I’ve heard you can get eyeball cancer from watching bad televison programming.
No, I lied…but apparently they are people making bank off the idea that cell phones cause ear cancer, which is about as ludicrous. An Australian science show has had to retract another episode after it was exposed as credulous bunk. This show accepted without question the fear-mongering nonsense of Devra Davis, who has written a book claiming that cell phones cause cancer.
I mean, really, the show had some of the most obvious examples of bad methodology I’ve seen in a long time. For example, it purports to show that cell phone radiation is penetrating right into people’s heads with pseudocolored imaging: how horrifying, they show a picture of a child holding a cell phone with a bright red tint over the side of her face with the phone, shading into yellows and greens and blues on the far side of her head. But I’m looking at it and wondering what kind of camera they were using to measure that, and I realize it was no camera…these were stock photos that someone had painted over.
Then Davis makes this claim:
The reality is that every single well-designed study ever conducted finds an increased risk of brain cancer with the heaviest use of cell phones, and the range of the risk is between 50% and eight-fold.
Apparently, her definition of “well-designed study” is one that gives her the results she wants, because that is simply not true. Only a few studies have found a very weak correlation between cell phone use and cancer, and those have tended to be case control studies, in which people with those cancers are asked to retrospectively report on how much they’d used cell phones in the past…and they’re clearly over-reporting their frequency. So quite contrary to what Davis is saying, the studies that find an effect tend to be methodologically flawed.
Here’s a believable analysis of Devra Davis’ work.
Disconnect [Davis’ book] is a good example of the kind of material used by the EMF alarmist movement. Virtually all the alarmist studies that Davis cites used a poor methodology and/or have not been replicated in follow up studies. In fact, most have been refuted by far more comprehensive and rigorous studies. In many cases, serious flaws have been found with studies that show harm. It is at odds with the conclusions of mainstream expert groups such as the SCENHIR (* 5 P 8): It is concluded from three independent lines of evidence (epidemiological, animal and in vitro studies) that exposure to RF fields is unlikely to lead to an increase in cancer in humans. Disconnect is designed to bamboozle and scare the lay reader, not to inform.
But the creators of that science show shouldn’t have needed to read that — they should have been able to see the hokey ‘evidence’ Davis was throwing at them and seen that there was something fishy going on.
If Australians want to be afraid of something, they ought to step outside and look at that giant ball of plasma in the sky that is showering them with intense radiation all the time. Does anyone seriously think that cell phone emissions are at all comparable?
Mobile phones don’t give you cancer but they can make an idiot of you.
wait wait wait…
Australia can get TV producers to actually RETRACT shows for fake content?
now that’s a concept worth exploring.
*reads*
oh. they have editorial standards.
won’t work for US programming.
OTOH… I’m guessing that means it isn’t a company owned by Rupert Murdoch either.
Animal Planet is still promoting their fake mermaid show. So no, we can’t have that.
…though I know a few Aussies that might argue Murdoch DOES own the Australian government.
To be fair, cell phones will kill you…if you use them while driving. Inattention, not cancer, is the mechanism of action.
FFS
is the Discovery Channel still trying to convince people the Nazis were witness to Megalodons too?
There’s a reason why Australia has the highest skin cancer rates in the world.
Also, that’s one scary ball of radiation up there. It most definitely causes cancer, especially in Australia among people who have undergone minor evolutionary changes that have adapted them to life in northern Europe.
ah, I see they have combined the two!
so, it’s not Nazi Uboats that saw Megalodons… it was mermaids! and they make the perfect witnesses… because they can’t be questioned… because they were all eaten by sharks.
*HEADDESK*
nope. that’s us over here in Eastern Australia.
In fact… getting a biopsy tomorrow for that very thing.
*sigh*
@11: Biopsy early, biopsy often, have a long term survival expectation that is not much, if at all, different from average. Nonetheless, I’m hoping it’s just a nice little non-malignant seb K or something.
probably is nothing.
The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy had it about right…
Most of them are nothing.
#8: Because you’re all using cell phones so much?
If typical, I would wager the producers, directors, etc of that show were on their cell phones often.
Is there anything that isn’t dangerous in Australia? I remember seeing an off comment about platypus being poisonous. I laughed it off but looked it up anyway. They are, and an incredibly scary venom too o_O.
Secretly I hope it’s true so that I can say I at least do something healthy. Also so I can claim occupational hazard at my sometimes-job??
And about Animal Planet having a fake mermaid show: Gaddfern it, mermaids get all the press. I’m calling the Histovery Planet to pitch a show about other half-human half-animals.
The ABC over here is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – a federal-government funded public broadcaster which has been suffering the fate of any institution declared sufficiently left-wing (i.e. anywhere to the left of either Adolph Hitler or Rupert Murdoch, depending on the time of the day) under a succession of conservative governments, and sufficiently off-message (i.e. not agreeing with what Mr Murdoch’s Papers say) under a succession of Labor governments. Namely, it’s been having its budget whittled away bit by bit by bit while being asked to provide more and more programming (going from one free-to-air channel with a definite closing down time plus local and national radio, to three twenty-four hour commercial channels, plus online content, plus the radio stations). We’re reaching the point where the donkey is going to collapse in its stall after having attempted to plough the field with no food at all.
(Oh, and the commercial media in this country – including/particularly Mr Murdoch’s 70% share of it – complain bitterly whenever the ABC attempts to do anything they’re doing, which means of course the available space for the ABC to stand has been practically whittled down to nothing).
The conservative nutters in charge of Australia’s government are dismantling the nation’s most respected broadcaster one fiscal cut at a time. The newly appointed chief of the ABC is apparently an ex Murdoch slave. Fact checking programs in advance is almost impossible on their current budget.
And texting causes hand cancer?
I can’t think of a single person more responsible for the destruction of journalism around the world than Murdoch.
nor anyone more deserving of jail time, just for the destruction of democracy he has caused, and the deaths resulting from it.
yes, there is a lot of blood on that man’s hands… and you don’t have to look too hard to see it.
Don’t forget the deadly poisonous spiders, snakes, plants, and probably rocks.
@24, etc. I hear that there are these really dangerous invasive placental mammals in Australia too.
And birds, which apparently deliberately spread fires.
Basically, everything in Australia is trying to kill you.
Me thinks continual cell phone usage is more a Symptom, than a Cause, of brain cancer. *twirling mustache*
#25
/eyeroll
Ear cancer is a thing? I mean, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be possible, but it has to be quite rare. I worked as a kind of intern in the radiology of a hospital once, never heard of ear cancer there. Most people had lung or breast or prostate tumors.
Also, nowadays, with all those smartphones, who is still actually using them for actually calling people? I think the quacks should update their scare tactics, and scare people about thumb cancer.
So I was looking at the previous post about Juno’s approach to Jupiter, and it seems incredible to me that we live in an age when we can send robots to the outer reaches of the solar system, but we still have large segments of the population that believe that phones give them ear cancer, or that some invisible sky being decides whet sort of medical care women should have access to…
No, ear cancer is not a big problem, and the other cancer they claim, gliomas, are also very rare.
Skin cancer affecting the ears probably happens at least somewhat regularly, that being an area of skin that is exposed to the sun but where people are likely to forget to put sun cream. I don’t know about humans, but it is somewhere that white cats commonly get cancer. “Ear cancer” as a separate thing seems much less likely.
@31 And not increasing in incidence over time. If cell phones were an issue, one would expect a big jump in incidence starting in the 1990s. It just isn’t there. It’s technically possible that it just happens that as cell phone use is increasing, the incidence of some other exposure is decreasing, causing essentially a nil effect, but I can’t imagine what that exposure would be.
Also, accoustic neuromas aren’t even really cancers. They’re benign tumors.
“If Australians want to be afraid of something, they ought to step outside and look at that giant ball of plasma in the sky that is showering them with intense radiation all the time. ” Especially since Australia has the world’s highest incidence of melanoma.
We all pretty much started using cathode ray tubes in T.V. sets back in the 1950’s and electrons hitting stuff emit x-rays if I remember my physics correctly. I believe they lead lined the screens for that reason, but surely some still gets through. I didn’t hear about any great increases in eye or face cancer at the time, or later.
In the 70’s and 80’s CRT monitors for computers, on the other hand, caused a great big scare.
Actually I still have a CRT screen on my T.V., though while I have it on a lot I am rarely watching the screen.
Or out of their eyeballs.
The real danger, of course, is the trees from which paper is made. They are emitting a dangerous elemental oxidizing agent into the atmosphere, where you can’t help breathing it. It reacts with yer brain, destroying the cells and neurons and things, leaving behind only residual eejitiods, continuously(but not linearly) increasing the individual and general stoooopidity.
It’s the eejitiods that the radiation from the mobiles, TVs, and mechanical pencils seeks out and enhances. Eejitiods feed on radiation, growing vast and increasingly dense. This gives the appearance that radiation causes stoooopidity; not as such, it merely “enhances” it.
No quantum vibrations were disturbed. May consist of nuts.
Ah yes, CRTs indeed generate X-Rays. They can’t be too strong, though. I have no idea about the currents and the voltage in such a tube, though, so I can’t even calculate the lambda_min of these x-rays. Also, if I remember correctly, plasma displays (not LCD or OLED) generate either UV or something x-ray like as well, but I have no idea where I read that and I’m not sure why this would happen, so…
We currently have a white cat who loves to sit in the window. We are resigned to keeping a close eye on her ears (which sounds anatomically improbable).
A friend of mine has had multiple moles taken off his back due to suspicious moley characteristics. My mother-in-law had multiple skin cancers (small, caught early) on her face. Unfortunately, my older son has exactly the pale, freckley skin that requires much sunblock and surveillance.
@26 I’m a little skeptical of that. Besides we have plenty of humans that do that sort of crap :(
prae wrote:
Older LCD TVs backlit with a CCFL (cold cathode florescent light) will emit some UV light. Even some LED backlit LCD displays might if their backlight was uses UV LEDs treated with yellow phosphors instead of RGB LEDs or phosphor treated blue LEDs. LCD displays using other LED backlighting methods or OLED screens should not emit UV as far as I know.
I’d call that Australian show a “Pseudoscience Show”. As far as I know it’s been Pure Hogwash for at least the past 22 years. Unfortunately my brother-in-law watches it and I always have a hard time explaining that what’s presented on the show has little to do with reality.
I have heard it said that all Australian wildlife falls into at least one of three categories:
1) Dangerous
2) Venomous
3) Sheep
@Meg Thornton #20:
Thanks, I didn’t know that. But it sounds remarkably familiar, because that’s what the Bastard Tories have been trying to do to the BBC here in the UK. I wonder what the common factors are…