

There is no WiFi allergy: newspapers misreport PR as science - erikwiffin
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/07/there-is-no-wifi-allergy-newspapers-misreport-pr-as-science.ars

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jacquesm
Funny this should come up today, I just met somebody that claimed that this
was the case and used a very sensitive (< 1 uW/m^2) field strength meter to
verify their claims and even if I could not disprove it they could not prove
it either.

As far as I'm concerned the jury is out on this one, but one important thing
to remember is that the nervous system is essentially an electrical aparatus
using very low powerlevels so interference would be expected by default rather
than the opposite.

We're sensitive to exposure by sunlight, we're sensitive to hard radiation, it
is not too much a stretch of the imagination that we're sensitive to HF too.

For much interesting reading about one positive sensitivity:

<http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=367925>

~~~
jerf
With science, the jury is always out, but with the total failure of anyone to
demonstrate "sensitivity" in double-blind studies, it's not a hard provisional
call to make with very high probability.

There are _all kinds_ of wonderfully and terribly potent effects that
mysteriously disappear in the harsh light of double-blind testing. That's
because they are chimeras in the dark. The fault lies with the darkness, not
the light.

If more evidence comes along in the future, I'll change my mind, but right now
the evidence is of a kind with water dowsing.

~~~
dejb
You are showing a significant bias by laying the burden of proof on those
saying this has an effect on people. 'Innocent till proven guilty' is a
principle of the justice system, not science. You could have made these same
comments about the health problems associated with smoking in the 60s and you
would have been wrong. The original poster laid out a reasonable argument for
why the default position should not be to assume there is no effect.

A less biased and more useful statement would have been "there have been
enough studies done on this to show that wifi 'sensitivity' is unlikely to
exist". If that was the case I'd like to know.

~~~
jerf
When I said referenced "double-blind studies", I was referring to the ones
that were _done_. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity#Etiology_and_evidence)
. The burden of proof is indeed on those who continue to claim it exists in
the face of strong, peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. Science has done
its bit.

A scientist goes _into_ the experiment with an open mind, and is ever mindful
of the possibility of future evidence causing the most likely hypothesis to
change, but is not obligated to keep their mind so open that they never decide
anything, even after the evidence is gathered and the peer review is done.

I _think_ you are criticizing me based on the belief that there were no
experiments done, and since that is not true, you would agree your criticism
is invalid. If that is not true and you still think these experiments are not
adequate, and "science" still has some sort of obligation to continue
investigation, I would say, what _would_ discharge that obligation? By which I
mean, give me a concrete, immobile standard for what it would take to convince
you before the fact that the investigation has been done, regardless of the
outcome, not after the experiments. As I referenced in another message, you
can _always_ move the goalposts, but this is a sign of weakness in a position,
not the strength some people seem to take it to be.

~~~
dejb
OK. firstly I don't have any particular belief in EM-sensitivity. I am just as
much a believer is science as you. What I objected to was the clear bias you
demonstrated in your post. The readiness to declare the 'total failure of
anyone to demonstrate "sensitivity"' rather than to provide any references
suggested an extreme partisanship on one side of the argument.

The link that you finally provided has some useful information. To me it reads
that suggest mixed results but mostly favouring no effect. If I where a
betting person I'd say maybe there is a 10% chance that the effect does exist
in some form based on my reading of that information. Maybe your
interpretation of the probabilities implied by the studies is different to
mine. But it leads me to agree with the conclusions of the authors of the meta
study that "more research into this phenomenon is required".

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TrevorJ
Technically, electrosensitivity could still exist as a condition even if wifi
sensitivity is disproved, since the definition of the condition is much
broader.

Also, the tests administered which disproved the so-called "wifi allergy"
failed to account for the possibility that the effects take time to develop. I
could disprove cat allergies easily using the same method, provided the
exposure time was less than the time needed for symptoms to set in.

~~~
jerf
'Also, the tests administered which disproved the so-called "wifi allergy"
failed to account for the possibility that the effects take time to develop.'

They used the self-reported time for symptoms to develop from the sufferers
themselves. It's not actually science's job to exhaustively test the state
space here, since that's not possible. Consequently, there's always another
goalpost that science didn't hit ( _no, wait, it's only 64-bit WEP
encryption!_ )... but it's not logical to thus conclude that the problem is
the science. When the goalposts are getting shuffled around the field, the
logical conclusion is that the problem most likely lies on the side moving the
goalposts, not the side that keeps hitting the goals.

Maybe there's a real problem that is actually something else, though at the
moment, "psychosomatic symptoms", Luddite-ism, and superstition seems to cover
the observed phenomena pretty well. Like I said in another message, if more
data comes in I'll examine it, but right now there is no reason to believe
there's any reason to believe that such data will be forthcoming.

(Following up on my first paragraph: This is why "more study is needed" is an
information-free statement. There's always more state space to examine; the
question is, is there any reason to believe there's anything interesting
there? There's so many interesting things that studying things extremely
likely to be uninteresting is a waste of time. The exceptions that you might
think are leaping to mind, like "Well how will we ever discover anything new
if we never try new things?", are not exceptions. Things we have no idea about
are interesting. Things that we have a _very_ good idea are going to be
uninteresting are what I'm talking about.)

~~~
TrevorJ
This is a pretty good summation of the issue. Well said. From a _strictly_
scientific standpoint, designing the tests around the claims of the
participants is only useful so far. The anecdotal claims of people who claim
to suffer from this condition would be suspect at best.

What is know is that electromagnetic energy can and does effect the human
body, it is just a question of what thresholds we are talking about. It would
stand to reason that some people are effected at different levels than others
for various reasons. (Hydration, PH balance, even height could be a factor
when talking about specific wavelengths).

All that is to say, the wifi thing may very well be bollocks, but I still
would love to see more rigorous research done.

~~~
Locke1689
Why don't you just do that math? E=hf -- you know the frequency of the
radiation, so you know the energy. Go ahead and assume that people are all
water, you will be mostly correct.

Then, when you're done, compare E to the

+2 NAD+ + 2 ADP + 2 Pi -> \+ 2 NADH + 2 H+ + 2 ATP + 2 H2O

(simple glycolysis reaction and synthesis of NADH and ATP).

Hint: The amount of ionizing energy of a 5GHz signal is noise in the amount of
energy created by normal biological processes. Ars is careful not to say "it
can't happen," but I'm going to come out and say -- it can't happen.

~~~
dejb
I haven't done the math but I'm prepared to bet that when it actually comes to
the crunch you aren't as confident as you say. 'it can't happen' implies 0%
probability. Well I'll go you one better as I'm prepared to bet on it at 0.01%
for $1. I'll even send you the dollar as long as you agree to the bet. So
that's my $1 vs your $10K. Talk is cheap.

What I'm trying to demonstrate is how certainty can vanish when faced with
actual consequences.

~~~
scott_s
When someone says "it can't happen" in a scientific context, I don't take it
to mean "I believe it is impossible to happen." I take it to mean "according
to our current understanding, it's not possible."

The implication being that while it's possible, if it were true it would
require fundamental changes in our understanding. This is so unlikely to be
incalculable.

~~~
dejb
Well according to the constructs of the English language and logic, "it can't
happen" does actually mean "I believe it is impossible to happen.". (Can't ==
can not == impossible). Your statement implies the 'scientific context' is
bullshit which I certainly do not agree with.

So in your alternative world of logical meaning what does "it can't happen"
equate to anyway? Does it simply mean less than 50% probability or what? If
you aren't prepared to put an actual mathematical meaning to probabilistic
statements then they are worthless. I certainly am and I am prepared to back
them up with cash. What about you? Do your statements mean anything or are
they just worthless oratory?

~~~
scott_s
The intended meaning always depends on context. People are rarely precise with
their words; it's takes too much time and doesn't improve communication if all
parties have a shared understanding.

At the start of my thermal physics class, my professor spent a lecture to
define what a thermal physicist means when they say "never." We spent time
calculating things like the likelihood of Hamlet emerging from 6 billion
monkeys banging on keyboards for 13 billions years. This sort of understanding
is important when talking about entropy and the laws of thermal dynamics.

For example, a thermal physicist would be comfortable saying all of the
molecules in a room will never spontaneously exist on only one side of that
room. With simplifying assumptions, we can calculate the probability of that
happening. While it's non-zero, it's so infinitesimal that physicists are
comfortable saying "never", and we have the second law of thermodynamics.

Your insistence on putting a dollar number on my confidence is strange, since
even in your case it's rhetorical. No one is asking you to put money up, nor
does the infrastructure or even rules exist for how to handle it. Further, my
entire point was to demonstrate that _certainty_ in science is impossible. All
we have is _confidence_ in something.

~~~
dejb
> All we have is confidence in something.

Yes but if you can't define what confidence is what does it mean? When I
studied physics we learned to provide confidence intervals for each
measurement and subsequent calculation so every variable was of the form X +/-
Y. From memory the confidence was a specific number of deviations from the
mean. That meant something. Saying 'roughly X' doesn't.

All the examples you provided are so improbable that 'never' is of course
appropriate in most contexts. But what do you think 'it can't happen' means in
a case like the existence of a phenomena like EM-sensitivity?

10% probability, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%, 0.001%?

None of these are at all appropriate to describe as 'it can't happen' in this
context. I think that in your heart of hearts you know that chances of EM-
sensitivity existing could well be better than 1%.

> No one is asking you to put money up, nor does the infrastructure or even
> rules exist for how to handle it.

Check out <http://longbets.org> . Otherwise I'd settle for a proof of ID from
whomever wants to take the bet and a public and signed statement to the effect
that they'll pay up if the conditions are met within a certain time period.
I'm pretty sure this type of bet is legal in most jurisdictions.

~~~
scott_s
A confidence interval is a different beast than saying that you are confident
that current understanding is correct. One can be quantified, the other
cannot.

~~~
dejb
> One can be quantified, the other cannot.

I've just described a method for quantifying probability. How hard is this to
understand? Neither really exist. The measure of X is some exact amount just
as a clearly defined proposition is either true or false.

You can actually simplify the confidence interval case to a boolean
proposition (e.g. is X greater than 7).

~~~
scott_s
I must not have been clear in my previous post: there is a difference between
an objective confidence (such as from experimental measurements) and
subjective confidence (such as my own personal confidence that something is
correct). Objective confidences can be meaningfully quantified. Subjective
confidences cannot.

For example, I am confident that special relativity is correct and that the
speed of light is the unreachable-ceiling for the speed of matter with mass. A
century's worth of observations and experiments support this. However, trying
to quantify that _subjective confidence_ is meaningless.

~~~
dejb
I don't believe the your notions of objective and subjective confidence really
stand up too well. I think you'll find that the more you try to define the
exact difference between them the more it will fade away. Perhaps it is a
philosophical question. Similarly the only reason to look at measuring the
length of a rope as 'objective' versus the combination of the many
measurements that make up the supporting evidence for special relativity is
because the former is subjectively (intuitively) simpler. .

However the main point is that probabilities are required for decision making.
Whether you like it or not, any statement must be interpreted
probabilistically to be incorporated into decision making. You need to
multiply the probability by the risk/reward differential to have basis to work
things out. You do this internally without realising it. 'What are the chances
that this movie will be good versus the cost of going to see it'. Exaggerated
statements can hurt people's decision making capabilities. That is why I
oppose them.

You need to replace the Booleans in some of your mental constructs with
fractions.

~~~
scott_s
Let's say I measure a rope many times, and come up with a mean value and a 95%
confidence interval for the length of the rope. That is, assuming my
"experiment" is constructed correctly, I say that the true length of the rope
lies within that range, with a 95% confidence. That's an objective confidence.

But in order to come up with that number, I had to assume my experiment was
correct. I very well could have had a systematic error in the experiment such
as misusing my ruler, accidentally holding the rope such as to artificially
shorten it, or completely misunderstood the concept of length. My confidence
that my experiment is correct is both independent of the confidence interval I
reported, and not quantifiable.

~~~
dejb
What about measuring the speed of light? or measuring the distance from the
earth to sun? Where do these fall in your neat divisions between subject and
objective?

Is there a certain class of proposition that is too complicated to be called
objectively true? Are all medical theories, for example, simply subjective and
have no real meaning in terms of predicting likely future outcomes?

Any statement or theory that does not have predictive power is meaningless.
Predictive implies probability. Probability implies odds. Put up or shut up
up.

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tybris
Wifi allergy? I'm glad I missed another meme.

------
onreact-com
In Germany the government office for radiation control asks people not to use
WiFi in children rooms and where people sleep.

~~~
jcl
Sounds a little like "fan death", which is apparently a major concern in South
Korea (and pretty much nowhere else):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death>

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dooyah
just like global warming...

