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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#531

Post by dekhn »

shpongled wrote: post #525
dekhn wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I have worked with world-class scientists where the author only had a gmail address (untill we gave them an appointment at Berkeley).

Of course, a gmail address in and of itself is not an indicator of quality, however on a single author paper it certainly makes me wary. Just out of curiosity, what field was that in? I could certainly see some scientific disciplines having unaffiliated world-class scientists, but others it would be virtually impossible to do high quality research outside of a lab

bioinformatics/computational biology. Specifically, multiple sequence alignment and HMMs for protein recognition. The author was previously a physicist (PhD) who left physics due to the low number of jobs in the 70s-80s, founded a database company, sold it to Intel, and then visited Berkeley and saw a cool talk and volunteered.

There were already a few codes in the area and plenty of papers, and he was mathematically inclined, so it didn't take long for him to become an expert. Once he was an expert, he pointed out major problems in existing codes (both functional and performance).

This is an area where you're working with fairly straightforward data and math (linear strings from a chosen alphabet, probabilistic model is well-established). You don't need to understand the underlying biology in detail to contribute.

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

#532

Post by mcguire »

Gnarl wrote: post #498
Gnarl wrote: post #491

This thread would be much shorter if someone had read this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26151230

and also this: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914

Keep in mind that many readers here are involved in these technologies. Any safety issues would directly or indirectly harm their interests. Alternatively, some likely feel they understand radio frequency radiation and know a-priori that it is safe; "why, I have carried a phone for years and I've never been nuked like a microwave burrito."

It's an interesting comparison with the vaping thread last week or the week before, where a similar number of comments came to the conclusion that it should be heavily restricted because we don't have enough data.

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

#533

Post by dekhn »

dekhn wrote: post #505
effie wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2014, 73% of men, 67% of women. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

I'm going off this page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db288.pdf Please note the table you showed the 73% is combination of "overweight" and "obese" while the row that shows obese is the same number as my citation.

I don't understand why people are downvoting me when I'm literally quoting the stats from the agency that defines this. If you're downvoting, can you at least reply to provide some technical signal so I can update my knowledge?

EDIT: I misread the original message and thought it was referring to just obesity, not obesity/overweight.

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

#534

Post by DoctorOetker »

shpongled wrote: post #436
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…

As a biochemist, I just want to chime in that I think part of the reason for an apparent increase rise in cancer rates is that we have eliminated many other causes of death already - we have to die of something, and cancer is something that is not "curable" in the sense of other disorders. After looking at the list of publications purported to be evidence, I have to agree with the other comments here casting doubt. M…

> I think part of the reason for an apparent increase rise in cancer rates is that we have eliminated many other causes of death already

Where did you read "an apparrent increase rise in cancer rates" ? in this article or in one of the articles it references? which one?

I am not a biochemist, but I would assume academics are referring to incidence rates, not causes of deaths... If you did actually witness such a confusion in the papers, it's important to point it out, but if you didn't it would be equivalent to a physicist suspecting a colleague of confusing mu (the reduced mass of a binary system) with mu (a muon)... rather incredulous if you ask me...

Every academic discipline expects its disciples to be at least proficient in disambiguating words from context, so when one refers to a "cancer rate" in the context of causation, that it would refer to "incidence rates" i.e. the transition probability per surviving individual per unit time. This is independent of deaths by other causes.

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

#535

Post by pas »

nabdab wrote: post #432
pas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like smoking is subtle. Just ask any none smoker, or how people started with their first cigarette. Coughing, dry throat, WTF is happening, I've smoke in my lungs.

None of the characteristics you mention are actually related to cancer though. If we banned everything that caused dry throat or caused you to caught because “obviously they cause cancer”, where would we be today? I mean we could ban 80% of all Indian food because first time westerners eat it they react much stronger to the spicy ness than they would to smoking. Stating independent of the actual science that “It was…

I never claimed they cause cancer. They are just not the fun harmless looking fun that the cool Marlboro man makes it look like. At least not the first few times.

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

#536

Post by catalogia »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #517
catalogia wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Except when it's not.) 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.

Patios are usually very close to doors. Is the threshold really 100 feet in some places?

I've seen such limits imposed on private property, but as far as I know there aren't any laws (specifically for cigarette smoke) that extreme.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a smoker and never have been. I like these laws. I'm just being a bit pedantic. There has been a general trend of restricting smoking and I think that trend has continued outdoors. It used to be that you could smoke anywhere, then businesses started creating indoor smoking sections. Then indoor smoking sections were banned and smokers moved to the outdoor seating. Then smoking outside near exterior doors was banned, in a way that effectively banned smoking at many restaurants entirely. Beyond this, in some places like NYC you have smoking bans in public parks and beaches as well, regardless of how far you are from any exterior door. (To be clear, I support these bans because cigarette smokers are notorious for their litter.)

And in the case of cannabis the restrictions are even more severe. In Washington you cannot smoke cannabis in view of the general public or in most buildings (except residential, although many apartment buildings have smoking bans too.) California is more permissive, but even they enforce a 1000(!) foot smoking ban around schools and youth centers.

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

#537

Post by mcguire »

SigmundA wrote: post #119
Someone1234 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to a persons personal risk. [..] Wear a hat and sunscreen. What's the "hat and sunscreen" protection against millimeter wave cellphone towers, that someone else installed on their private property near you? I'm not yet convinced the risks exist. But conceptually if there was a danger, there's no "personal risk" argument. We're blanketing the whole area around a tower with millimeter wave/5G, a person…

The sun is a 1000 watts per square meter exposure at your body, cell towers might be 100w if you hugged the antenna then inverse square law to distance to about 0.00000001 watt with a strong signal. Your cell device is a millwatts transmitter, equivalent to an LED light shining on you. You don't need hat and sunscreen for street lights or flashlights nor would you need it for cellular power levels, orders of magnitud…

Note that without significant shielding, the sun will make you very sick or kill you.

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

#538

Post by floatboth »

eytgsf5et wrote: post #267
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…

I find the HN community to be bi-modal with respect to technology: either they are very distrusting (luddites), or blindly in love with it (techno-utopians). 5G gets the techno-utopians in HN all excited about the possibilities of [INSERT THE POINT OF 5G] and they'll get mad at anything that threatens its introduction.

Who here actually gets excited about 5G? Everything I see about 5G is just full of business buzzwords. No one can explain why [a technical person outside of the mobile telecom industry] should care. Why the hell is there a new "G" if LTE was supposed to mean "Long Term Evolution" anyway?

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

#539

Post by mcguire »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #192
koheripbal wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absorbsion rates vary by orders of magnitude depending on signal frequency. A simple power comparison is not a great measure of affect.

The Sun transfers orders of magnitude more heat to your body than cell towers or your phone. The problem with every argument about radiation from cell phones being dangerous is that for every proposed mechanism, the Sun is orders of magnitude more damaging. The obvious worries with cell phones are repeated stress injuries, insomnia and disruption of personal relationships. There's just no plausible mechanism for the…

Out of curiosity, do you wear sunscreen to keep yourself cool?

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

#540

Post by vardump »

Gnarl wrote: post #491

This thread would be much shorter if someone had read this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26151230

Bad formatting in that paper makes it very hard to read.

Overall it seemed to have pretty strong cherry picking feel. Are you sure this paper is objective?

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