Don't play with your phone instead of your partner or penis.
Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
31–40 of 92 posts
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like many people, you're starting from assumption of the mechanism (ionization) and ignoring the fact that there are many other known physical mechanisms that are plausible. Also, if people detect a reliable signal without a plausible physical mechanism, best thing to do is determine what the cause of the signal is- rather than just assuming it's impossible. In grad school we were taught to do "back of the envelope"…
What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a s…
Maybe people with low sperm concentrations tend to sit around using their cell phone while it is plugged in?
The abstract doesn't really propose a mechanism, it just notes the correlation.
Pushing people with certain usage patterns to get screening for low t (or whatever) can still be a useful outcome of the further research.
Not that I think they really need to get funding to pursue it, but you are imputing the proposal of a causative radiation mechanism.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
There could be an over-represented subgroup of the general population who are more susceptible to the cell phone radiation, but selecting from that group would not necessarily obscure the relationship between the amount of cell phone use and any resulting biological impact. They don't go very far out on the limb, they say that it probably justifies a bigger study, which is pretty mild.
> There could be an over-represented subgroup of the general population who are more susceptible to the cell phone radiation, but selecting from that group would not necessarily obscure the relationship between the amount of cell phone use and any resulting biological impact. That's not what he said. If you read the abstract, it says that the candidates were chosen using "questionnaires accessing demographic data and…
My point was that the selection bias proposed will not necessarily obscure a biological effect (or at least, correlation).
Setting aside the legitimacy of pursuing this research, looking for effects using statistical analyses of medical records is an interesting way to direct at least a small amount of research, saying that such questions can only be asked when there is solid control of every factor is probably not a win.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like many people, you're starting from assumption of the mechanism (ionization) and ignoring the fact that there are many other known physical mechanisms that are plausible. Also, if people detect a reliable signal without a plausible physical mechanism, best thing to do is determine what the cause of the signal is- rather than just assuming it's impossible. In grad school we were taught to do "back of the envelope"…
What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a s…
Again, you're making a ton of assumptions about mechanisms. Saying low intensity RF has a negligible effect on chemistry belies the fact that cell receptors can be exquisitely sensitive and those receptors can cause large changes in cells via DNA transcription.
The current most plausible mechanism is localized cell heating. We already know that RF can cause cell heating. There are a number of physical responses to cell heating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein) which can have large effects on cell morphology.
I am not claiming that is the mechanism. But I've seen enough epidemilogical studies that have been conducted carefully enough to suggest there is some mechanism by which negative health effects may be occurring, and I think that alone makes it worth being a bit more creative than trying to disprove the observed evidence by claiming one of the plausible mechanisms isn't.
(I have a PhD in Biophysics; I've worked up and down the molecular stack, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if the epidemiologists carry out a good study, and the meta-analysts confirm the effect, it's always a good idea to be open minded about the cause).
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#35I can't critique the article directly, since it's behind a paywall. But I can take the purported results and do some Bayesian analysis with it. Take first a prior - due to my knowledge of physics, my prior on microwave/RF/visual radiation having any biological effect is 10^{-5}. Multiphoton ionization has simply never been observed to happen except under extremely intense (read: it'll melt you) fields and there are s…
I appreciate this analysis (and I agree with commenter who notes that there may be another element at work here and not just ionization/radiation). But concerning radiation, Shawn Otto has a great breakdown of why cellphones cannot cause cancer because the microwaves in cellphone transmission don't have enough energy to break DNA chains. It's a great, enlightening passage from his book "Fool Me Twice." I love how dow…
Exactly. The energy required to break the bond of a DNA pair (a covalent bond) is about 1 eV. If you plug 1 eV into E = hv you get the frequency of ultra-violet light. So anything lower than UV light (visible, infrared, microwave, radio wave) doesn't have enough energy to do anything.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#36I can't critique the article directly, since it's behind a paywall. But I can take the purported results and do some Bayesian analysis with it. Take first a prior - due to my knowledge of physics, my prior on microwave/RF/visual radiation having any biological effect is 10^{-5}. Multiphoton ionization has simply never been observed to happen except under extremely intense (read: it'll melt you) fields and there are s…
I appreciate this analysis (and I agree with commenter who notes that there may be another element at work here and not just ionization/radiation). But concerning radiation, Shawn Otto has a great breakdown of why cellphones cannot cause cancer because the microwaves in cellphone transmission don't have enough energy to break DNA chains. It's a great, enlightening passage from his book "Fool Me Twice." I love how dow…
This is a good explanation, but unfortunately it's wrong. You don't actually need to invoke quantization of light (i.e. photons) to derive the photoelectric effect, or multiphoton ionization.
You can actually use a semiclassical model - electrons are quantized, and obey the Schrodinger equation, but EM radiation is fully classical. I.e., just solve the time dependent Schrodigner equation with V(x,t) = V_{atom}(x) + cos(wt) E x.
Using this model, you derive exactly what the photonic theory intuitively predicts - i.e., the rate of 2-photon ionization scales like O(I^2) (i.e. probability of ionization = probability of 2 photons hitting simultaneously), n-photon ionization scales like O(I^n), etc.
Unfortunately I can only give paywalled references for this:
A. Jensen A. Galtbayar and K. Yajima. Local time-decay of solutions to schrodinger equations with time-periodic potentials. J. Stat. Phys., 116:231, 2004.
O. Costin, R. D. Costin, and J. L. Lebowitz. Time asymptotics of the Schr¨odinger wave function in time-periodic potentials. J. Statist. Phys., 116(1-4):283–310, 2004.
S Geltman. Multiphoton ionization of atoms. J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys., 10:831, 1974.
R. V. Jensen and I.B. Bernstein. Semiclassical theory of relativistic electrons in space and time varying electromagnetic field. Phys. Rev. A., 29:282–289, 1984.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like many people, you're starting from assumption of the mechanism (ionization) and ignoring the fact that there are many other known physical mechanisms that are plausible. Also, if people detect a reliable signal without a plausible physical mechanism, best thing to do is determine what the cause of the signal is- rather than just assuming it's impossible. In grad school we were taught to do "back of the envelope"…
What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a s…
Warm battery in front pocket? Testicles are outside the body to help control temperature.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a s…
Again, you're making a ton of assumptions about mechanisms. Saying low intensity RF has a negligible effect on chemistry belies the fact that cell receptors can be exquisitely sensitive and those receptors can cause large changes in cells via DNA transcription. The current most plausible mechanism is localized cell heating. We already know that RF can cause cell heating. There are a number of physical responses to ce…
Of course I'm making assumptions - the biggest one is that quantum chemistry works.
If you are now retreating to thermal effects, they a) can be easily measured and b) are vastly smaller than effects like wearing tighty whities or walking past a radiator in winter. Is your sole claim that using a cell phone might have an effect 1/100th as large as blow drying one's balls after a shower?
Let me reason by analogy, to explain the probabilitistic intuition here. Study: we threw golf balls at aircraft carriers and cargo vessels, and concluded that they are an effective naval weapon. The probability of observing this result by random chance, assuming golf balls don't sink aircraft carriers, is 2%.
Would you draw the conclusion that golf balls are likely to sink aircraft carriers from such a study?
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a s…
Maybe people with low sperm concentrations tend to sit around using their cell phone while it is plugged in? The abstract doesn't really propose a mechanism, it just notes the correlation. Pushing people with certain usage patterns to get screening for low t (or whatever) can still be a useful outcome of the further research. Not that I think they really need to get funding to pursue it, but you are imputing the prop…
Right - I'm charitably assuming that their study supported causality with p=0.02. In reality it doesn't.
Re: Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality
#40I can't critique the article directly, since it's behind a paywall. But I can take the purported results and do some Bayesian analysis with it. Take first a prior - due to my knowledge of physics, my prior on microwave/RF/visual radiation having any biological effect is 10^{-5}. Multiphoton ionization has simply never been observed to happen except under extremely intense (read: it'll melt you) fields and there are s…
Like many people, you're starting from assumption of the mechanism (ionization) and ignoring the fact that there are many other known physical mechanisms that are plausible. Also, if people detect a reliable signal without a plausible physical mechanism, best thing to do is determine what the cause of the signal is- rather than just assuming it's impossible. In grad school we were taught to do "back of the envelope"…
When it comes to weird results in human epidemiology and public health, my bet is always on hidden/unknown 3rd factors. You're right that the signal might be real, but it might have nothing at all to do with cell phones. Rather, cell phones might be independently correlated with whatever the real causes of the sperm problems are.
Put in plain English: a group of men with similar cell phone habits probably have many other things in common.