming over all nostalgic......

Completely agree, and unfortunately see this all the time when reviewing scientific manuscripts. All that a correlation tells you in an observational study are that two variables are potentially not independent and says absolutely nothing about causation. Observational studies are extremely limited in what they can claim.

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#960129 1-Jan-2014 21:50

TinyTim: I have just noticed that there is a wireless AP about 1 metre from my son's head in bed at night, through the wall. I must go and move it.

This is a good point. We have wifi monitor for baby. I decided to read the manual the other day. Interestingly enough, in order to comply with FCC regulation, the camera has to be at least 60cm from the baby... I wish this was written outside the box!

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#960132 1-Jan-2014 21:58

zenourn:

And even if you do find a strong correlation, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

This was beaten into us rigorously back in the day when I learned data analysis. One of the commonest mistakes that junk science makes, over and over, is to assert that since event Y followed event X then event Y must have been caused by event X. Or, in this case, if areas with high levels of X (ie WiFi) also have high levels of Y (eg brain tumours) then WiFi causes brain tumours. It's the good old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that we were taught to avoid. People seize on a correlation because they think it validates what they are trying to prove, even when it clearly doesn't. It the hypothetical example I used, it would be just as valid (and equally nonsensical) to claim that brain tumours emit WiFi radiation, because places where there are more tumours found have higher measured WiFi emissions.

I'm coming over all nostalgic......

Completely agree, and unfortunately see this all the time when reviewing scientific manuscripts. All that a correlation tells you in an observational study are that two variables are potentially not independent and says absolutely nothing about causation. Observational studies are extremely limited in what they can claim.

Yes, observational studies are limited but this is the only evidence you can have for this subject.

Who is willing to give their children to be part of my 20 year prospective double blind randomized controlled trial? I will provide a box that have to be plugged in and placed next to the child cot, within 30cm for five years of their life. No one will ever put up their hand.

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#960133 1-Jan-2014 21:59

People already put a 2.4GHz box in many babies' rooms. The child monitor...

jpoc

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#960137 1-Jan-2014 22:07

MauriceWinn: <<It is like trying to argue with people who don't vaccinate (who are doing so despite comprehensive scientific proof and usually based on an autism scare that has been thoroughly disproved). >> Actually, it's not like that at all. You'd lose that argument [with the right person though admittedly many anti-vaccinators are as ignorant as the anti-microwave people]. You'd lose both arguments, though the cellphone/wifi risk is vastly lower than the vaccination risks, which are very high.

The risk from modern cellphones held right by the head is so close to zero that it can be ignored compared with a huge array of actual high-risk activities that people do or have inflicted on them. But it is not zero.

Epidemiological studies of acoustic neuromas on ear nerves to the brain show that the risk is below the level of their study, but within the studies, there is enough hint of risk that it's above zero.

Rather than observing results, we can also estimate risk.

We know that ionizing radiation damages dna and causes cancer [with various probabilities and whatnot]. We know that 2GHz is not ionizing [and neither is lower frequency spectrum]. http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize.html
We also know that 2GHz is absorbed in brain tissue to some extent.
And that photons are wave functions which interfere with each other causing patterns in the aether like various size waves on the ocean interfere with each other, causing bigger peaks, or cancellation, with some combining to form freak waves which sink boats.
So, if a 2GHz and almost ionizing photons combine together just at the point of absorption into brain tissue, the combination goes from not ionizing, to ionizing. Hey presto, two non-ionizing wave functions cause ionizing DNA damage and probabilistic cancer of the brain.
Throw into the soup a handy chemical carcinogen at the site and the probability of cancer rises some more.

2GHz is such a low energy photon that the number of extra incidents of ionizing or chemical boosting would be minuscule and not worth looking for. But it should not be dismissed out of hand because for the 1 in 100,000 person [or maybe it's 1:10 million] who might get brain cancer from it, it's the end of the world. Of course that person has a 1:3 chance of getting some other cancer, such as from the sausage they ate [contains nitrites which cause nitrosamines in the stomach when combined with some amine, and thereby cancer], or the bread crusts [browning of foods causes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to form some of which are carcinogenic, same as in tobacco smoke and diesel exhaust].

The parents of the children at school are sure to be feeding them "food" which is vastly more harmful than the infinitesimal theoretical risk of cellphone and wifi radiation which huge epidemiological studies have not been able to demonstrate. Admittedly, I have not checked epidemiological studies in several years.

Disclosure of interests - I'm a shareholder in Qualcomm Incorporated and Zenbu Networks Ltd [which both supply equipment using 2GHz microwaves]. I was also a BP Oil International technical/marketing employee, hence my interest in chemical carcinogens and risk in general. Lead in petrol was a major disaster. Worrying about cellphone and wifi radiation seems absurd.

So far as I am aware, the Michelson-Morley experiment (19th century physics) debunked the existence of the aether and it has not come back.

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#960146 1-Jan-2014 23:11

nakedmolerat:
zenourn:

And even if you do find a strong correlation, that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

This was beaten into us rigorously back in the day when I learned data analysis. One of the commonest mistakes that junk science makes, over and over, is to assert that since event Y followed event X then event Y must have been caused by event X. Or, in this case, if areas with high levels of X (ie WiFi) also have high levels of Y (eg brain tumours) then WiFi causes brain tumours. It's the good old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that we were taught to avoid. People seize on a correlation because they think it validates what they are trying to prove, even when it clearly doesn't. It the hypothetical example I used, it would be just as valid (and equally nonsensical) to claim that brain tumours emit WiFi radiation, because places where there are more tumours found have higher measured WiFi emissions.

I'm coming over all nostalgic......

Completely agree, and unfortunately see this all the time when reviewing scientific manuscripts. All that a correlation tells you in an observational study are that two variables are potentially not independent and says absolutely nothing about causation. Observational studies are extremely limited in what they can claim.

Yes, observational studies are limited but this is the only evidence you can have for this subject.

Who is willing to give their children to be part of my 20 year prospective double blind randomized controlled trial? I will provide a box that have to be plugged in and placed next to the child cot, within 30cm for five years of their life. No one will ever put up their hand.

I cannot for a second understand those who say observational studies are useless. As a purist, yes.

In the real world if your obs is negative it is negative. For many reasons. If there was a correlation chances are it will show up somewhere. The chances of a confounder exactly canceling a causative effect is unreal. Ie either it is too weak to cancel out and you see a positive correlation. Or it is stronger you see a negative correlation (the other way). To be exactly zero means it is zero more likely than not.

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#960170 2-Jan-2014 06:21

<<So far as I am aware, the Michelson-Morley experiment (19th century physics) debunked the existence of the aether and it has not come back.>>

Yes, in the 19th century sense of aether, but it did not debunk the interference and combining of photon energy. Nor did it debunk the existence of the electromagnetic quantum field, which is a complicated way of writing "aether". Looks as though aether hasn't gone away : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory What all that complicated jargon means is there's something murky going on in the quantum field. Aether seems an easier word than electromagnetic quantum field. Near enough for government work anyway.

Wave energy combines giving higher total energy or cancellation, depending on phase. With higher total energy, ionizing can be achieved by combining a non-ionizing 2GHz with a high energy photon which nearly, but not quite, has enough energy to do the job.

It's true that a 2GHz all by itself is too low in energy to do ionizing and thereby cause cancer, but chemical reactions such as the introduction of a carcinogen to a cell, are assisted by the input of energy which can arrive at the precise spot required by way of a 2GHz photon. So even though not ionizing, it could assist cancer formation by microscopically raising the temperature for a nano-second, just long enough for the carcinogen to slip into place.

The simplistic idea that 2GHz can't ionize and therefore can't cause cancer is like the simplistic Global Warming idea that CO2 absorbs particular wavelengths so the world must be getting hotter since CO2 has gone from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million. Climate is more complicated than that. Global Alarmists have now decided they need to include clouds as a variable in their computer models of what will happen. Meanwhile, all models failed. The actual temperature is nearly out the bottom of their envelopes of temperature projection.

The additional cancer caused by 2GHz must be so low as to be almost undetectable because 2GHz of energy is so tiny compared with ionizing radiation energy levels. Epidemiological studies show that to be the case.

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#960173 2-Jan-2014 07:10

Everybody dies.

Whether it's 2Ghz photons or radiation from flying or uv rays in the light or lack of vit d from lack of light causing osteoporotic fractures.

Or breathing toxic exhaust fumes or lack of exercise from playing xbox or catching disease from the unvaccinated our from a fatal allergic reaction from a vaccine.

Or cancer from a ct scan radiation to diagnose a fracture or a blood transfusion to save a life. Or eating too much barbeque, chips, out swallowing too much fluoride.

If someone doesn't want to die don't live.

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#960175 2-Jan-2014 07:42

joker97: Everybody dies.

Whether it's 2Ghz photons or radiation from flying or uv rays in the light or lack of vit d from lack of light causing osteoporotic fractures.

Or breathing toxic exhaust fumes or lack of exercise from playing xbox or catching disease from the unvaccinated our from a fatal allergic reaction from a vaccine.

Or cancer from a ct scan radiation to diagnose a fracture or a blood transfusion to save a life. Or eating too much barbeque, chips, out swallowing too much fluoride.

If someone doesn't want to die don't live.

With respect, that is a silly statement. It doesn't take much grey matter exercising to determine that people are concerned about premature death.

Extrapolating your thoughts, the people that were concerned about the risks associated with asbestos, smoking, thalidomide, petroleum lead, benzine.... Were being irrational.

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#960189 2-Jan-2014 09:29

KiwiNZ:
joker97: Everybody dies.

Whether it's 2Ghz photons or radiation from flying or uv rays in the light or lack of vit d from lack of light causing osteoporotic fractures.

Or breathing toxic exhaust fumes or lack of exercise from playing xbox or catching disease from the unvaccinated our from a fatal allergic reaction from a vaccine.

Or cancer from a ct scan radiation to diagnose a fracture or a blood transfusion to save a life. Or eating too much barbeque, chips, out swallowing too much fluoride.

If someone doesn't want to die don't live.

With respect, that is a silly statement. It doesn't take much grey matter exercising to determine that people are concerned about premature death.

Extrapolating your thoughts, the people that were concerned about the risks associated with asbestos, smoking, thalidomide, petroleum lead, benzine.... Were being irrational.

Thanks for a polite response, KiwiNZ. I thought this thread had settled down but the issue really seems to bother people.

At present there is insufficient knowledge to be deterministic about the impact of Wifi radiation. On the balance of probabilities the risks are likely to be very small or effectively zero but I am not going to criticise parents who want to keep their children safe. Remember that they are not thinking about the overall probabilities but the impact if cancer hits their child or another child they know. For this reason, I'm not so dismissive of their concerns and I'm happy if one in every few thousand parents don't have guilt about the impact of Wifi (assuming that child cancer is actually about 3 in 100,000 annually over the first 20 years of a child's life).

Recent history also suggests that parents' concerns shouldn't be rejected so quickly. My parents' efforts to give me the best and safest upbringing have actually increased the risks of some detrimental outcomes because they listened to the accepted 'scientific' knowledge from the time when I was a child. My mother has apologised to me on several occasions for not acting on her misgivings. There simply wasn't enough knowledge for experts to be so definitive on many issues and some of those 'knowns' have long since been disproved.

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#960304 2-Jan-2014 14:04

MauriceWinn: <<So far as I am aware, the Michelson-Morley experiment (19th century physics) debunked the existence of the aether and it has not come back.>>

Yes, in the 19th century sense of aether, but it did not debunk the interference and combining of photon energy. Nor did it debunk the existence of the electromagnetic quantum field, which is a complicated way of writing "aether". Looks as though aether hasn't gone away : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory What all that complicated jargon means is there's something murky going on in the quantum field. Aether seems an easier word than electromagnetic quantum field. Near enough for government work anyway.

Wave energy combines giving higher total energy or cancellation, depending on phase. With higher total energy, ionizing can be achieved by combining a non-ionizing 2GHz with a high energy photon which nearly, but not quite, has enough energy to do the job.

It's true that a 2GHz all by itself is too low in energy to do ionizing and thereby cause cancer, but chemical reactions such as the introduction of a carcinogen to a cell, are assisted by the input of energy which can arrive at the precise spot required by way of a 2GHz photon. So even though not ionizing, it could assist cancer formation by microscopically raising the temperature for a nano-second, just long enough for the carcinogen to slip into place.

The simplistic idea that 2GHz can't ionize and therefore can't cause cancer is like the simplistic Global Warming idea that CO2 absorbs particular wavelengths so the world must be getting hotter since CO2 has gone from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million. Climate is more complicated than that. Global Alarmists have now decided they need to include clouds as a variable in their computer models of what will happen. Meanwhile, all models failed. The actual temperature is nearly out the bottom of their envelopes of temperature projection.

The additional cancer caused by 2GHz must be so low as to be almost undetectable because 2GHz of energy is so tiny compared with ionizing radiation energy levels. Epidemiological studies show that to be the case.

So, going for a run and getting hot and sweaty can increase your cancer risk?

Oh really.

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#960357 2-Jan-2014 16:58

<<So, going for a run and getting hot and sweaty can increase your cancer risk?

Oh really.>>

Carcinogens have to go through a chemical reaction with cells to form cancer and since chemical reactions go better with some heat, getting the reaction over the hump, yes, getting body temperature up a little should help form cancer cells.

But the number of such cancer cells would be comparable with the number formed by ionizing radiation from wifi and cellphones. It would be hard to find them. Especially since running introduces masses of other chemistry in the runner which would provide confounding variables galore. At least a cellphone user simply answers their phone and puts it to their ear next to their brain. They don't have to start eating a lot more food and inhale dirty air and mess with their hormone levels to answer the phone. So studies to find the cancer effect should be easier.

It seems likely that some hot and sweaty exercize would give a lot more benefit than cancer risk. But maybe the lazy are intuitively doing the right thing. The old joke about "I get enough exercize walking to the funerals of my exercizing friends" is a matter of many a true word spoken in jest.

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#960503 3-Jan-2014 07:45

zenourn:

No, it is real science. The guy was a genuine NZ scientist working in his area of expertise. It is not some opinionated drivel.

The work deserves to be taken seriously as science and any criticisms should be addressed on that basis. Personally I am not qualified to do so and it will take me some some to digest even one of those papers.

http://www.neilcherry.com/documents.php

Reading some of these documents is causing my bad-science detector to go to high alert. My area of expertise is developing models of predictive risk in neurodegenerative disorders (I have a PhD in Medicine, BSc Hons in Mathematics) so work on similar things.

As one example take a look at this paragraph from http://www.neilcherry.com/documents/90_p1_EMR_Epidemiological_Principles_for_EMF_and_EMR_Studies.pdf:

"Strength can be indicated by two factors, the size of the Relative Risk and the p-value. A very large and/or very significant RR value (p<0.01) can be assessed as causal. If the p-value is p<0.005 or even p<0.001 then the strength of the relationship is classically causal. "

This is absolute rubbish. All a significant p-value tells you is the probability of observing data as extreme as this given that the null hypothesis is zero. It tells you absolutely nothing about causal relationships. Being able to infer causal relationships relies on your experimental design and proper analysis.

Unfortunately, the documents are full of such basic errors that nothing in them can be relied upon.

Were any of these papers published in reputable journals with reputable peer reviewers?

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