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…
“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
481–490 of 613 posts
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People with few publications now working in other fields I'm surprised this statement passed muster on HN where there must be some number of PhDs now working in other fields. Certainly the ones I know wouldn't take kindly to the idea that somehow, just because they left academia their research can be easily and completely dismissed.
It's unfortunately common in science for someone who's an expert in one field to think they can easily be an expert in another field and get it completely wrong. Linux Pauling is the most well known example of this.
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#483I'm amazed that I scanned a bunch of comments and it seems like no one read the article and noticed that it's not actually a proper SciAm article, just an Op-Ed. Let me repeat, this is not a proper SciAm article in which some actual academics condense their interesting research into something more easily understood by people outside the field. This is an Op-Ed. It's an opinion. And more specifically, it's an opinion…
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's not like second-hand smoking Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)?
> Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)? That's why smoking is allowed outdoors.
It's not really uncommon to see "no smoking on the patio" or "no smoking within 100 feet of this door" signs. And some states have legalized smoking cannabis, except outdoors.
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except our pockets (unless you wear tinfoil pants) and many other materials are transparent at those wavelengths which makes it a lot less crazy.
You don't think making an antenna that can detect an LED shining in a flat miles away is crazy because pockets are transparent?
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#486I scanned through some of the mouse studies, but they all had the same problem for me: to see effects, they blasted the mice with huge powers, on the order of 1 W/kg absorbed. For reference, the human body itself, through all its metabolic activity, barely generates that much. If you were absorbing anything near 1 W/kg of power at any frequency, you would start overheating, as if you'd just stepped out into the midday sun. Increase that by a few times, and you would probably shortly die, by literally being cooked. So I think most of those studies can be safely discarded. Anything is bad for you at those crazy intensities, which are far higher than what you get from a cell phone.
Of course, this leaves a lot of other studies that may or may not be more solid -- but without more time I can't draw any solid opinions.
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Cigarettes and alcohol too. Radiowave effects, even if they do cause anything, are quite easy to mitigate in humans by wearing clothing with carefully positioned electrical conductor insertions.
Working in a Faraday cage seems more appealing.
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#488Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#are-death-rates-from-cance... "In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually fallen."
You are looking at cancer deaths, which indeed have gone down from better treatments and better screening. This does not imply less incidence of cancer.
Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
#490Honestly, after a glance at the links, they don't inspire confidence in me either. There are papers about very small changes on very rare types of cancer, measured by proxy on a species where it's common; papers criticizing the critics claiming association with interested parties (what is a perfectly fine thing to claim, but what is it doing in a scientific paper?); and the only wide review I could find claims that t…
The thing that concerns me about millimeter wave tech and 5G is that it seems like a solution looking for a problem. My city just had a wave of poles dropped in a few neighborhoods, and they seem to me to be an expensive boondoggle. IMO, we would be better served by the heavy hand of the FCC allowing fiber providers to run telephone poles and trenches without any accountability (as the wireless carriers can with 5G).…
That would definitely invert the value calculations. I work in the industry and there's no question that the savings from 5G are regulatory in nature. Ironic that it's the less regulated tech that has the more questionable health effects.