by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @06:44PM (#50391407)
Easy way to win the Amazing Randi's million dollar challenge for supernatural powers. If you get sick when they turn the wi-fi on and feel better when they turn it off, you have the ability to detect 2.4GHz radiation with your body.
There have been double-blind tests performed, but the subjects were quite upset when they learned that apparently it wasn't the wifi signals making them sick, but the blinking lights on the wireless devices.
IE lights disabled, radios fully enabled, on highest power, transmitting data: No symptoms. Simulated status light activity, radios completely disabled and unpowered: symptoms. Lights & radio on : symptoms Lights & radio disabled: no symptoms.
Conclusion: Clearly we need to investigate the status lights.;)
Interesting, do you have a source ? (Aka citation needed). I'm genuinely interested in getting such kind of study result. Of course the real subject is long term exposure effects of radio microwaves. For which I'm not sure many results (scientific ones) exist. And incidentally I'm going to install Ethernet plugs in our sons school next week to avoid this - not for me but by other parents demand (which I think will bring more reliable connectivity - win win )
That should have been done in the first place. Don't expect me to do your work for you. No citation means you fail, or are you gonna tell you college professor to google it?
This is repeated over and over again when ham operators put up towers. The complaints start rolling in about interference with phones and tv signals long before any transmitter is ever activated. I've even got grief for small wire receive only antennas.
Falsehood 1: You can light your tap water on fire. Fox made this claim famous in the first Gasland movie when he showed a resident of Colorado striking a match as water came out of his tap; the natural gas dissolved in the water burst into flame. Yet the water was tested by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which reported to the resident: "There are no indications of any oil & gas related impacts to your well water." The agency concluded that the natural gas in his water supply was derived from natural sources—the water well penetrated several coal beds that had released the methane into the well.
I can believe that. The light on my computer monitor is so annoying that I had to tape over it, and my router blinking all the time is pretty annoying too.
It seems to me that more and more people are exhibiting symptoms of being allergic to modern life and all its complexities, technology very much included. But in this case I'm thinking more and more that it's just the kid not wanting to go to school, so he latched on to this mysterious ailment (that he probably read about on the internet) and is playing it for all it's worth. His parents, being totally incapable of conceiving on their precious little snowflake actually faking anything like this, is going Great Guns over it. Or, perhaps, they're scumbags and are trying to cash in through litigation on something they sold their kid on. Either way: Occams' Razor.
More likely the kid got legitimately sick at some point, the parents latched onto something they heard about on Facebook and things snowballed from there.
When I was in preschool, I got a "cold" and had to stay home so I didn't make the other kids sick. That part was explained to me at the time. But they didn't also explain that my runny nose and sore throat were themselves the "cold." So those symptoms went away, and I had no idea that I no longer had a "cold." They asked if I wanted to go back to preschool, I said "no." I mean, I didn't like it for other reasons and back then in the stone age "preschool" was daycare with no education at all, and no concept of appropriate supervision either. So it was no loss. But they just respected my wishes, and it was many years later when they found out the reason I said "no" was that I didn't want to make the other kids get a "cold," whatever that was. It sure sounded bad by the tone of voice adults used when they said I had it.
It is the natural trajectory for making decisions from ignorance.
It seems to me that more and more people are exhibiting symptoms of being allergic to modern life and all its complexities, technology very much included. But in this case I'm thinking more and more that it's just the kid not wanting to go to school, so he latched on to this mysterious ailment (that he probably read about on the internet) and is playing it for all it's worth. His parents, being totally incapable of conceiving on their precious little snowflake actually faking anything like this, is going Great Guns over it. Or, perhaps, they're scumbags and are trying to cash in through litigation on something they sold their kid on. Either way: Occams' Razor.
Allergic? No.
Seeing everybody else whine about something and get coddled, rewarded, given money or status because of it... yes. I assume a lot of it is "let's get some money out of it using lawyers" or in the case of africa "let's get some money in hush money / bribes."
It's the rotting of integrity in modern culture, not allergies.
Seriously, why does my air purifier need an LED power on indicator light? I can hear the damn thing if it is running! It shouldn't take 5 layers of duct tape to make it dark enough to sleep in my room...
Maybe they it they are just sensitive to radiation in the visible spectrum. The obvious answer is to stick them in pitch dark rooms to help them learn.
Still no citation for this claim. We spent lot of time discussing someone's fantasy.
Honestly If you are going to make claims of some study, you really should post a link to it, or at least to something discussing it.
And to anyone telling me to look it up, I say no, not my job, if you made this mistake in a paper in school you would fail, so try not to fail in life too.
The whole reason there is a placebo group is precisely because we know the human brain is susceptible to suggestion. In an experiment like this, there is no reason at all to provide that suggestion.
To expand upon this, in a 'double blind' test, not even those with any contact with the test subjects know whether they're administering the real thing or a placebo. IE those handing out the pills and recording any symptoms don't know. This prevents even more contamination, because the doctor can act differently if he knows which pills he's handing out, and influence the patients that way.
You've described a "blind" study. "Double blind [wikipedia.org]" means that the testers don't know which subject is in which group until after the study.
It's exactly what double blind means. You don't tell the subjects whether they're in the active, placebo, or control groups.
Nope, that's a blind test.
Double-blind means the people handing out the pills also don't know if they're placebo or not. This eliminates any subtle body-language vibes they might be giving out to the people who swallow them.
A double-blind test only ensures that the researchers and the subjects are not aware of any information that may affect their actions during the test. What is being tested has no impact on whether something is double-blind or not, and likewise for revealing that information after the test.
That test is on the contrary quite revealing, since it correctly decorrelates radio signals from symptoms, thus refuting the hypothesis that radio signals are responsible for the symptoms.
I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals. It is well known that humans are susceptible to suggestion. You can make people feel itchy by showing them pictures of mosquitos. You can make people feel warm by showing a rising thermometer. You can make people misidentify the taste of food by coloring it. Do those tests refute the fact that people can sense touch, temperature, or taste? Of course not.
I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals.
As the famous 'experiment' down in South Africa showed, where the cell phone tower operators shut the tower off six weeks before a meeting about turning the tower off, where people were STILL expressing the same symptoms, how getting away from the tower decreased them, how it was the radiation from the tower giving them rashes and such, perception is a thing.
By having the lights be visible, it allowed the study to not just test radio sensitivity, it allowed them to test perception of radio sensitivity.
The test essentially showed that the people were getting sick when they thought they were being bombarded with radio waves, not when they were actually being bombarded.
A real test would not provide any misleading clues.
They tested that as well. They had 4 different tests - Radio & lights, Radio & dark, No Radio &lights, No Radio & dark. Symptoms tracked with the status lights on the test device, not the radio waves.
If people were sensitive, but also fooling themselves with the lights, more people would have shown something when the lights were dark but the radio was on.
But the South Africa test and this experiment are both strongly influenced by what the subjects thought. At most, that shows that the power of suggestion overrides any real effect. But that situation is not all that unusual - I gave some examples above.
Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all? Just put them in a room with an antenna and have them indicate when it is on or off. There is no reason to provides any other hints or clues, real or misleading, at all.
Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all?
OK, you run that test and nobody feels ill, on or off. What does that prove? Not much - your signal could be too weak or the wrong frequency, or the room could be interfering, or it need to send data in bursts or cycles, or both the signal and the blinking lights are needed, or... On the other hand, if you can create the feeling of sickness using just lights and with lights and wifi you can be pretty sure that lights are the (indirect) cause - making those 'what ifs' more implausible.
Second, it also gives you a chance to catch non-wifi issues that are making people sick. What if the school's lack of proper ventilation, or an old chemical spill giving off fumes, or the hot plastic of the router creating VOCs really is making people ill? We can catch it now by proving that it's not just not wifi, but also not all in their heads, and start looking for other answers.
Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all?
Let me ask this: What are you gaining by testing less?
There have been a number of experiments like you describe. By not telling them whether the wifi is active or not, you do indeed confound them enough that they can't just guess and fake the symptoms.
But as yndrd mentions, by having the lights as additional test groups, it can help zero in on whether it's psychosomatic in nature. And the evidence is that it IS, at least in part.
It also gives you the ability to differentiate between symptoms between two
If people were sensitive, but also fooling themselves with the lights, more people would have shown something when the lights were dark but the radio was on.
I don't understand this. Why is the suggestion that the radio is off (dark lights) not as strong as the suggestion that the radio is on?
I don't understand this. Why is the suggestion that the radio is off (dark lights) not as strong as the suggestion that the radio is on?
It's a matter of ratios, which is why it's good to do all 4 possibilities(in this case) in 1 experiment.
Basically, between the lights on and lights off tests, you can figure out, roughly, how many people are (presumably) responding to the lights, and not the radio. How many are responding to the radio, and not the lights, etc...
I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals.
There's no parlor tricks here. The lights are the placebo in a placebo-controlled study [wikipedia.org].
If you want to determine if a medicine is really the cause of the effect on patient's health - positive or negative - then you use a placebo to rule out the possibility that swallowing a huge pill or getting an injection itself is causing some psychological effect. You have the real medicine (lights+signal), fake medicine (lights + no signal), control group (no lights + no signal), and sometimes an alternative treatment (no lights + signal).
There is a known (or at least claimed) correlation between WiFi signals and reported illness. The test is designed to isolate the effects of perceivable stimulus (lights on the device) with the supposed cause of the illness (the invisible WiFi signals). Intuitively we all "know" that WiFi signals do not cause any physiological effects. But something is apparently effecting these people, and the test is aimed at figuring out what that something is. =Smidge=
Is there a name for an anti-placebo where you are giving them an actual drug but telling them it's a placebo to test if a patient thinking the drug does nothing is overcome by any actual benefits of the drug itself?
I doubt anyone is suggesting blinking LEDs actually cause the problem (dear God, I hope not).
actually, blinking lights have long been proven to give people headaches & even seizures - but that's not the issue under discussion as those are epileptic in nature.
I doubt anyone is suggesting blinking LEDs actually cause the problem (dear God, I hope not).
The LEDs can make the people imagine that there are "harmful electromagnetic waves" present. Thus, the LEDs would actually cause the problem, but mentally.
Solution: make devices with just a simple power LED in concealment somewhere back of the device, or allow the blinking LEDs to be toggled on/off.
Yes you really are. I'm actually inclined to agree that the experiment design wasn't ideal, clearly it was designed to test whether indicators of WIFI affect people rather than the presence of WIFI itself, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be civil or moderate when discussing it.
There is proof however that people who claim to have "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" mysteriously cannot explain why they can get "sick" even when the source of electromagnetic radiation is turned off. Apparently the mere sight of a router/electrical transformer/pylon is enough to make them "sick".
I would like to see real studies on the effects of the EM spectrum, but such studies would be extremely hard to perform given both the lack of controls with everything else being equal, and given that the ramp-up of the use of radio in general has been slow and steady as opposed to instantly punctuated.
Well, if I stand outside in the hot texas sun for over half an hour, I do develop a bad skin rash that burns, itches and stings for a day or so. Sometimes it's also accompanied by nausea and lethargy. I suppose I have EHS!
Of course doctors don't diagnose me properly, instead they ask me to apply this skin lotion before hand, and warn me if I keep going out without it I may get cancer. I have tried to sue the sun, and have asked it to turn itself down, but it never complies for more than 12 hours a time, frequently less.
Move to Alaska in the winter and Antarctica in the summer and you'll be able to be free from most of the sun! Or just living in a cave works too I suppose.
Bring in a portable faraday cage and have him sit in it. If he still develops symptoms then it's something else. I'll bet it's something environmental, like what they use to clean with, or something in the ventilation system. Or maybe the kid just doesn't want to go to school and has his parents totally foxed. Wouldn't be the first or last time that happened.
Bring in a portable faraday cage and have him sit in it.
Sounds like reasonable accomodation to me, problem solved.
"Thus arose, in the early 20's, a small subculture of spherically encased children known as 'Faraday Hamsters.'
Enabled by a 2017 Supreme Court interpretation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, these 'Faraday Hamsters' could frequently be seen running their electromagnetically impervious cages down school hallways along special troughs--evocative of the famous boulder chase scene in the 20th century classic, Raiders of the Lost Ark."
That only works if he doesn't know that he's sitting in a Faraday cage. Otherwise the kid would simply subconsciously - or consciously - fake symptoms just to fulfill the prophesy declared by his parents. He can't know the Faraday cage is there, else you'd never be able to rule out WiFi RF and narrow it to "something [else] environmental".
So... give him an astronaut suit to wear for a day and tell him it's a reward for good grades or something.
OK, true enough. So we provide him with a fake Faraday cage, that doesn't keep anything out. If he magically gets better then you reveal it's a fake and that he's suffering from imaginary symptoms. Or that he's just trying to get out of going to school.
Bah, we don't need him to sit in a Faraday cage. I'll simply sell them my patent pending WiFi Sickness Rocks. Each rock absorbs the bad components of WiFi via a process called Eam Nihil Penitus Operari. By simply keeping the rock in his pocket, he can be guaranteed that WiFi signals won't cause him any physical harm. All for the low, low price of $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). Order now and I'll throw in my Vaccine Toxin Be Gone rock which removes anything in vaccines that causes autism simply by
Good thing that medical diagnoses are never based on subjective symptoms but rather objective signs. Courts, juries and lawyers do not have a license to practice medicine and should remember that.
Or possibly just at home. The kind of people who tend to go on about "WIFI radiation" are usually the same ones who use "organic" cleaning agents that don't really kill any bacteria and don't vaccinate their children. For all we know, he could be an unvaccinated child who's been living in a moldy, dirty-ass environment until they sent him off. The second he went off to school, all the diseases that everyone else is immune to all could have combined in his system to make turbo-ebola. I predict all their face
Probably not the organic cleaning agent using ones (as you point out those don't kill the germs) but the ones who have little bottles of Purell hand sanitizer clipped on to their belts and wipe every thing down with Clorox wipes multiple times a day. These parents are also ones who likely don't let the kids play in the dirt or go outside.
It isn't like you really need to sterilize hard surfaces at home anyway. I don't mind cleaning a toilet with Windex since it is pointless to sterilize it and it does a good enough job cleaning it, but my wife thinks that's gross and insisted using a 'real cleaner' like Softscrub. Then she got into the organic stuff and so we're using some organic cleaner that is mostly ethanol (from organic corn, as if that matters...) and some essential oil for scent. It works as well as Windex, less harsh than bleach-b
Unfortunately, they have the backing of this guy [columbia.edu] who is on some sort of crusade to protect humans and wildlife [businesswire.com] from those oh so dangerous invisible EMF rays.
Even more unfortunately, he appears to be a bright guy with fairly well established credentials.
The problem is (and this is sometimes overlooked by judges) smart people can be: a) wrong b) crazy c) lying
In this case I think it's (a) with a healthy dose of (b) mixed in.
Hopefully the judge takes stock of the numerous double blind studies [wikipedia.org] where it has been shown that EMF "sufferers" symptoms disappeared when they were unaware of the presence of EMF radiation
Everything about the studies that have been done points to the condition being psychosomatic. While psychosomatic symptoms can still be extremely debilitating for the sufferer, even going so far as to produce objectively measurable effects on the person's body and metabolism, should psychosomatic conditions be the school board's problem?
In this case, it isn't even a school board, it's a private school's admin, so it is likely to be even less their problem. A public school district is legally obligated to deal with basically whatever the residents of the area spawn; either in-house or by paying for an appropriate specialist placement(I think that kiddo going to jail makes him not their problem anymore; but if so that's about it).
A private school has no particular obligation to deal with anyone in particular; so long as they don't explicitly step on some protected class or (as is being argued in this case) fail to make reasonable accommodation per the ADA.
If it were a public school, it would be the school's problem, just as they have to make provision for the education of any other sickie(mental or physical); but for the private school to be obligated; it has to be demonstrated that kiddo has a 'disability' for ADA purposes, that they are capable of performing if provided with 'reasonable accommodation', and that the 'reasonable accommodation' would not cause 'undue hardship' for the entity being asked to provide it.
I'd be interested to know how the meaning of those terms would be decided in this case. Fay is a pretty fancy school, east coast private boarding school with history dating back before 1900 and its own endowment and all; but even if that mitigates any argument about the financial impact of having to hardwire everything, it might well be argued that, say, making it impossible for anyone in this kid's class to do an ipad-related curriculum activity would impose excessive limitations on their ability to learn, and the school to teach, as it usually does. If the school were purely doing wireless because it was cheaper, they might have issues; but today wireless devices are used routinely in situations where hardwired stuff would never have been considered practical; plus(unlike an accommodation that requires adding something, like a braille copy of the textbook or the like, the accomodation here demanded requires depriving everyone in the student's proximity of any use of wifi devices, or segregating the student, neither of which are likely to go over all that well.)
To my understanding, the only treatment that currently exists for a psychosomatic condition is ignorance for the person who has the condition (that is, they are oblivious to the presence of what will trigger the physiological responses associated with the condition), or else to somehow convince them that their suffering is psychosomatic. Generally, the former is easier to achieve than the latter. Belief is a surprisingly powerful thing, it can affect a person's immune response, their hormone levels, their
As someone who has fought with the public school system to get accommodations for my son (who has an actual medical diagnosis for a real condition), it takes more than the parents saying "Johnny gets sick around WiFi" before the school would be forced to turn off all WiFi. So even if this were a public school, they would have an uphill battle and would need to 1) demonstrate that their child really does react badly to WiFi signals and 2) show that there is a solution that can be reached which wouldn't over
Your point is an important one: in law, public schools are required to do whatever is necessary; but that certainly doesn't stop them from imposing a variety of procedural hurdles, attempting to pass off inadequate measures as being suitable, or just plain stalling. This is theoretically legally risky; but it's not as though there are any regulatory bodies with the time and interest to proactively hunt misconduct, so it's pretty much a question of how forceful the parents are. The ability of the district to
This is a great point. More importantly, I would suggest a vast majority have no idea what "electromagnetic radiation" is and are ignorant to the fact that they are bathed in it, in this part of the spectrum - 2300-2400 MHz [jneuhaus.com] everywhere they go.
Sure, but imagine a kid as agoraphobia and can't stand being in the open air. Is it reasonable for the parents to expect the school to put the football field inside of a building so the kid can be on the team? Also there is absolutely no evidence that EHS itself exists, which is what the parents claim. The child would be better off if the parents admitted that it was a psychiatric disorder and started getting the kid treatment for it. The ADA has limits on what accommodations an employer, or school has
In today's society? Absolutely. You can get away with all kinds of criminal activity just by claiming poor home life or being bullied when you were a kid.
Pretty much every body has this excuse because it usually takes about 25 years before the average person learns how to be a good parent.
Not sure on that. Remember that ADA concerns disabilities, not illnesses. Since it's the government, I'd be surprised if a list of disabilities isn't somehow defined and that you can't just claim something as a "disability."
For example, if I have Metallophobia (fear of metal), the company does not have to remove all metal from my surroundings.
For ADA purposes, the limitations imposed by the effects of an illness, or the treatment requirements of one, count as 'disabilities'(eg. unless you can prove that it would cause 'undue hardship', you would need to allow a diabetic some breaks to test blood sugar and administer insulin, if needed).
You do have to have a disability, and you can't just self-diagnose(it would be interesting to see what the court thinks of the quack who did the diagnosing in this case); but the law covers basically any functi
A mental illness is still an illness. So the ADA would still apply.
Yes but what should the school do about it? Screw everyone else because they have one disabled child? Or provide a facility for the disabled child to work within the system.
A mental illness is still an illness. So the ADA would still apply.
Yes but what should the school do about it? Screw everyone else because they have one disabled child? Or provide a facility for the disabled child to work within the system.
I say we put the kid in a cage.
Well, I know that in public schools they will compromise the health of the rest of the student body by removing healthy nuts from the menu due to one child's allergy, so I would not be surprised if they required the school to hardwire every classroom. Kind of sucks for tablets and phones though.
It is easy to prove that nut allergies exist and some can be quite lethal. When my wife was teaching, she had a student who would have a severe allergic reaction if she picked up a pencil that had previously been handled by someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich. We're not talking "break out in hives" reaction either, but the "can't breathe, get an EpiPen or she'll die" kind of reaction. In cases like this, denying children nuts in school is a small price to pay.
"Well, I know that in public schools they will compromise the health of the rest of the student body by removing healthy nuts from the menu due to one child's allergy, so I would not be surprised if they required the school to hardwire every classroom."
Well, if they manage to actually reliably prove the kid's electromagnetic intolerance, which I don't think anyone ever could prove before, then yeah, they might make all schools rewire every classroom, plus they'd be the most famous people on the planet.
This is a California thing in general. There are some additional California rules that go beyond ADA requirements that tend to be abused. There is essentially no enforcement though, except by roving bands of lawyers who threaten to sue people. This is by design because it is cheaper than hiring regulators paid by the state (and it's also Republican friendly to have private enterprise suing people). It's cheaper to pay off the lawyer than to go to court and get an exemption or time extension or clarifica
This is a California thing in general. There are some additional California rules that go beyond ADA requirements that tend to be abused. There is essentially no enforcement though, except by roving bands of lawyers who threaten to sue people. This is by design because it is cheaper than hiring regulators paid by the state (and it's also Republican friendly to have private enterprise suing people). It's cheaper to pay off the lawyer than to go to court and get an exemption or time extension or clarification of the rules.
This happens in Oklahoma City, too. When business gets slow, painting companies will drive around looking for houses that need paint and report them to the city, then within a couple of days of the notices getting sent out, this company goes door to door seeing if they would like their house painted.
I had to deal with an issue relating to a number of members of the public claiming to be affected by this a couple of years ago. Bluntly, most of the people involved had clear mental health or personality issues and were projecting their general dislike of modern life and technology onto this supposed bogeyman.
A couple turned out to be more interesting; they'd started feeling unwell since having wireless routers installed in their homes. Turned out that a faulty batch of router power supplies was emittin
You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!
What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy way to win the Amazing Randi's million dollar challenge for supernatural powers. If you get sick when they turn the wi-fi on and feel better when they turn it off, you have the ability to detect 2.4GHz radiation with your body.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
Are you not aware of the many orders of magnitude difference between WiFi and Microwave ovens.
Microwave Oven typically 600+ Watts or 600,000mW
Wifi Typically 5mW or 0.005 Watts
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been double-blind tests performed, but the subjects were quite upset when they learned that apparently it wasn't the wifi signals making them sick, but the blinking lights on the wireless devices.
IE lights disabled, radios fully enabled, on highest power, transmitting data: No symptoms.
Simulated status light activity, radios completely disabled and unpowered: symptoms.
Lights & radio on : symptoms
Lights & radio disabled: no symptoms.
Conclusion: Clearly we need to investigate the status lights. ;)
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Interesting, do you have a source ? (Aka citation needed).
I'm genuinely interested in getting such kind of study result. Of course the real subject is long term exposure effects of radio microwaves. For which I'm not sure many results (scientific ones) exist. And incidentally I'm going to install Ethernet plugs in our sons school next week to avoid this - not for me but by other parents demand (which I think will bring more reliable connectivity - win win )
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
LMGTFY: http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs296/en/
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That does not cite the study mentioned by the GP.
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Also posting to undo mod.
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, here's one [sjweh.fi] - Note "sham".
and another [sciencedirect.com].
The study I'm remembering was slightly different, but I'm being drowned out by different studies. [biomedcentral.com]
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This is repeated over and over again when ham operators put up towers. The complaints start rolling in about interference with phones and tv signals long before any transmitter is ever activated. I've even got grief for small wire receive only antennas.
Re: What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Informative)
Falsehood 1: You can light your tap water on fire. Fox made this claim famous in the first Gasland movie when he showed a resident of Colorado striking a match as water came out of his tap; the natural gas dissolved in the water burst into flame. Yet the water was tested by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which reported to the resident: "There are no indications of any oil & gas related impacts to your well water." The agency concluded that the natural gas in his water supply was derived from natural sources—the water well penetrated several coal beds that had released the methane into the well.
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I can believe that. The light on my computer monitor is so annoying that I had to tape over it, and my router blinking all the time is pretty annoying too.
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I've found that liquid electrical tape works pretty good as well. I've even used foil a couple times.
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Citation, please. If genuine, this study needs to be cited every time this issue comes up.
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Funny)
When I was in preschool, I got a "cold" and had to stay home so I didn't make the other kids sick. That part was explained to me at the time. But they didn't also explain that my runny nose and sore throat were themselves the "cold." So those symptoms went away, and I had no idea that I no longer had a "cold." They asked if I wanted to go back to preschool, I said "no." I mean, I didn't like it for other reasons and back then in the stone age "preschool" was daycare with no education at all, and no concept of appropriate supervision either. So it was no loss. But they just respected my wishes, and it was many years later when they found out the reason I said "no" was that I didn't want to make the other kids get a "cold," whatever that was. It sure sounded bad by the tone of voice adults used when they said I had it.
It is the natural trajectory for making decisions from ignorance.
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It seems to me that more and more people are exhibiting symptoms of being allergic to modern life and all its complexities, technology very much included. But in this case I'm thinking more and more that it's just the kid not wanting to go to school, so he latched on to this mysterious ailment (that he probably read about on the internet) and is playing it for all it's worth. His parents, being totally incapable of conceiving on their precious little snowflake actually faking anything like this, is going Great Guns over it. Or, perhaps, they're scumbags and are trying to cash in through litigation on something they sold their kid on. Either way: Occams' Razor.
Allergic? No.
Seeing everybody else whine about something and get coddled, rewarded, given money or status because of it... yes. I assume a lot of it is "let's get some money out of it using lawyers" or in the case of africa "let's get some money in hush money / bribes."
It's the rotting of integrity in modern culture, not allergies.
OT: new study needed (Score:2)
Re:OT: new study needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, why does my air purifier need an LED power on indicator light? I can hear the damn thing if it is running! It shouldn't take 5 layers of duct tape to make it dark enough to sleep in my room...
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That could also be explained by the simple fact that their "symptoms" are all in their heads.
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Which is the reason for the wink smiley. ;)
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Honestly If you are going to make claims of some study, you really should post a link to it, or at least to something discussing it.
And to anyone telling me to look it up, I say no, not my job, if you made this mistake in a paper in school you would fail, so try not to fail in life too.
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It's exactly what double blind means. You don't tell the subjects whether they're in the active, placebo, or control groups.
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The whole reason there is a placebo group is precisely because we know the human brain is susceptible to suggestion. In an experiment like this, there is no reason at all to provide that suggestion.
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To expand upon this, in a 'double blind' test, not even those with any contact with the test subjects know whether they're administering the real thing or a placebo. IE those handing out the pills and recording any symptoms don't know. This prevents even more contamination, because the doctor can act differently if he knows which pills he's handing out, and influence the patients that way.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
You've described a "blind" study. "Double blind [wikipedia.org]" means that the testers don't know which subject is in which group until after the study.
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It's exactly what double blind means. You don't tell the subjects whether they're in the active, placebo, or control groups.
Nope, that's a blind test.
Double-blind means the people handing out the pills also don't know if they're placebo or not. This eliminates any subtle body-language vibes they might be giving out to the people who swallow them.
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That test is on the contrary quite revealing, since it correctly decorrelates radio signals from symptoms, thus refuting the hypothesis that radio signals are responsible for the symptoms.
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I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals. It is well known that humans are susceptible to suggestion. You can make people feel itchy by showing them pictures of mosquitos. You can make people feel warm by showing a rising thermometer. You can make people misidentify the taste of food by coloring it. Do those tests refute the fact that people can sense touch, temperature, or taste? Of course not.
Now, I don't believe at all that
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals.
As the famous 'experiment' down in South Africa showed, where the cell phone tower operators shut the tower off six weeks before a meeting about turning the tower off, where people were STILL expressing the same symptoms, how getting away from the tower decreased them, how it was the radiation from the tower giving them rashes and such, perception is a thing.
By having the lights be visible, it allowed the study to not just test radio sensitivity, it allowed them to test perception of radio sensitivity.
The test essentially showed that the people were getting sick when they thought they were being bombarded with radio waves, not when they were actually being bombarded.
A real test would not provide any misleading clues.
They tested that as well. They had 4 different tests - Radio & lights, Radio & dark, No Radio &lights, No Radio & dark. Symptoms tracked with the status lights on the test device, not the radio waves.
If people were sensitive, but also fooling themselves with the lights, more people would have shown something when the lights were dark but the radio was on.
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But the South Africa test and this experiment are both strongly influenced by what the subjects thought. At most, that shows that the power of suggestion overrides any real effect. But that situation is not all that unusual - I gave some examples above.
Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all? Just put them in a room with an antenna and have them indicate when it is on or off. There is no reason to provides any other hints or clues, real or misleading, at all.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all?
OK, you run that test and nobody feels ill, on or off. What does that prove? Not much - your signal could be too weak or the wrong frequency, or the room could be interfering, or it need to send data in bursts or cycles, or both the signal and the blinking lights are needed, or... On the other hand, if you can create the feeling of sickness using just lights and with lights and wifi you can be pretty sure that lights are the (indirect) cause - making those 'what ifs' more implausible.
Second, it also gives you a chance to catch non-wifi issues that are making people sick. What if the school's lack of proper ventilation, or an old chemical spill giving off fumes, or the hot plastic of the router creating VOCs really is making people ill? We can catch it now by proving that it's not just not wifi, but also not all in their heads, and start looking for other answers.
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Why would it not be a stronger experiment if there were no lights at all?
Let me ask this: What are you gaining by testing less?
There have been a number of experiments like you describe. By not telling them whether the wifi is active or not, you do indeed confound them enough that they can't just guess and fake the symptoms.
But as yndrd mentions, by having the lights as additional test groups, it can help zero in on whether it's psychosomatic in nature. And the evidence is that it IS, at least in part.
It also gives you the ability to differentiate between symptoms between two
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If people were sensitive, but also fooling themselves with the lights, more people would have shown something when the lights were dark but the radio was on.
I don't understand this. Why is the suggestion that the radio is off (dark lights) not as strong as the suggestion that the radio is on?
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I don't understand this. Why is the suggestion that the radio is off (dark lights) not as strong as the suggestion that the radio is on?
It's a matter of ratios, which is why it's good to do all 4 possibilities(in this case) in 1 experiment.
Basically, between the lights on and lights off tests, you can figure out, roughly, how many people are (presumably) responding to the lights, and not the radio. How many are responding to the radio, and not the lights, etc...
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. There is no reason at all to show lights if what you are really testing is sensitivity to radio signals.
There's no parlor tricks here. The lights are the placebo in a placebo-controlled study [wikipedia.org].
If you want to determine if a medicine is really the cause of the effect on patient's health - positive or negative - then you use a placebo to rule out the possibility that swallowing a huge pill or getting an injection itself is causing some psychological effect. You have the real medicine (lights+signal), fake medicine (lights + no signal), control group (no lights + no signal), and sometimes an alternative treatment (no lights + signal).
There is a known (or at least claimed) correlation between WiFi signals and reported illness. The test is designed to isolate the effects of perceivable stimulus (lights on the device) with the supposed cause of the illness (the invisible WiFi signals). Intuitively we all "know" that WiFi signals do not cause any physiological effects. But something is apparently effecting these people, and the test is aimed at figuring out what that something is.
=Smidge=
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Is there a name for an anti-placebo where you are giving them an actual drug but telling them it's a placebo to test if a patient thinking the drug does nothing is overcome by any actual benefits of the drug itself?
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Boy, you're really going on that citation thing, you know? Completely missed where I posted sources?
Here, have another [sciencedirect.com] couple [nih.gov].
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actually, blinking lights have long been proven to give people headaches & even seizures - but that's not the issue under discussion as those are epileptic in nature.
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I doubt anyone is suggesting blinking LEDs actually cause the problem (dear God, I hope not).
The LEDs can make the people imagine that there are "harmful electromagnetic waves" present. Thus, the LEDs would actually cause the problem, but mentally.
Solution: make devices with just a simple power LED in concealment somewhere back of the device, or allow the blinking LEDs to be toggled on/off.
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Or electrical tape works...
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Yes you really are. I'm actually inclined to agree that the experiment design wasn't ideal, clearly it was designed to test whether indicators of WIFI affect people rather than the presence of WIFI itself, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be civil or moderate when discussing it.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Informative)
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I would like to see real studies on the effects of the EM spectrum, but such studies would be extremely hard to perform given both the lack of controls with everything else being equal, and given that the ramp-up of the use of radio in general has been slow and steady as opposed to instantly punctuated.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if I stand outside in the hot texas sun for over half an hour, I do develop a bad skin rash that burns, itches and stings for a day or so. Sometimes it's also accompanied by nausea and lethargy. I suppose I have EHS!
Of course doctors don't diagnose me properly, instead they ask me to apply this skin lotion before hand, and warn me if I keep going out without it I may get cancer. I have tried to sue the sun, and have asked it to turn itself down, but it never complies for more than 12 hours a time, frequently less.
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Move to Alaska in the winter and Antarctica in the summer and you'll be able to be free from most of the sun! Or just living in a cave works too I suppose.
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Oh, nonsense! It complies for better than 13 hours on Christmas, just to give you a treat....
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bring in a portable faraday cage and have him sit in it.
Sounds like reasonable accomodation to me, problem solved.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Funny)
Bring in a portable faraday cage and have him sit in it.
Sounds like reasonable accomodation to me, problem solved.
"Thus arose, in the early 20's, a small subculture of spherically encased children known as 'Faraday Hamsters.'
Enabled by a 2017 Supreme Court interpretation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, these 'Faraday Hamsters' could frequently be seen running their electromagnetically impervious cages down school hallways along special troughs--evocative of the famous boulder chase scene in the 20th century classic, Raiders of the Lost Ark."
--Collected Histories of the Twenty-First Century
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:4, Informative)
That only works if he doesn't know that he's sitting in a Faraday cage. Otherwise the kid would simply subconsciously - or consciously - fake symptoms just to fulfill the prophesy declared by his parents. He can't know the Faraday cage is there, else you'd never be able to rule out WiFi RF and narrow it to "something [else] environmental".
So... give him an astronaut suit to wear for a day and tell him it's a reward for good grades or something.
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Give him a portable faraday cage made out of plastic
If it solves the problems, it was psychosomatic.
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Bah, we don't need him to sit in a Faraday cage. I'll simply sell them my patent pending WiFi Sickness Rocks. Each rock absorbs the bad components of WiFi via a process called Eam Nihil Penitus Operari. By simply keeping the rock in his pocket, he can be guaranteed that WiFi signals won't cause him any physical harm. All for the low, low price of $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). Order now and I'll throw in my Vaccine Toxin Be Gone rock which removes anything in vaccines that causes autism simply by
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Works for me! I was kidding about the spacesuit, though.
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Although... then they just wind up claiming the symptoms have delayed onset or something else ridiculous.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
" If he still develops symptoms then it's something else."
Yea, the student is full of shit and trying to get out of school.
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So you mean the student has to sit in a corner with a tinfoil hat on? I don't think the parents will like that...
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A simple tinfoil hat should work.
Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they have the backing of this guy [columbia.edu] who is on some sort of crusade to protect humans and wildlife [businesswire.com] from those oh so dangerous invisible EMF rays.
Even more unfortunately, he appears to be a bright guy with fairly well established credentials.
The problem is (and this is sometimes overlooked by judges) smart people can be:
a) wrong
b) crazy
c) lying
In this case I think it's (a) with a healthy dose of (b) mixed in.
Hopefully the judge takes stock of the numerous double blind studies [wikipedia.org] where it has been shown that EMF "sufferers" symptoms disappeared when they were unaware of the presence of EMF radiation
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Interesting)
A private school has no particular obligation to deal with anyone in particular; so long as they don't explicitly step on some protected class or (as is being argued in this case) fail to make reasonable accommodation per the ADA.
If it were a public school, it would be the school's problem, just as they have to make provision for the education of any other sickie(mental or physical); but for the private school to be obligated; it has to be demonstrated that kiddo has a 'disability' for ADA purposes, that they are capable of performing if provided with 'reasonable accommodation', and that the 'reasonable accommodation' would not cause 'undue hardship' for the entity being asked to provide it.
I'd be interested to know how the meaning of those terms would be decided in this case. Fay is a pretty fancy school, east coast private boarding school with history dating back before 1900 and its own endowment and all; but even if that mitigates any argument about the financial impact of having to hardwire everything, it might well be argued that, say, making it impossible for anyone in this kid's class to do an ipad-related curriculum activity would impose excessive limitations on their ability to learn, and the school to teach, as it usually does. If the school were purely doing wireless because it was cheaper, they might have issues; but today wireless devices are used routinely in situations where hardwired stuff would never have been considered practical; plus(unlike an accommodation that requires adding something, like a braille copy of the textbook or the like, the accomodation here demanded requires depriving everyone in the student's proximity of any use of wifi devices, or segregating the student, neither of which are likely to go over all that well.)
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As someone who has fought with the public school system to get accommodations for my son (who has an actual medical diagnosis for a real condition), it takes more than the parents saying "Johnny gets sick around WiFi" before the school would be forced to turn off all WiFi. So even if this were a public school, they would have an uphill battle and would need to 1) demonstrate that their child really does react badly to WiFi signals and 2) show that there is a solution that can be reached which wouldn't over
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This is a great point. More importantly, I would suggest a vast majority have no idea what "electromagnetic radiation" is and are ignorant to the fact that they are bathed in it, in this part of the spectrum - 2300-2400 MHz [jneuhaus.com] everywhere they go.
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Re:What does Science have to say about this? (Score:5, Informative)
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Sure, but imagine a kid as agoraphobia and can't stand being in the open air. Is it reasonable for the parents to expect the school to put the football field inside of a building so the kid can be on the team? Also there is absolutely no evidence that EHS itself exists, which is what the parents claim. The child would be better off if the parents admitted that it was a psychiatric disorder and started getting the kid treatment for it. The ADA has limits on what accommodations an employer, or school has
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Can bad parenting be considered a disability?
In today's society? Absolutely. You can get away with all kinds of criminal activity just by claiming poor home life or being bullied when you were a kid.
Pretty much every body has this excuse because it usually takes about 25 years before the average person learns how to be a good parent.
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Not sure on that. Remember that ADA concerns disabilities, not illnesses. Since it's the government, I'd be surprised if a list of disabilities isn't somehow defined and that you can't just claim something as a "disability."
For example, if I have Metallophobia (fear of metal), the company does not have to remove all metal from my surroundings.
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You do have to have a disability, and you can't just self-diagnose(it would be interesting to see what the court thinks of the quack who did the diagnosing in this case); but the law covers basically any functi
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A mental illness is still an illness. So the ADA would still apply.
Yes but what should the school do about it? Screw everyone else because they have one disabled child? Or provide a facility for the disabled child to work within the system.
I say we put the kid in a cage.
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A mental illness is still an illness. So the ADA would still apply.
Yes but what should the school do about it? Screw everyone else because they have one disabled child? Or provide a facility for the disabled child to work within the system.
I say we put the kid in a cage.
Well, I know that in public schools they will compromise the health of the rest of the student body by removing healthy nuts from the menu due to one child's allergy, so I would not be surprised if they required the school to hardwire every classroom. Kind of sucks for tablets and phones though.
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It is easy to prove that nut allergies exist and some can be quite lethal. When my wife was teaching, she had a student who would have a severe allergic reaction if she picked up a pencil that had previously been handled by someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich. We're not talking "break out in hives" reaction either, but the "can't breathe, get an EpiPen or she'll die" kind of reaction. In cases like this, denying children nuts in school is a small price to pay.
So the question is: Can the parents prov
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Well, if they manage to actually reliably prove the kid's electromagnetic intolerance, which I don't think anyone ever could prove before, then yeah, they might make all schools rewire every classroom, plus they'd be the most famous people on the planet.
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In America, all you need is a gut feeling and a lawyer, and you can litigate anything!
And last *I* checked, the gut feeling isn't required.
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Hell, you don't even need the gut feeling. Or the lawyer.
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This is a California thing in general. There are some additional California rules that go beyond ADA requirements that tend to be abused. There is essentially no enforcement though, except by roving bands of lawyers who threaten to sue people. This is by design because it is cheaper than hiring regulators paid by the state (and it's also Republican friendly to have private enterprise suing people). It's cheaper to pay off the lawyer than to go to court and get an exemption or time extension or clarifica
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This is a California thing in general. There are some additional California rules that go beyond ADA requirements that tend to be abused. There is essentially no enforcement though, except by roving bands of lawyers who threaten to sue people. This is by design because it is cheaper than hiring regulators paid by the state (and it's also Republican friendly to have private enterprise suing people). It's cheaper to pay off the lawyer than to go to court and get an exemption or time extension or clarification of the rules.
This happens in Oklahoma City, too. When business gets slow, painting companies will drive around looking for houses that need paint and report them to the city, then within a couple of days of the notices getting sent out, this company goes door to door seeing if they would like their house painted.
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The rule is, it's an abuse of the system if the other side does it, but it's a constitutional right if your side does it.
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A couple turned out to be more interesting; they'd started feeling unwell since having wireless routers installed in their homes. Turned out that a faulty batch of router power supplies was emittin