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.
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.
Its definitely possible to get sick from wifi. Want to know how???
Well, suppose the child's teeth braces are at the wavelength for perfect reception of 2.4Ghz. The child's braces act like an antenna, and there an be a voltage generated between two teeth by the metal bands. That voltage could cause some headaches.
And of course, my theory goes to pots if the child does not wear braces or metal frame glasses, also the frame capable of acting like an antenna.
A third possibilty is that the router is within 18
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?
The most serious conundrum is RF is so ubiquitous that litigation of and changes in the school will not solve this if it was real. All the new phones worthy of buying have dual band WIFI hardware, bluetooth, and a gazillion cell service bands.
Unknown and rejected by the tinfoil hats is the reality that more and closser Cell, WiFi towers and routers is the only way to enable dynamic systems to operate at lower power levels. The further away a modern router is the more power a phone or laptop must use to hold
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.
Just provide the citations please. "Just Google it" is not helpful as there is a tonne of material out there presenting different view points and methods, some badly flawed.
If you want to mention research here, you need to back it up with EVIDENCE. Otherwise you're better off just stepping outside and playing with squirrels.
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.
Is it just me or what?? You don't "light something on fire". You simply light it. The verb "light" in this context means "to set on fire". Clearly some dimwit started this "lighting on fire" nonsense and now everyone and their parrot is "lighting things on fire".
In summary:
1. You light a fire
2. You set fire to a bush
3. You set a pile of wood on fire
4. You strike a match to light it
You never light something on fire, unless you mean to say that you're setting fire to something that is somehow bal
I was able to light my grandparents well water coming out of the tap 40 years ago. This isn't new.
Correct.... not new. The fracking issue mostly is simply some historic issue looking for deep pockets to dig into. Energy companies drilling for oil and mining coal. Attorneys looking for deep pockets to dig money out of.
I said mostly... there are some troubles in paradise but fracking is not the issue to pay attention to.
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.
You clearly don't want to accept that these people are just fucked in the head.
I'm pretty sure this is a psychological issue. On both their part, and yours.
You do realize the environment is identical in these scenarios. So ventilation, etc. is irrelevant.
Oh, I get it. You were so busy feeling smugly superior to other people that you lost the ability to comprehend English. Let's try this again - if the study had shown that no combination of wifi or lights made these people sick, but they still felt sick in certain places, then it's possible that it wasn't in their heads, and might have some other cause. Wouldn't that be a good thing to know as well?
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
It depends what your theory is. If your theory is people can detect radio waves, your suggested experiment makes sense. If your theory is it's all in their mind, the original test makes more sense, because it actually tests whether psychological clues are part of the issue. Lo and behold, they can't detect radio waves and it *is* all in their mind, so it sounds like a far more informative experiment was carried out than the one you're suggesting. Yes, it goes an extra step, but it's a revealing extra step.
But the South Africa test and this experiment are both strongly influenced by what the subjects thought
ding, ding, ding!!!!!
Congratulations! You've just stated exactly what the study proves and also confirmed why people who claim EMI-related illness are self-deluded crazies!
The proof of this test is specifically that people's belief that they are being bombarded by radio which they believe makes them sick is what makes people sick. The presence or absence of the radio signal had no bearing on how they f
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...
Telus does something similar in the larger cities up here. They put in a new cell tower, but leave it powered off/disconnected. Wait a couple of months for the lawsuits and complaints to start pouring in, then reveal that nothing is running yet. All the complaints stop and lawsuits are thrown out. A little while after that, they turn the cell tower on, without telling anyone. Seems to have cut down on the amount of time wasted in the court system for them.:)
Sometimes the mind can be a real jerk. Fear, stress, and anxiety can manifest some pretty bad physical symptoms. Which while illusory, can have a real physical impact on health.
I was recently told a story by my father just the other week about a person he knew that was involved. Apparently he worked in a lab with a bunch of other people, using some pretty dangerous material. In particular a gas, if escaped in enough quantity, could have some serious health impacts and even death. They had a leak, and the mo
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?
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?
You do realise that when you do these tests you don't actually tell the patients that they're placebos? Right?
Right, but scientifically, there might be value in telling a patient they are getting a placebo when administering a drug to see if they get better despite not believing they are getting treatment. It is the inverse of believing they are getting treatment when they aren't. Both might be scientifically valid. Though I think I have read that some people get better on placebos even if they are told it is a placebo. People are funny creatures...
Yeah. Basically, electro-mag sensitivity people have made up their minds that it's wifi, radio towers, etc - and nothing on this fucking Earth will ever, ever convince them otherwise. That's humanity for you.
Providing misleading cues disjoint from the actual event allows you to build multiple correlations. They showed no correlation between symptoms and EMR, but strong correlation between symptoms and perception of EMR.
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.
It is also the new tinfoil, and can protect you from wifi radiation! lmao
Cardboard can also filter the radiation. Just put the wifi into a cardboard box, make sure it is completely sealed so you can't see it from any angle, and visitors experiencing wifi exposure symptoms can receive substantial relief. Just don't tell them that the radiation it is filtering is the visible light from the L
"Double blind" in this experiment would mean neither the subjects nor the observers would know whether the radio was on or off. Clearly everyone would know whether the lights were on or not. And yeah, one one level it's trying to mislead people to see whether it's the radio or their perception of the radio which is causing the problem. I doubt anyone is suggesting blinking LEDs actually cause the problem (dear God, I hope not).
There is not enough consensus on the philosophical meaning of "cause" to really answer the question so broadly stated.
It may be they were "born that way" and it "isn't their fault" and you can't differentiate between the LEDs "causing" the problem in these subjects, or the subjects "causing" the problem in the presence of the LED.
Luckily, science doesn't care and doesn't try. The two views are considered the same.
What an obnoxious asshole. Yes, I did attend an American school, and it taught me much more than whatever Dumbfuckian school you went to. You see, I learned not only what a blind experiment is, but WHY and HOW to conduct one.
The purpose of a blind experiment is to REMOVE biases and expectations. The only possible reason to have lights in the experiment is to EXPLOIT biases and expectations, the exact opposite of what should be done.
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.
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.
I don't believe in alien or government mind control stuff that can be blocked by foil, but it being impervious to visible light is well known to night workers trying to sleep during the day.
I don't believe in alien or government mind control stuff that can be blocked by foil, but it being impervious to visible light is well known to night workers trying to sleep during the day.
And pot growers, trying to hide their crop at night. "No, no, that's to keep the aliens out. heh heh"
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.
Quite a few years ago, my wife ate four Dairy Queen dilly bars for lunch, came home, and felt sick. She got really sick from that, and blamed it on the dilly bars.
A bit later, I got an A&W Cream Soda from a friend, and it tasted off. I then became really sick.
What obviously happened was that we got sick because of some virus or other infectious agent, and attributed the sickness to what we ate or drank when we were starting to get symptoms. We know that. I still find A&W Cream Soda irration
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.
Uh, you do understand I used the word 'allergic' in only the loosest sense here, not literally, right? You seem to think I was implying that there are people with actual physiological allergies to modern life or something..
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.
I'm sensitive to visible radiation - specifically, I'm in the top x% that's sensitive to flickering. For example, I could spot a CRT monitor set to a 60hz refresh rate from across the room. I can spot weak fluorescent ballasts. The effect is not subtle to me.
But even then, bump it from 60hz to 70-75, and I'm fine.
The wireless router, I'd point out that it's the lights annoying me.
Heck - that could be another test. Get away from 'RFI' sufferers. Just test 'comfort levels' in some rooms where the only di
You're lucky that the lamp works. I can be in a room 'full' of ballasts, and point right at the 'weak' one, and the flicker from it is enough to annoy me.
As the building custodian though, I was able to get them replaced.
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.
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.
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.
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TFA specifically says it's the new-fangled 5 GHz spectrum that's the problem.
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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.
Its definitely possible to get sick from wifi. Want to know how???
Well, suppose the child's teeth braces are at the wavelength for perfect reception of 2.4Ghz. The child's braces act like an antenna, and there an be a voltage generated between two teeth by the metal bands. That voltage could cause some headaches.
And of course, my theory goes to pots if the child does not wear braces or metal frame glasses, also the frame capable of acting like an antenna.
A third possibilty is that the router is within 18
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
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Never seen it happen in reality.
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I wonder how many of these Wifi hating fools use mobile phones or tablets or have smart TVs, consoles, laptops etc with WiFi built in.
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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Off topic, but thank you for stating 'LMGTFY' and not obnoxiously linking to the site with the same name.
Same point, much friendlier :)
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Off topic, but thank you for stating 'LMGTFY' and not obnoxiously linking to the site with the same name.
Same point, much friendlier :)
Off topic, but I was a little disappointed. It was like a smackdown with a padded glove.
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Also posting to undo mod.
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LMGTFY: http://www.who.int/peh-emf/pub... [who.int]
The most serious conundrum is RF is so ubiquitous that litigation of and changes in the school
will not solve this if it was real. All the new phones worthy of buying have dual band WIFI hardware, bluetooth,
and a gazillion cell service bands.
Unknown and rejected by the tinfoil hats is the reality that more and closser Cell, WiFi towers and
routers is the only way to enable dynamic systems to operate at lower power levels. The further
away a modern router is the more power a phone or laptop must use to hold
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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Interesting, do you have a source ? (Aka citation needed).
Don't need a citation
Need to test the kid. Hell, he might be the first with a real wifi allergy (probably not).
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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.
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So cite them. Don't tell people to google anything. You make the claim, you back it up.
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The citations.
Just provide the citations please. "Just Google it" is not helpful as there is a tonne of material out there presenting different view points and methods, some badly flawed.
If you want to mention research here, you need to back it up with EVIDENCE. Otherwise you're better off just stepping outside and playing with squirrels.
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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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The water itself DID light on fire, and the water from the tap was tested and found the gas. So you can't call that 'falsehood #1'.
The Colorado Dept said that the falsehood was 'fracking caused the gas in the water.', not the water could light on fire.
Whether the state of Colorado is correct is another matter, but you yourself are stating your own claim so badly that it looks you are the one lying.
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Is it just me or what?? You don't "light something on fire". You simply light it. The verb "light" in this context means "to set on fire". Clearly some dimwit started this "lighting on fire" nonsense and now everyone and their parrot is "lighting things on fire".
In summary:
1. You light a fire
2. You set fire to a bush
3. You set a pile of wood on fire
4. You strike a match to light it
You never light something on fire, unless you mean to say that you're setting fire to something that is somehow bal
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I was able to light my grandparents well water coming out of the tap 40 years ago. This isn't new.
Correct.... not new.
The fracking issue mostly is simply some historic issue looking for deep pockets to dig into.
Energy companies drilling for oil and mining coal.
Attorneys looking for deep pockets to dig money out of.
I said mostly... there are some troubles in paradise but fracking is not the issue
to pay attention to.
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What kind of double blind test is that? It seems deliberately misleading, which would seem to me to be the opposite of a blind test.
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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.
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Triple blind is when the gov't kills everyone involved in the test.
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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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You clearly don't want to accept that these people are just fucked in the head.
I'm pretty sure this is a psychological issue. On both their part, and yours.
You do realize the environment is identical in these scenarios. So ventilation, etc. is irrelevant.
Oh, I get it. You were so busy feeling smugly superior to other people that you lost the ability to comprehend English. Let's try this again - if the study had shown that no combination of wifi or lights made these people sick, but they still felt sick in certain places, then it's possible that it wasn't in their heads, and might have some other cause. Wouldn't that be a good thing to know as well?
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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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It depends what your theory is. If your theory is people can detect radio waves, your suggested experiment makes sense. If your theory is it's all in their mind, the original test makes more sense, because it actually tests whether psychological clues are part of the issue. Lo and behold, they can't detect radio waves and it *is* all in their mind, so it sounds like a far more informative experiment was carried out than the one you're suggesting. Yes, it goes an extra step, but it's a revealing extra step.
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ding, ding, ding!!!!!
Congratulations! You've just stated exactly what the study proves and also confirmed why people who claim EMI-related illness are self-deluded crazies!
The proof of this test is specifically that people's belief that they are being bombarded by radio which they believe makes them sick is what makes people sick. The presence or absence of the radio signal had no bearing on how they f
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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...
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Telus does something similar in the larger cities up here. They put in a new cell tower, but leave it powered off/disconnected. Wait a couple of months for the lawsuits and complaints to start pouring in, then reveal that nothing is running yet. All the complaints stop and lawsuits are thrown out. A little while after that, they turn the cell tower on, without telling anyone. Seems to have cut down on the amount of time wasted in the court system for them. :)
Mind over Matter (Score:2)
Sometimes the mind can be a real jerk. Fear, stress, and anxiety can manifest some pretty bad physical symptoms. Which while illusory, can have a real physical impact on health.
I was recently told a story by my father just the other week about a person he knew that was involved. Apparently he worked in a lab with a bunch of other people, using some pretty dangerous material. In particular a gas, if escaped in enough quantity, could have some serious health impacts and even death. They had a leak, and the mo
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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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?
You do realise that when you do these tests you don't actually tell the patients that they're placebos? Right?
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Right, but scientifically, there might be value in telling a patient they are getting a placebo when administering a drug to see if they get better despite not believing they are getting treatment. It is the inverse of believing they are getting treatment when they aren't. Both might be scientifically valid. Though I think I have read that some people get better on placebos even if they are told it is a placebo. People are funny creatures...
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The Nocebo Effect.
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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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Providing misleading cues disjoint from the actual event allows you to build multiple correlations. They showed no correlation between symptoms and EMR, but strong correlation between symptoms and perception of EMR.
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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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Electrical tape is not just to cover your data and protect it from prying eyes anymore.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/0... [slashdot.org]
It is also the new tinfoil, and can protect you from wifi radiation! lmao
Cardboard can also filter the radiation. Just put the wifi into a cardboard box, make sure it is completely sealed so you can't see it from any angle, and visitors experiencing wifi exposure symptoms can receive substantial relief. Just don't tell them that the radiation it is filtering is the visible light from the L
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"Double blind" in this experiment would mean neither the subjects nor the observers would know whether the radio was on or off. Clearly everyone would know whether the lights were on or not. And yeah, one one level it's trying to mislead people to see whether it's the radio or their perception of the radio which is causing the problem. I doubt anyone is suggesting blinking LEDs actually cause the problem (dear God, I hope not).
There is not enough consensus on the philosophical meaning of "cause" to really answer the question so broadly stated.
It may be they were "born that way" and it "isn't their fault" and you can't differentiate between the LEDs "causing" the problem in these subjects, or the subjects "causing" the problem in the presence of the LED.
Luckily, science doesn't care and doesn't try. The two views are considered the same.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
What an obnoxious asshole. Yes, I did attend an American school, and it taught me much more than whatever Dumbfuckian school you went to. You see, I learned not only what a blind experiment is, but WHY and HOW to conduct one.
The purpose of a blind experiment is to REMOVE biases and expectations. The only possible reason to have lights in the experiment is to EXPLOIT biases and expectations, the exact opposite of what should be done.
Now go crawl back under your rock.
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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.
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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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I've found that liquid electrical tape works pretty good as well. I've even used foil a couple times.
I was waiting for the tinfoil set to weigh in on this thread, thank you.
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I don't believe in alien or government mind control stuff that can be blocked by foil, but it being impervious to visible light is well known to night workers trying to sleep during the day.
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I don't believe in alien or government mind control stuff that can be blocked by foil, but it being impervious to visible light is well known to night workers trying to sleep during the day.
And pot growers, trying to hide their crop at night. "No, no, that's to keep the aliens out. heh heh"
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I've found that liquid electrical tape works pretty good as well. I've even used foil a couple times.
In any situation, you should use tinfoil regardless. You never know who or what is watching you.
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Citation, please. If genuine, this study needs to be cited every time this issue comes up.
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Citation, please. If genuine, this study needs to be cited every time this issue comes up.
I imagine the school's lawyers would be quite grateful for a link too.
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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Quite a few years ago, my wife ate four Dairy Queen dilly bars for lunch, came home, and felt sick. She got really sick from that, and blamed it on the dilly bars.
A bit later, I got an A&W Cream Soda from a friend, and it tasted off. I then became really sick.
What obviously happened was that we got sick because of some virus or other infectious agent, and attributed the sickness to what we ate or drank when we were starting to get symptoms. We know that. I still find A&W Cream Soda irration
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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.
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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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I'm sensitive to visible radiation - specifically, I'm in the top x% that's sensitive to flickering. For example, I could spot a CRT monitor set to a 60hz refresh rate from across the room. I can spot weak fluorescent ballasts. The effect is not subtle to me.
But even then, bump it from 60hz to 70-75, and I'm fine.
The wireless router, I'd point out that it's the lights annoying me.
Heck - that could be another test. Get away from 'RFI' sufferers. Just test 'comfort levels' in some rooms where the only di
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You're lucky that the lamp works. I can be in a room 'full' of ballasts, and point right at the 'weak' one, and the flicker from it is enough to annoy me.
As the building custodian though, I was able to get them replaced.
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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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You must of missed this post [slashdot.org] then.
Re: What does Science have to say about this? (Score:1)
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.
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I believe this type of allergy exists and it even has a fancy acronym: NIMBY.
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