Scientists Flip Coin as Evidence Now “Increasingly Against” Phone->Cancer Link

So far we know that cellphones are potentially carcinogenic like coffee, they do something to your brain, and even 10 year studies on the subject come up inconclusive. Still that has not stopped people scurrying around worried that their favorite gadget is slowly killing them… faster than everything else that is already working on killing them. The latest entry to this circus of flip flop science comes from a committee of experts from the US, UK, and Sweden. They did a major review of the current published research on the cellphone cancer link and “concluded there was no convincing evidence of any cancer connection” according to Reuters.

The best quote from the report:

Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults

While it is obviously hard to prove a positive connection between cellphones and cancer it still is extremely telling that even with tons of money and research we can’t even show any solid correlation. It could be cellphones are simply as bad as everything else we pit ourselves against like car exhaust and power lines. Still that won’t stop scientists from studying it… All they need is one extreme scientist and cellphones may become like the vaccine shots causing autism fears.

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WHO Says Cellphones Possibly Cause Cancer… Hires a Parrot

This scientific argument back and forth between scientists on the connection between cell phones and cancer baffles me. It has been years going back and forth and the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have come to the conclusion that cell phone radiation are now classified as “possibly carcinogenic.” Seriously! A parrot could have simply repeated the exact studies this working group went over to come to the same inconclusive conclusion. They are using this “Possibly carcinogenic” classification to call for more research.

It reminds me about what my dad used to say about scientists and researchers. Their goal is not to find a solution because then they wouldn’t have any work or grant money left. Instead they come up with a possibly stimulating hypothesis and ask for more research (aka money). Rinse and repeat.

On the other hand with footnotes like the two below I wonder why they even bother:

(2) ‘Limited evidence of carcinogenicity’: A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence.
(3) ‘Inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity’: The available studies are of insufficient quality, consistency or statistical power to permit a conclusion regarding the presence or absence of a causal association between exposure and cancer, or no data on cancer in humans are available.

This all makes me wonder when we will finally get a study that will put this matter to rest one way or another. The thing is what would you do if they found a link? Throw your BlackBerry in the ocean?

Full study PDF via AP via Engadget

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