The World Health Organization is publicizing this idea (pdf), but to me the evidence still does not look very strong at all. Chat away. Hat tip goes to Mocost on Twitter.
What is the evidence on whether cell phones can cause cancer?
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This reminds me of every time I’ve been to California. You walk into a building, and there is a sign that says “This building contains substances known by the State of California to cause cancer.”
But they never list what those substances are. Seems kind of sadistic when you think about it.
Every product I buy says “contains substances known in the State of California to cause cancer” which is why I never go to California.
Does tap water in Californian restaurants come with a similar warning too? I remember they never gave me water in San Francisco restaurants unless I asked for it.
http://goo.gl/zg3c0
‘Limited evidence of carcinogenicity: A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working
Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence’.
A couple of small studies have shown a positive association, but most studies have shown no association, and a few a negative association. This seems all within the normal standard deviation of no association, and would seem by far the most sensible interpretation of the evidence.
Why then is the WHO giving newspapers a reason to print ‘mobile phones cause cancer’ ?
“Why then is the WHO giving newspapers a reason to print ‘mobile phones cause cancer’ ?”
It’s not WHO’s fault, honestly. It’s just the usual http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#comic
IARC publish a periodic monograph, about cancer related effects of a different agent. Cellphone radiation was the next target. 2B is, more or less: there is some vague hint, it’s not legit to refuse the idea of a cancer-correlation, however the general idea is “no effects”. 2A is the same, but the general idea is “some effects”. While 1 (some cancer-related effect) and 3 (no effect) are true, concrete, results. Btw a 2B result was expected, since ELF radiation and static electric fields were already classified 2B and 3 respectively.
If a newspaper decides to publish a 2B result as “Found a connection between cellphones and cancer!”, it’s the journalist’s fault, not the scientist’s.
It’s an issue of communication. I would place a lot of the blame on ‘science’ journalists who really don’t understand what they are writing about. But, speaking as a scientist, there is clearly a disconnect between the idea of ‘limited evidence’ from a scientist and layman’s point of view. That distinction has to be articulated well.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/06/the_bride_of_the_son_of_the_revenge_of_c.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link
Respectful Insolence has some good words on this too.
“Basically, the only suggestive studies all come from the same group in Sweden, which is always a red flag to me (that the studies all come from one group, not that they come from Sweden, I hasten to add). As I said before, whenever one group of researchers keeps finding a result that no other group seems able to replicate or that otherwise disagrees with what everyone else is finding, that’s a huge problem. I’d also have a lot more confidence in this seeming association in “high quality” studies if the association didn’t depend upon a single researcher and if this researcher was not also known for being an expert witness in lawsuits against mobile phone companies.”
Actually, the fact that they’re Swedish is also a red flag.
The real red flag is that the leader of that one group makes money as an expert witness in cell-phone cancer cases, which gives him a big conflict of interest. Based on the standards the left uses to dismiss scientific claims, his claims are utterly unreliable.
Very small risk.
But, the question to ask is this:
Does this incentivise some handheld device manufacturer to invent around the problem with some new remote technology (better earphone, new mike, etc.) that completely eliminates the “risk”.
Would you pay $10 for an improvement that eliminates this risk?
A much more useful question would be to determine the mechanism by which it might cause cancer. Is it the talking for a few minutes a day, or is it the sitting inches from my prostate for hours?
I think the mechanism is known, microwave radiation. Frequency of use is a variable that the customer would not chose to change, so inventing products that produce no risk is an answer.
But, the question is: what would you be willing to pay?
There are already inventions that do that. There are ear piece shields to prevent radiation leaks. (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=cell+phone+radiation+shields&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=12074841215183799983&sa=X&ei=k2HpTbn-NanL0QH7_umHAQ&ved=0CGUQ8wIwAQ)
People buy those goofy things even though the evidence seems to point to you getting more cancer from the food you eat. We don’t change that one as much though.
If there is a risk, none of those will fix it; the “risk”, so to speak, is the microwave band transmitter.
Which is the one part of the phone you can’t really change and have it still work.
(Oh, you can have a wired headset and move the phone away from you, but if the risk isn’t zero in the holding it next to your head case, it still won’t be in the three feet away case…)
Grou 2B carcinogens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens#Mixtures COFFEE CAUSES CANCER
Also, a graph of studies done: http://cancerresearchuk.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mobile-phones.jpg
Context: xkcd.com/882
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/01/why-im-still-not-worried-about-my-cell-phone-hurting-my-brain/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverTopStories+%28Discover+Top+Stories%29
Although they went with the attention grabbing “Cellphone is called possible carcinogen” headline, the Philly Inquirer at least attempted to explain the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation in their article this morning. They also pointed out the lack of an actual MECHANISM by which cellphones could cause cancer, apart from the hypothesized handwaving of “free radicals or an inflammatory response”.
Coffee’s in the same category. Of course, there’s a huge bias against coffee. It’s so useful, it’s got to be bad for you, somehow.
Of the 23 studies shown, 2 have positive effects, one of which is barely less than the 5% level.
1. If an effect was really significant, you’d expect a p-value of much lower than 5%. Ultimately a p-value of 5% is not very strong evidence. (This is something Bayesians especially gripe about).
2. No statistician would say 2 out of 23 studies being significant is a significant finding. Assuming the tests are independent, if none of the tests really has a positive effect, there’s a 32% chance that 2 or more will be significant by chance.
3. Both significant studies are from the same author. That should raise alarms.
What’s the probability of getting 0, 1, or 2 positive results out of 23 trials in a Bernoulli process with positive = 0.95 and negative = 0.05? Seems to me it’s about 90%.
(23 choose 0)*0.95^(23) + (23 choose 1)*0.95^(22)*0.05 + (23 choose 2)*0.95^(21)*0.05^2 = 0.89
Model “doing a study” as a Bernoulli trial with the probability of a negative result 0.95 and the probability of a positive result 0.05. Then the probability of getting 0, 1, or 2 positives out of a 23 trials is about 90%.
Ack, sorry about that. First one posted late.
The WHO also tried to bury the results of their second-hand smoke study. http://www.davehitt.com/facts/who.html
Too political to trust.
Prediction:
10 years from now states will be securitizing and selling their portions of the global cell phone settlements made with ATT, Verizon, Google, and the handset makers.
What I find interesting about the cancer-mobile phone story is that it hasn’t stopped everyone from buying mobile phones and using them heaps. It’s very different to reactions to nuclear power, irradiation of food, or GM. I take from this that if people clearly see the benefits to themselves, they’re much more risk loving.
I think at least with nuclear radiation the reason is more that there is a well established causal link between nuclear radiation and cancer . sth which doesnt exist thus far for microwave radiation (cell phones).
this is by the way also the reason why this discussion is so egregious. i mean some studies barely managed to find a very weak correlation (other not) and nobody has an idea how it should work biological. come on. this is like the old joke about the correlation between the number of storks and newborn kids.
There is a very well-known and tested biological mechanism by which nuclear radiation causes cancer (ionization).
There is none for low-frequency microwave radiation. Cell phone radiation literally cannot cause cancer.
Well, to be strictly scientifically accurate (echoing Orac in the Respectful Insolence link above), there’s no known way that radiation in the microwave bands and power levels involved can cause cancer.
The probability that there’s some unknown mechanism can’t be proven to be zero, at least at this time, but all the evidence is that it is at least Very Very Very Close To Zero.
(In other words, there’s excellent scientific basis for believing it can’t, but we ain’t proved it yet.)
“Strict scientific accuracy”
(a) Inhibits communication with the scientifically illiterate, and
(b) Is needlessly pedantic.
Best to be safe, they don’t want to be arrested for manslaughter.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/27/scitech/main20066827.shtml
Has to be asymmetric incentives. If WHO says cellphones cause cancer; but if indeed they don’t no one’s going to go after WHO for being paranoid.
My son says “Birthdays are good for you–the more you have, the longer you live.” Perhaps he can keep a straight face long enough to get WHO to fund a study…
A single grilled hamburger has a lot more carcinogenic potential than years of cell phone use. I am not about to give up on grilled food because of that.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/brain-tumour-shock-for-longterm-mobile-user-20110601-1fgqt.html
This is embarassingly (for the journalist) anecdotal.
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