“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#281

Post by nl » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

not_a_moth wrote: post #166

andrepd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the hunch you have just spendt 30 seconds thinking about is sadly incorrect. The increase in life expectancy doesn't account for the increased incidence of cancers. There are other factors at play, which need to be investigated (some that we know: obesity, pollution, cigarettes).

I would add sleep deprivation to your list. We live in an increasingly sleepless society and lack of sleep is effectively a carcinogen.

I checked this for you, and what appears to be the best meta study I could find shows that the only correlation found was that long sleep duration increases the risk of one type of cancer:

The present meta-analysis suggested that neither short nor long sleep duration was significantly associated with risk of cancer, although long sleep duration increased risk of with colorectal cancer.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762769/

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#282

Post by mdorazio » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #271

jonnypotty wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your certainty regarding the reasons we have increasing incidents of cancer to seriously detract from your previous points.

Most people in the cancer field (I worked in a tangential one) believe that incidence of cancer is due to people living longer (cancer rates go up a lot as you age), and not dying of other diseases first. In a sense, cancer is what you get after you solved the other problems.

"Most people in the cancer field" seem to be pretty misinformed then. See [1] and [2]. At a minimum, health/diet habits have increased cancer risk in young people over the last 20 years, and probably other environmental factors/exposures as well.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...

[2] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#283

Post by lightedman » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #107

Someone1234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goalposts notwithstanding you have to admit the list is kind of hit or miss. Whenever their job isn't listed they're either retired or were never in a related field. For example you listed Harvard, Columbia, Monash, and McGill above. Half the people from those institutions are either unqualified, retired, or both. Plus there's places like "ElectroSensitivity UK" which aren't scientific institutions. PS - I fully admi…

> the list is kind of hit or miss. It seemed that way to me as well, but the real point is that it's irrelevant how well or poorly we judge those people. What matters is the facts they or others present. > you're being far too defensive Defensive of what? I haven't even expressed a position yet, other than "logical fallacies are bad" and I'm pretty willing to stand by that one. Are you here to argue the converse? To…

"I haven't even expressed a position yet, other than "logical fallacies are bad" and I'm pretty willing to stand by that one."

Your fallacy is the "Fallacy Fallacy." If you can actually stand by your words (nobody in my nearly 40 years of life has been able to) you'd explode from the sheer paradox.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#284

Post by hannob » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

BostonFern wrote: post #239

hannob wrote: post #147

I clicked on a few links and Googled a few names. It's roughly what I'd expect: People with few publications now working in other fields, people without scientific publications, but university degrees, people who regularly speak at events from radiation critics, people who are invested in other fringe theories. People get fooled by "large lists of peer-reviewed publications". Peer review is a lowest level quality mar…

I haven't read the article, and I'm not a party to the 5G debate, but what you're describing in your comment is a meta-analysis, which is a practice that has produced some of the most controversial findings in recent times. If anything is needed to clear up an inconclusive body of studies, it's better and more reliable studies and experiments, not meta-analyses.‎

It's... more complicated than that.

Yeah, a meta analysis is only as good as its inputs. Unfortunately many meta analysises read like "we found 20 studies on the topic, but 19 of them are crap and the one good study didn't really ask the question we're asking, so we really don't know". And yeah, there's considerable wiggle room for a meta analysis. But I don't think you'll find any serious scientist doubting the usefulness of a meta analysis per se.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#285

Post by kZardo » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

BostonFern wrote: post #239

hannob wrote: post #147

I clicked on a few links and Googled a few names. It's roughly what I'd expect: People with few publications now working in other fields, people without scientific publications, but university degrees, people who regularly speak at events from radiation critics, people who are invested in other fringe theories. People get fooled by "large lists of peer-reviewed publications". Peer review is a lowest level quality mar…

I haven't read the article, and I'm not a party to the 5G debate, but what you're describing in your comment is a meta-analysis, which is a practice that has produced some of the most controversial findings in recent times. If anything is needed to clear up an inconclusive body of studies, it's better and more reliable studies and experiments, not meta-analyses.‎

Meta-analyses try to find the unknown common truth by reviewing multiple studies and their methods and weighing them accourding to their percieved (really, calculated) quality.

By combining the results of the best studies and giving us an overview of them, meta-analyses really are the best studies we have.

"In addition to providing an estimate of the unknown common truth, meta-analysis has the capacity to contrast results from different studies and identify patterns among study results, sources of disagreement among those results, or other interesting relationships that may come to light in the context of multiple studies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#286

Post by lightedman » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #61

murgindrag wrote: post #10

I'd be interested in seeing signatures from people at institutions I recognize and trust. There are a lot of people with degrees FROM credible institutions, but very little in terms of currently being researchers in the field AT credible institutions. It's not hard to find 250 wackos if you pull random scientists working in random fields at random institutions. Most have no better way to know safety of 5G than I do.…

The scientists' appeal, including a list of signatories and their affiliations, isn't hard to find by following links. https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-appeal Likewise for a list of relevant papers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl... Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia? Monash? McGill? Can we dispense with the tired ad hominems and ta…

"Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust?"

After their primary university admissions scandal? Absolutely not, not that I ever trusted them in the first place (Memphis has a far better medical program.)

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#287

Post by mytailorisrich » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

klmr wrote: post #236

mytailorisrich wrote: post #18

He is not arguing that 5G is dangerous. He is pointing out that there does not seem to be enough research available to state as a fact that it is safe and that, as a consequence, we might want to be cautious. That's a very reasonable general approach. Whether his proposal to stop 5G deployments altogether is proportional to our understanding of the potential risks, if any, is debatable, to say the least.

> That's a very reasonable general approach. If made in good faith, yes. I’m not convinced that this is the case here, however, given that the author is fundamentally at odds with the scientific consensus on 2G, 3G and 4G safety, without acknowledging that he’s in the clear minority. In fact, he claims that the majority of relevant experts have signed the 5G moratorium, and this seems to not actually be the case. I a…

I think this is a reasonable approach in general. Whether it is made in good faith or not is a red herring and does not change anything.

What's more important, since you mention the 'scientific consensus' and his claim that there isn't enough data is: What is the consensus on 5G (I suppose that means mmWave) and what are the studies it is based on? That would allow to make a factual comment on his claims about health hazards.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#288

Post by dekhn » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

darkFunction wrote: post #210

vizzah wrote: post #92

I feel EMF from WiFi/LTE with my head. Someone wants to study me? As soon as there is a high-bandwidth transmitter very close to me - headache comes in seconds. I've done blind tests holding non-remitting iPad or the one streaming 1080p movies at high bitrate and easily able to tell when there is no radiation.

I used to get a very sharp pain in my head, above my ear, when making outbound calls, just before the recipient would pick up. Nobody seems to believe me, and I have never had the motivation to try to prove it to anyone, but it got to the point where I would hold the phone away from my head until the person answered. It began with a Sony Ericsson, but happened across a couple of different phone brands over the years.…

I get a sharp pain in my head above my ear from my glasses. The skin right there is very sensitive. Just rubbing things (including phones) causes the same senstation.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#289

Post by someonehere » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

nroets wrote: post #279

hannob wrote: post #147

I clicked on a few links and Googled a few names. It's roughly what I'd expect: People with few publications now working in other fields, people without scientific publications, but university degrees, people who regularly speak at events from radiation critics, people who are invested in other fringe theories. People get fooled by "large lists of peer-reviewed publications". Peer review is a lowest level quality mar…

Furthermore, even if cell phones cause cancer then the risk will in all likelihood be so small that it doesn't justify banning the technology. [1] For example, eating barbecued meat causes cancer, but it we don't ban it. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs

But not everyone eats barbecued meat or has barbecued meat near/next to their body 24/7 like people who use cell phones. I can opt out of eating barbecued meat though it carrying a phone close to my body.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#290

Post by christophilus » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #90

I'm amazed at how many people here actually decline to click on the links in the article, which would guide one to a large list of scientific publications, with links to the original publications themselves. Yet they are very ready to call "more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields" "wackos" or "cranks with a PhD", call…

Agreed.

> The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals.

That’s a pretty strong group.