10-Year Cell Phone / Cancer Study Is Inconclusive 248
crimeandpunishment writes "A major international (retrospective) study into cell phones and cancer, which took 10 years and surveyed almost 13,000 people, is finally complete — and it's inconclusive. The lead researcher said, 'There are indications of a possible increase. We're not sure that it is correct. It could be due to bias, but the indications are sufficiently strong ... to be concerned.' The study, conducted by the World Health Organization and partially funded by the cellphone industry, looked at the possible link between cell phone use and two types of brain cancer. It will be published this week."
easy (Score:1, Interesting)
in the given (not yet proven) chance that cellphones do give cancer, why not purchase a wired hands-free headset and be done with it?
-arc
Re:It's all relative (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:USA Today (Score:4, Interesting)
Results for some groups showed cellphone use actually appeared to lessen the risk of developing cancers, something the researchers described as "implausible."
People with UNDIAGNOSED very early stage brain cancer might have problems functioning in society, equals less likelihood of cell phone ownership. Not implausible at all.
Re:It's all relative (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No answer is sort-of an answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it kind of does. If you have a null hypothesis "there is no link between cellphone use and brain cancer" then an inconclusive result would fail to disprove the null hypothesis and therefore affirm it. This is based on choosing a null hypothesis that is based on the sensible default position, which in this study is fine as long as you're the kind of person who is willing/capable of understanding that we are constantly bathed in all sorts of EM radiation of which cellphones only play a small part and that the default position from a conventional understanding of physics is that they're likely to be harmless.
It's also based on the idea that, for a risk factor for cancer(s) significant enough to be worth worrying about, we would expect to see an obvious and conclusive result. For instance, when testing the null hypothesis "there is no like between smoking and lung cancer", the observed data would overwhelmingly reject the null hypothesis. The reality is that there's all sorts of things [facebook.com] that people think cause cancer, and many of them may do (e.g. drinking hot drinks regularly is linked with oral cancer) but most of the risk factors aren't significant to be worth worrying about.
Relative and irrelevant (Score:1, Interesting)
Really, what does it matter if cellphones cause cancer or not?
Modern society is pretty dependant on everyone being part of the information loop and being available all the time. Yeah, we were able to survive long before this happened - just like we were able to survive long before computers - but it would be practically impossible to return to how things were (just like it would be practically impossible to return to the time before computers and TV). Hell, we can't completely rid the society of smoking, etc. though they have little to no positive sides. How in world could we ever make people stop using cellphones? Devices which are very useful. Even if we found out that they increase the chances of cancer by a large amount, it would probably still be orders of magnitude easier to go after less useful things that still cause more health problems.
I'm not saying that this shouldn't be researched. I'm all for us finding out more about human body, etc... And perhaps this could be useful some way (if the current technology is found unhealthy, perhaps we could put more resources into researching alternatives that would offer the same functionality with lower health risks, for example. And those technologies could become useful in unforeseeable ways, too.). It also allows people to make more educated decisions (such as parents deciding whether to wait one more year before buying their child a cellphone, etc.) But even so... Whenever I see news about studies that concern cancer and cellphones I can't help but think "So what? It's not as if we were gonna go back to the time before cellphones even if they do cause cancer..."
Re:Limited study (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean that if cell phones cause cancer, you would expect the rate of cancer to raise along with the use of cell phones. Instead, cancer rates have fallen or stayed the same for 20 years.
Re:Statistical significance (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't care what they found or didn't found - I'm still not buying a god damned radiating device to hold up beside my head.
Then I sure hope you stay out of direct sunlight.
Re:It's all relative (Score:2, Interesting)
It's fairly safe to say that heavy cell phone users are such because they don't work at a desk - that's why they're always on the damn cell phone instead of their desk phone.
While you've created a masking effect, there is still a correlation that you should have measured. The cell phone users, despite their lower CRT exposure, would show a correlation vs. non-cell phone, non-CRT users.
No, you're just attacking me because I asked a question you can't answer well.
So once again, how can you have causation without correlation? You claimed there's trillions of examples, so you can come up with one that's not nearly as lame.
Re:Limited study (Score:3, Interesting)
It could still be a general drop in cancer rates, but a specific rise in the rates for people who use cellphones (in certain conditions, given that pretty much everyone uses them these days?). Looking at simple numbers like that is inconclusive