Denialism

Badscience takes on the WiFi paranoia from BBC

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by

MarkH
in

And kicks its ass.

What is up with the British and their fear of “radiation”? People complain about poor science comprehension here in the US, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon. The fact someone was able to put a documentary on BBC suggesting that radiofrequencies of WiFi had any chance of affecting human health is pretty pathetic. And the fearmongering and anti-scientific conduct of the documentary is clearly pretty shameful.

Between this and the Independent’s coverage of the environment, I think they’re trying to bring down environmentalism from the inside.

Comments

8 responses to “Badscience takes on the WiFi paranoia from BBC”

  1. bigTom

    Consider the hollywood fantasies everyone is brought up on. You know whenever they need people -or spaceships to act weirdly then invent some sort of mystical “radiation” as a plot element. After seeing this sort of stuff dozens of times many people unconsiously internalize that sort of thinking.

    Or look at another prevalent (and costly myth), that in a vehicular accident you are safer not wearing your seatbelt (so you can jump out before the vehicle either bursts into flames or goes off the cliff). We’ve all seen that happen countless times. It took decades of education to disabuse most of the public of that one.

    Reply
  2. Despard

    I suspect that the lack of interest in religion in the UK means that people here are more likely to succumb to other irrational beliefs. I give you MMR and homeopathy as sad examples.

    Oh, and if you think the Indy’s bad, you should try the Daily Mail sometime. (Warning: strong stomach required…)

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  3. Dubito

    I can assure you that Australia is just as bad as the Us of K and SA in this regard. I also agree whole-heartedly with both previous commentators – the human mind craves certainty and without a really good grounding in science both needs and accepts woo as the provider thereof.

    My own take is: Not enough understanding (not just knowledge) of science in the general community. In this case, to understand that WiFi is in the same family as their radios, TVs, portable and mobile phones etc. Maybe we should petition to ban that band of the electromagnetic spectrum between ultraviolet and infra-red as having a particularly noticeable effect upon human physiology?

    And bigTom, I hope that one day education manages to disabuse the public of myths about wearing a helmet, as well.

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  4. Tony

    I suspect that the lack of interest in religion in the UK means that people here are more likely to succumb to other irrational beliefs.

    Whereas, the solidly religious US is lighting the beacon to guide us away from irrational beliefs such as creationism, UFOlogy, 9/11 conspiracy, and global warming denial. Not to mention religion itself (but that’s another debate).

    Hmm. Am I misreading your point? Could it be that you’re merely saying that the religious and the non-religious both have irrational beliefs in about the same proportion, but simply different subjects?

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  5. Chris H

    These guys have a lot of power in San Francisco, and they’ve almost made me abandon the precautionary principle, because they’ve used this scaremongering to attack all sorts of public projects.

    Anyway, I was a little disappointed with the rebuttal. What I’d like to see an explanation of why the studies that they cite are wrong. Powerwatch has these studies: http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/studies.asp

    that purport to link exposure to cell phones and what not to harm.

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  6. Ted

    There is an element to the view that the US and Europe are different in regards to consumers vs. commercial interests. The view is that in the US, consumer interests are secondary because there is a politicization of the regulatory agencies and that the business environment is friendly regardless of which members of the duopoly are in power.

    The way I view these scaremongering stories is that the BBC has a mandate to serve the public, and as such, it can get a little on the edge of things. Will the WiFi scaremongering decrease the use of WiFi? Doubtful. But it will create a nagging perception in the head of the public about electrosmog, which could use further studies. And that will drive development and testing for that market if the public’s fears are to be allayed.

    In the US, I think electrosmog is not an issue because there are no independent public interest media outlets to bring awareness. We’re reduced to sites like junkscience (which frankly sometimes I confuse with the badscience site) and YMMV when relying on the motivations of Steven Milloy to keep you informed as he is prone to be an extension of business interests (IMO).

    So, the difference: The BBC may actually drive the discourse on electrosmog (even with bad reporting) vs. here, where the market and market interests will drive the discourse on electrosmog (with reporting that coincides with market interests).

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  7. Torbjörn Larsson, OM

    These guys have a lot of power in San Francisco, and they’ve almost made me abandon the precautionary principle, because they’ve used this scaremongering to attack all sorts of public projects.

    Indeed. From the outset, AFAIK there wasn’t much that told us either way what would happen biologically. Any broadcast limits were set from other concerns.

    Some summarily dismissed radio or lower frequencies since cell membranes are screening by being dipole layers. That concerned me at the time since there are physical limits to screening, penetrating residual fields, and many communicating pores and signal molecules in the outer cell membranes are sensitive or work by conformal changes.

    But by now we have rather large and repeated epidemic studies with diverse radio sources that doesn’t show any problems, and no one has being able to present any believable mechanism that would indicate otherwise. The continued interest is probably partly an information problem among the public, but there are also some pretty heavy denialist interests here.

    And, unfortunately, the group of cranks that slowly follows the societies development when inventing the cause to their problems. A hundred years ago it was “a nervous disposition” to blame, now it is “electricity” and “vaccination”, and tomorrow it will likely be “computers” and “gene therapy”.

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  8. David

    Isn’t it just one of those random selection effects under the pressure of competition? For peacocks it’s tails, and for British editors it’s radiation scare stories.

    Reply

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