> People with few publications now working in other fields

I'm surprised this statement passed muster on HN where there must be some number of PhDs now working in other fields. Certainly the ones I know wouldn't take kindly to the idea that somehow, just because they left academia their research can be easily and completely dismissed.

There's nothing wrong with changing fields. But if you tell me "these are the most relevant scientists in the field" and most of them aren't actively working scientists - it looks fishy...

You might find it more informative to look at the last author, who is typically the expert and ( ideally ) is helping to drive the research.

Being such a person is totally fine (I’m one myself). What’s damning is the fact that this list is largely composed of just such people (plus some that are less qualified).

Yeah, this is just a ridiculous way to dismiss the papers. Most authors are "people with few publications now working in other fields". One professor trains 25+ PhDs in their career, and usually all but one or two of them will end up fitting that description.

It's unfortunately common in science for someone who's an expert in one field to think they can easily be an expert in another field and get it completely wrong. Linux Pauling is the most well known example of this.

Furthermore, even if cell phones cause cancer then the risk will in all likelihood be so small that it doesn't justify banning the technology. [1]

For example, eating barbecued meat causes cancer, but it we don't ban it.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs

Wouldn't the difference there be that the person consuming meat is voluntarily consuming it while even people sticking to older tech phones are exposed to the newer radiation? I am no luddite but this would be my argument from a devil's advocate position

No, because you're only exposed to radiation if you actually use a phone. Google for "inverse square law". Your exposure is orders of magnitude lower from "second-hand cellphones" than from using it yourself; it's not like second-hand smoking.

Not if there's a cell tower every 100 yards putting out 30dB more power than your phone. The inverse square law also doesn't apply when you have phased arrays doing beamforming if you're directly in the path.

The inverse square law totally applies in the case of phased array beamforming, you just have a much higher gain to start with.

You get a lower exponent than the square with a beam. For a perfectly parallel beam the exponent is technically 0 (same intensity regardless of distance - like a laser pointer) For a focused beam intensity will actually increase with distance up to the focal point. Some energy can be absorbed by the medium (air/moisture/rain), but that is not covered by the inverse square law.

Not with a planar or linear array. I'm skeptical, but prepared to learn something: what sort of array can generate a square beam?

Even lasers spread. This guy agrees with me: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-light-from-lasers-reduced-by-th...

The cross section of the beam can be any shape, the important thing is the signal source is an area not a point. The value of the inverse square (of distance from source) is dominates power density when the signal source is effectively a point - this becomes the situation for a laser or anything at long enough distance, but at distances where it is effectively a beam, the strength of power density does not dissipate by that value. The geometry of the beam concentrates the power density at its focal point, which can be far behind the source or in front of it. For an ideal beam focused to infinity (parallel rays) its power would never dissipate with distance - as all of the power goes in the same direction. We don't need to form an ideal beam to say its doesn't follow the inverse square rule, any focusing of rays breaks the rule (at scales where it is reasonable to treat it as a beam and not just rays emanating from a point)

I hope that helps picture the situation. My original comment that a beam can have a different exponent was incorrect except in some approximate sense. The inverse square value will still apply, but from the beams real or imaginary focal point (if it is a point) But it the case of a transmitter beaming a signal at another, that focal length can be far beyond the reciever, so the 'rule' can be completely confounded.

It depends. The inverse square law applies to spherical wavefronts. Due to diffraction, wave fronts always become spherical in the far field.

But in the near field, that's not the case.

Beamforming arrays have planar wavefronts close to the source, so the inverse square law does not apply. The wave fronts will become spherical again at a "large" distance from the emitter, where the meaning of "large" depends on wavelength and emitter size.

Focussed lasers also do not have spherical wave fronts in the near field. The distance at which the inverse square law starts to apply to lasers depends on beam width, coherence, and focus.

the inverse square law always applies, hence the law part.

Laws of Physics are in general not always applicable. Ohm's Law, for instance, is only applicable in a narrow range of conditions.

"Laws" tend to be less rigorous and more narrowly applicable than "theories," though the colloquial meaning of the terms is switched.

Yes, except in this case there isn't an exception.

Incorrect analysis can give the correct answer.

There are excpetions to many inverse square laws, they just aren't relevant to the problem at hand.

Actually the difference between law and theory is nothing whatsoever.

There is a substantial difference in my opinion. Laws rarely put forward a mechanism or seek a complete understanding of a relationship, while theories often do.

Ohm's law was a law long before the electron was discovered. It's an emperical linear relationship that just seemed to work. Since no mechanism is suggested, it's not possible to determine whether ohmic behavior is expected or not. In contrast, The Drude Model's explantion of ohmic behavior could be considered a theory. It makes an attempt to understand the underlying physics, and from this it is possible to predict whether a material will follow Ohm's Law or not.

Have you noticed that nothing is called a law anymore? It's a difference in word choice not meaning.

I think modern scientists are a lot less likely to call any empirical relationship a law. Theory is still pretty widely used, and not for things that could be called laws.

You can say the "the theory of quantum chromodynamics," but not "the law of quantum chromodynamics". 'Law' implies a small number of simple equations, while theory allows for a much larger scope of complexity or rigor. The meaning is absolutely different. Modern science is pretty complex compared to what went on 200 years ago, so it's not surprising law has fallen out of favor.

> it's not like second-hand smoking

Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)?

no. smoke is heavily influenced by ventilation and the enclosure. there's a fair amount of modelling in the literature, for example on how much air flow you would need in confined spaces to reduce secondhand smoke cancer risks to acceptable levels.

Not if you are in a sealed room with the smoker.

> Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)?

That's why smoking is allowed outdoors.

(Except when it's not.)

It's not really uncommon to see "no smoking on the patio" or "no smoking within 100 feet of this door" signs. And some states have legalized smoking cannabis, except outdoors.

Patios are usually very close to doors. Is the threshold really 100 feet in some places?

I've seen such limits imposed on private property, but as far as I know there aren't any laws (specifically for cigarette smoke) that extreme.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a smoker and never have been. I like these laws. I'm just being a bit pedantic. There has been a general trend of restricting smoking and I think that trend has continued outdoors. It used to be that you could smoke anywhere, then businesses started creating indoor smoking sections. Then indoor smoking sections were banned and smokers moved to the outdoor seating. Then smoking outside near exterior doors was banned, in a way that effectively banned smoking at many restaurants entirely. Beyond this, in some places like NYC you have smoking bans in public parks and beaches as well, regardless of how far you are from any exterior door. (To be clear, I support these bans because cigarette smokers are notorious for their litter.)

And in the case of cannabis the restrictions are even more severe. In Washington you cannot smoke cannabis in view of the general public or in most buildings (except residential, although many apartment buildings have smoking bans too.) California is more permissive, but even they enforce a 1000(!) foot smoking ban around schools and youth centers.

But not everyone eats barbecued meat or has barbecued meat near/next to their body 24/7 like people who use cell phones. I can opt out of eating barbecued meat though it carrying a phone close to my body.

Fortunately/unfortunately some of us live in Kansas City and have no choice in the matter.

Regarding 5G or barbecued meat?

Meat barbecued with 5G

As I type this across from Jack Stack. Korean BBQ is better anyway.

> For example, eating barbecued meat causes cancer, but it we don't ban it.

Sure, but the absolute risk is very low and it's probably zero if you add veggies to your meal. And also causality was not established, observational studies on this topic suffering from the healthy-user bias in addition to a lot of confounding factors and in general for nutrition the evidence is very low quality, compared with medication research.

This isn't a boolean. Saying that "this or that causes cancer" is meaningless without giving the risk factor, which has to be statistically significant and in case of meat it isn't.

In other words if you want to compare the risks of 5G with anything, I think nutrition is a really poor choice due to the low standards for evidence we have and due to all the confounding factors and biases.

Not sure if assessing the safety of 5G is easier, but at the very least you can do double-blind studies. At the very least you can compare it with the placebo effect. Which in nutrition isn't possible.

Cigarettes and alcohol too. Radiowave effects, even if they do cause anything, are quite easy to mitigate in humans by wearing clothing with carefully positioned electrical conductor insertions.

What about the head? Is it time for tinfoil hats?

Working in a Faraday cage seems more appealing.

"Causes" implies that you will get cancer if you partake. Maybe you mean "increases the risk of". Agreed that your risk exposure might only be fractions of a percent and not worth abstaining or regulating.

I find your certainty regarding the reasons we have increasing incidents of cancer to seriously detract from your previous points.

Most people in the cancer field (I worked in a tangential one) believe that incidence of cancer is due to people living longer (cancer rates go up a lot as you age), and not dying of other diseases first. In a sense, cancer is what you get after you solved the other problems.

"Most people in the cancer field" seem to be pretty misinformed then. See [1] and [2]. At a minimum, health/diet habits have increased cancer risk in young people over the last 20 years, and probably other environmental factors/exposures as well.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...

[2] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

Sorry, i think you misunderstood. I believe that lifestyle effects do influence cancer rates, but I don't think they influence it as much as the effects I mentioned. Note that in the papers you describe, the increase in relative risk is actually fairly small.

Ok in that case I agree. I think it’s important to recognize that lifestyle and environmental factors are a contributor to cancer rates across age groups. Thanks for clarifying.

That reminds me of one of the cell phone radiation studies that I see get bandied about sometimes. People that are skeptical of cell phones like mentioning it because they found that rats exposed to massive amounts of 2G and 3G signals were more likely to die of cancer. However, what the study also found is that the rats exposed to the signals actually lived longer than the control group.

If cell phones give me cancer because they make me live longer, then maybe I should start carrying around a second one.

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsroom/releases/2018/novemb...

I agree - and you're probably right but I think we should hold ourselves to the same standards of evidence we expect of others.

Based on nothing scientific, I chalk up the increase in cancer to contaminants in our water, whether it's well or city water, and the introduction of petrochemicals/plastics.

"And nobody knows why."

Not only that but the article also leans on the somewhat infamous 'rat study', which produced hugely misleading findings, as explained in a good writeup by John Timmer here (https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/a-critical-analysis-...)

> "Here's a large number of studies saying X" is meaningless in a topic where a very large number of studies have been done. What you need is systematic reviews of the literature that not only count studies, but evaluate their quality and combine their results.

The sixth link in the article will get you what you want: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138357421...

"The present review - of results published by my group from 2006 until 2016"

Self-evaluation of quality is not quite a systemic review of literature. Neither is research on drosophila melanogaster quite in the same ballpark as research on homo sapiens.

Thank you. The sheer volume of blatantly false comments on this thread is astounding to me.

I haven't read the article, and I'm not a party to the 5G debate, but what you're describing in your comment is a meta-analysis, which is a practice that has produced some of the most controversial findings in recent times. If anything is needed to clear up an inconclusive body of studies, it's better and more reliable studies and experiments, not meta-analyses.‎

Meta-analyses try to find the unknown common truth by reviewing multiple studies and their methods and weighing them accourding to their percieved (really, calculated) quality.

By combining the results of the best studies and giving us an overview of them, meta-analyses really are the best studies we have.

"In addition to providing an estimate of the unknown common truth, meta-analysis has the capacity to contrast results from different studies and identify patterns among study results, sources of disagreement among those results, or other interesting relationships that may come to light in the context of multiple studies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis

Meta-analysis is good if you assume no publication bias. The problem is that most of the times only studies with successful result get published, and in those studies only the successful (or at least interesting) parts are published. You can use meta-analysis only in areas that have pre-registered trials, and perhaps that is too optimistic.

Isn't meta-analysis necessary and critical today?

With a potentially large # of studies on a specific subject, some of which may be contradicting, meta-analysis will be done.

Whether by accredited scientists, or institutions who do this on a professional basis with open and established criteria and consistency in approach (though there may still be flaws in the approach); and/or by individuals when confronted with large # of studies, when I feel bias would almost certainly be the primary driver.

While you absolutely cannot eliminate the latter, it feels it would be foolish to dismiss or eliminate the former.

As long as:

a) World is a bit tricky (phenomena difficult to define and isolate; limitations in equipment and measurements; limitations in humans)

b) We use statistical analysis as primary differentiator of significance There will continue to be contradicting studies.

Not disagreeing it's always better to improve studies and experiments, but it feels like meta-analysis of multiple studies is not just a necessary evil, but a good and desirable next step.

Thoughts?

Why not do the study? The phycologists have and they realized their field of study was built on sand. No amount of meta-analysis will fix that.

>> Why not do the study?

Hmm; I don't think we fully understand each other.

Absolutely do the study; in fact, do several.

What then, though? A "study of studies", or any method of reconciling or making sense of these multiple studies, is the "meta analysis" in question. It's going to happen, in some way, somehow, by somebody. There is no way to reconcile multiple studies without doing some form of what we are calling meta-analysis. Even if it's just you or me googling it up and then deciding which of the studies to trust, that's a "meta-analysis".

My claim, therefore, is that it's far better to acknowledge this need and reality, and have dedicated teams of experienced professionals do it with an open, consistent method; then for each of us to mentally, subconsciously, "biasedly", to pick & choose and prioritize the studies.

[in the end, proper meta-analysis, and study replication, are the methods of how we discover inconsistency, contradiction, data issues, or other problems, whether in psychology or other domains. It's not a method of "fixing something", but a method of collecting, analyzing, and reporting on multiple studies and data points]

Phycology, the study of seaweed, is indeed all on top of sand! ;)

Doh; and here I completely misunderstood the underlying message... thx for setting me straight! :-)

haha, good catch. ill keep it there

It's... more complicated than that.

Yeah, a meta analysis is only as good as its inputs. Unfortunately many meta analysises read like "we found 20 studies on the topic, but 19 of them are crap and the one good study didn't really ask the question we're asking, so we really don't know". And yeah, there's considerable wiggle room for a meta analysis. But I don't think you'll find any serious scientist doubting the usefulness of a meta analysis per se.

I knew other grad students who'd say, "oh, it's a meta analysis" and then toss it in the bin. But in recent years I've met people who worked on boards for cities and hospitals where they dug though a lot of papers and wrote detailed meta analysis about the larger body of work. They'd comment on things that seemed consistent and inconstant, and tried to help others make well informed decisions.

With a meta-analysis, you do have to look at the whole thing. Phrased like, "when controlled for.." you can't control for some things over 10 different studies. You need to read how they attempted to control for things and why the came to their conclusions.

They are still valuable and you shouldn't just chuck them in the bin.

That's criticizing a weak interpretation of my point and seems to conclude I'm rejecting the use of meta-analyses entirely, which is not the case. The point I make is in the context of the suggestion that a meta-analysis of an inconclusive body of studies is sufficient to yield substantially stronger conclusions.

Can you give some examples of the controversial findings of meta-analysis?

In 2010, a meta-analysis seeking to reevaluate the scientific evidence behind the prevailing view that dietary saturated fats are tied to adverse effects on cardiovascular health was published.[1]

The study's conclusion, "a meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic [sic] studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD", unleashed a wave of news reports claiming dietary saturated fats were no longer considered harmful, further tilling the grounds for a movement urging the increase in consumption of saturated fats for added health benefits.

The 2010 meta-analysis has been criticized here: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/91/3/497/4597072

Again, I'm not a party to this particular debate on dietary saturated fats, but I am critical of the suggestion that a meta-analysis of an inconclusive body of studies will yield an actionable conclusion.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824152/

Recently, a meta-analysis calling into question a connection between eating red and processed meat and heart failure.

So as to help me best evaluate the validity of the article, what is your background? Are you familiar w/that field? That would help me assess the usefulness of your critique of the backgrounds of people linked to in the article.

> Peer review is a lowest level quality mark for a piece of science.

Peer reviewed used to be the epitome of proof, now it's been relegated to base minimum?

Are you saying that consensus is no longer considered valid proof? (not that I disagree, it's just that this is a rare argument in my experience)

Also the World Health Organization (WHO) is cited:

https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf

"Lyon, France, May 31, 2011 ‐‐ The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer1 , associated with wireless phone use."

The "possibly carcinogenic" declaration is quite weak ("evidence far from conclusive").

Even if it was "carcinogenic to humans", there's a lot of things that are vital to modern society which fall into that category. It's then up to the regulators to guess an "acceptable" limit of exposure.

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” seems appropriate here...