Ben Goldacre at Bad Science is leading the way on opposing this new absurdity of "electric smog", and one of it's leading proponents in Britain, Julia Stephenson.
It's really too easy. Remember the crank HOWTO? Well, she's just about a perfect example.
It all started when she got wifi in her apartment...
Within a couple of weeks she felt tired and fatigued, so she removed it, and then she felt better!
Two years ago I got Wi-Fi. It was convenient, as I could work anywhere in my flat. But within a few weeks began to suffer from a lack of energy and insomnia, and had difficulty concentrating. Other factors could have caused this, but I suspected that the Wi-Fi had something to do with it, so I returned to fixed broadband. My symptoms disappeared.
When I wrote about my experiences I incurred the wrath of a vocal few, who claimed that as I'm not a scientist I couldn't possibly make such assertions. I am, its true, no scientist; I was simply recounting my experience. Disconnecting my Wi-Fi made me feel better. End of. I don't need a degree in physics to work out if I feel well or ill.
You shouldn't need a degree in physics to know better than argue a post hoc ergo propter hoc either. Ever think that maybe you just were sick? A virus? A simple cold wouldn't be an equivalent explanation? And how much you want to bet that someone else in her building could turn on wifi and she wouldn't be able to tell the difference?
Ok, so she's formed her crazy idea, and it's wacky. Radiowaves from wifi (RADIATION in the parlance of the technoparanoids) made her sick! Wifis can have health effects! Perfect! I'm very impressed. That's a pretty glaringly dumb idea, what's the next step? Well disseminate your idiot idea of course. She's lucky, she get's it published in the Independent which has some of the worst science writing in the world - a perfect start for a cranky idea. She even offers solutions to her RADIATION problem.
Fortunately there are steps that concerned individuals can take to reduce the amount of "electro-smog" to which they are subject. Like many people, I'm mobile-dependent, but I now use a headset that delivers sound through an air-filled wireless tube similar to a doctor's stethoscope (but much smaller, so you don't look like you're on call). Conventional headsets transmit sound to the earpiece through a wire, but as wire is an electrical conductor it may also deliver radiation directly to your head. Since I've started using the tube I no longer experience headaches or a slight ringing in my ears.
You could also try the Q-Link pendant, which employs "sympathetic resonance technology," something that the makers declare "repairs and tunes your biofield". Friends who wear a Q-Link report that they feel healthier and more energetic.
The homeopathic medicine company, New Vistas, and the Australian flower essence company, Bush Flower Remedies, both make drops that claim to reduce the amount of radiation stored in the body.
Also, for the past two months I've been using an electro-magnetic field protection unit plugged into a wall at home. The device was created by engineer and homeopath Gary Johnson. Disturbed with the increasing number of patients coming to him with skin problems, exhaustion, blurred vision, and symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, he suspected that they might be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation (EMR).
Radiation drops and EM-field protection units! There's a cure, aren't we lucky? It just involves worthless woo. Some of her false experts she quotes are also priceless. They claim everything from memory loss from brain-damage to fatigue and cancer is being caused by cell phones. The reality is, that not a single credible piece of evidence exists that cell phones or cell towers do any of these things. Does that stop the purveyors of woo from just making things up? Of course not:
"Any imbalance in our electromagnetic field creates a disturbance in cell structure and function, which can lead to illness in sensitive individuals," says London-based complementary health practitioner Dr Nicole de Canha.
Ah, yes. Humans have fields that influence our cell structure and function. And the evidence is, where exactly? Oh yeah, I forgot, "homeopathic" means that you can just make up whatever the hell you want, and act like you have a single good damn reason for believing it.
But we're not done. We have to do step three - (not)responding to criticism.
She does pretty well here, she ignores the criticisms based on stuff like, well, physics, medicine, physiology, common sense(as any good crank does), alleges it's all a conspiracy and goes straight to step four - persecution!
The men in white coats are on my back. They're not lurking at the door with straightjackets, but they want me locked up all the same. Let me explain. Last week I sparked howls of protest from boffins when I described the negative effects of installing Wi-Fi in my flat. Many were absolutely apoplectic.
...
It's a hot potato. The telecommunications industry generates around £13bn a year and brings in large amounts through taxes and licences. It's a powerful and influential business, which obviously doesn't like being threatened.
Meanwhile, a considerable amount of the research into the safety of mobile phones, masts and Wi-Fi is carried out by groups funded by phone companies. They say they are unbiased, but how can we be sure? How many of us would dare bite the hand that feeds us?
How does she finish off? It's a triple-lutz with a perfect crank landing.
At one time scientists assured us the earth was flat and that mercury, asbestos, the atomic bomb and cigarettes were harmless. Today many assure us that GM crops, mobile phones and pesticides are safe. Yet history must surely advise caution before we rush headlong to embrace all that technology has to offer.
See - she's just another paradigm shifter - like Galileo - because they made stupid assertions without any proof too.
Aside from the stupidity of the statement that the atomic bomb was ever called "harmless" - it's a bomb - so I'm not sure where she's getting that one, this is the classic "they laughed at Copernicus/Galileo/Columbus/Einstein" nonsense. But she wouldn't be a crank if she didn't make the comparison.
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As an electrical engineer, I'm a little sensitive to this particular form of quackary (and the correlated woo associated with it). The idea that the telecommunications industry thinks she's a nut because they want their money is wrong. They think she's a nut because she's advancing a scientific hypothesis as fact without doing any credible testing of the hypothesis. Saying "there's no proof I'm wrong!" does NOT make you right. Why can't cranks understand this??? (incidentally, is there a card in the denialists deck that mentions this?)
I agree with her that research performed by groups funded with money from industry sensitive to the research is a conflict of interest, but not necessarily one that can be dismissed as readily as cranks would like. Research is research, and if you want to attack the credibility of the research, you better have a goddamned good reason for doing so. Evidence of falsifying the results. Questionable hiring, experimental, or evaluation procedures. etc. Even then, if the results of such an inquiry are inconclusive, then shut up and accept the results unless you can prove them wrong.
I have an idea of how this could be easily debunked. Put a wifi in her home, and plug and unplug it on different days. Let her tell you how she feels, each day, plus give her a physical exam. However, unbeknownst to her, have another wifi hidden, and plug and unplug it in a random pattern. So, you will have days of no wifi, days of one wifi (hidden or visible), and days of both wifi.
Then, show her the results of her subjective evidence (her own words) and the objective evidence (the physical exame) compared to the pattern of the wifi. One would expect, when both wifi were running, she would feel the worst (but somehow I doubt it). If there does seem to be some corrolation, start running the same experiment on a random population.
It's all really simple, but they just don't get it.
-Berlzebub
From what I recall, such studies have been done. I think Goldacre goes over them at some point, basically all they show is what you'd expect - electrosensitive people are experiencing a placebo effect.
AH HA!!!
It's all clear now. Because my job requires me to be around large groups of servers and Wi-Fi access points I am losing my hair. I had hair 10 years ago at age 26 then I started working around computers and now at age 36 almost 37 I'm seeing the full extent of Male Technopattern Baldness. I should have known this would happen.
Yeah, according to Ben Goldacre, there are at least 33 provocation studies which show no statistically significant effect. There are also 3 poorly designed studies which do. I haven't looked into the details though...
Ready for the really funny part?
While she's got rid of her own WiFi, she can apparently still connect to her neighbours WiFi!
You couldn't make it up...
-- King James I on tobacco, 1604
I like this line particularly: "At one time scientists assured us the earth was flat and that mercury, asbestos, the atomic bomb and cigarettes were harmless"
Knowing that the earth is round required geometry, and the Periclean Greeks knew the world was round. Ancient Greeks also knew that asbestos was extremely dangerous, as modern people have since about the 1910s or 1920s. Mercury has been known for a very long time to be dangerous, too.
For cigarettes to be "dangerous," people's life spans and quality of life had to increase beyond the point at which the worst effects of cigarettes would be known. By the 1930s, this was the case, and it was known. Industry did play with nicotine and numbers and suppress studies. But doctors knew, and smokers knew, that smoking make you feel crappy, and hurt your lungs.
This writer is trying to conflate a lack of any credible scientific evidence in the case of Wi-Fi with the deliberate suppression of obvious effects in the several examples she cites.
She take all the homeopathic medicine she wants and wear a whole box of Q-Tips around her neck, but they won't help. We all know that there is only one proven treatment for her condition: the aluminum foil hat. Not only will it make her feel better, but it provides an unmistakable sign to the rest of us to stay far, far away from this person.
A toxicologist colleague who has studied the phenomenon of "multiple chemical sensitivity" notes that the symptoms generally resemble an anxiety disorder far more than any kind of chemical intoxication or allergy. She suggests that such people are indeed highly sensitive, but that it is sensitivity at the level of perception rather than biological effect, coupled with an anxiety reaction (sometimes triggered by an actual instance of traumatic poisoning that left the individual hyperaware of chemical traces in the air). It would not be surprising if a similar mechanism were involved with people who claim ill effects from long-wavelength radiation. This means that a study would have to be done very carefully to disentangle what is really going on. She might well actually be reacting to subtle hums being produced by the electronics, for example.
Rev. BigDumbChimp wrote:
Hee hee hee. That almost makes it sound cool.
trrll wrote:
That sounds so darn...reasonable. It can't possibly be true!
It reminds me of a woman who was a patient at a clinic I used to work at. She came in one day with a list of her allergies and sensitivities- it was two and a half pages long!!
The thing is, she did have serious allergies and athsma. I really felt for her because she clearly was miserable. But the fact that she had car exhaust and body odor on her list made me more than a little suspicious. It would be like telling your doctor you are "sensitive" to Linberger cheese or dog crap.
"Saying 'there's no proof I'm wrong!' does NOT make you right. Why can't cranks understand this???"
Because they are cultists. That's what the mystery is to me: why people are reluctant to admit we're living in a time of "spiritual" hysterics. Climate change, homeopathy, energy medicine, reiki - all of it has it's roots in the new age canon - while people outside the cult are acting like the gullible folks are just stupid. They're not. Not when doctors, and scientists, are part of it. Believers have merely allowed themselves to be sucked into cultish thinking, by so-called gurus, using thought-stopping language (like the simple-minded entreaty to "make a difference") by con men and women who want credibility, power, and money.
Think about it:
Bill Clinton actually works with Tony Robbins, the con man and new age motivational speaker:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id…
Hillary Clinton has talked to Eleanor Roosevelt, and hands out bio-electric shields to influential women to ward off "evil spirits", and she's a serious contender for president! Would anyone have considered Reagan for president if - before he was elected - we knew Nancy was talking to psychics?:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9606/24/clinton.houston/
Oprah pumps this very same stuff, daily, and no one asks where she's getting it from:
http://www.slate.com/id/2166211/nav/tap1/
But we do know Cherie Blair (Tony Blair's wife) is involved in all sorts of this nonsense - and we know where she got it from: Carole Caplain, Adam Ant's ex-stripper girlfriend and a member of the Exegesis cult:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.ht…
Celebrities like Ellen, Rosie - all of them - are all admitted lovers of psychics, new age beliefs, etc.
A serious look at this phenomena, as cult-induced, would probably go a long way towards stopping it in it's tracks. To keep acting like it's just harmless noodling by silly people is, itself, silly - and dangerous: people believe this stuff.
For many, on it's periphery, it's really life and death.
I always love hearing woos talk about electromagnetism. Most of them don't seem to realize that the magic ball of fire in the sky is really one huge source of electromagnetic radiation -- both the visible and invisible kinds.
I always love hearing woos talk about electromagnetism. Most of them don't seem to realize that the magic ball of fire in the sky is really one huge source of electromagnetic radiation -- both the visible and invisible kinds.
Not getting woo-woo on you, but it's funny that this statement is exactly that of many global warming deniers, who point out -- absolutely accurately -- natural sources of CO2 and claim therefore that C02 can't be the problem climatologists say it is. This is a fallacy -- in the case of C)2 there is a certain amount of background amount that works well, that we, and the planet, have gotten used to -- but when you add a lot more it trips over the edge and becomes a problem. This is also the case for many things -- vitamins, for instance.
So your point is accurate but wrong -- that is, it's a non sequitor. It's theoretically possible that we do fine with the background amount of electromagnetic radiation (as we do for other forms of radiation) but adding more trips over the edge and harms us (as it does for other forms of radiation). But there isn't any solid evidence that this actually happens (unlike other forms of radiation, vitamins, etc.) and that's what you need to be pointing out, because saying what you did leaves you open to being shown to be wrong about your premise, which naturally damages your overall argument.
Nice try Sam. You really are a one-trick pony?
Yes, left wingers have stupid ideas too. We write about it here a lot. It's just a different pile of rubbish from the right wingers - like how AGW isn't happening.
Global warming is not new age nonsense as you suggest, it's a legit field of study. The irony of someone understanding the cultish nature of other types of crankery, and then not seeing their own crankish behavior on science, is kind of hysterical, you're right about that. Isn't sad that you're also a victim?
Your are indeed correct -- it would be unwise to use this observation as an argument of any sort. And I do find it plausible that some forms of EM radiation we produce in large quantities might be harmful. It's really just something that amuses me: many people who go on about electromagnetic radiation don't know what EM actually is (I've had personal experience with such folks).
"Global warming is not new age nonsense as you suggest, it's a legit field of study. The irony of someone understanding the cultish nature of other types of crankery, and then not seeing their own crankish behavior on science, is kind of hysterical, you're right about that. Isn't sad that you're also a victim?"
Now, now: I didn't say GW isn't a legitimate field of study - or that I don't believe the earth is warming - but that the current hysteria has it's roots in new age theology. New agers are anti-modernity: stop flying, stop driving, get back to nature, etc., (Trying to make me out to be a whack-job, as opposed to someone to be taken as seriously as you, is unfair, Mark. Yes, I've got my issues and I'm gonna stay with them until they're taken seriously,...) To ignore the danger these people - many of whom, like Hillary, are in positions of power - is reckless. You don't dismiss the Falwells, or a Pat Robinson, but Al Gore's apocolyptic (sp?) visions get a pass?
Weird, considering they're closer to the White House than anyone else is.
And "nice try" my ass:
You tell me one field of study that new agers haven't infiltrated? They've had their sights on science, for quite a long time, and they're in the hospitals and everywhere else. Are you stopping them? No. I'm trying. But what can I expect from you as psychics work almost every corner in America, homeopathy is sold in health food stores (amazing thing that) Tony Robbins pumps vitamins, Andrew Weil is on PBS which shows specials on "chi" and Greenpeace, etc. are part of the IPCC?
You do nothing but talk shit and call me a conspiracy theorist.
Well, for a science-loving atheist conspiracy theorist, I sure do live in a weird fucking world.
"Nice try". My friend, you are too dismissive of others to be of much good for anyone.
And do you have a BETTER answer, than cultish thinking, to your own question:
"Saying 'there's no proof I'm wrong!' does NOT make you right. Why can't cranks understand this???"
I seriously doubt it.
Hey Mark - check out this series:
http://shambook.blogspot.com/index.html