There is no WiFi allergy: newspapers misreport PR as science

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

by erikwiffin • 17 years ago

45 30 17 years ago

TrevorJ2• 17 years ago

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.

jerf3• 17 years ago

'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.)

TrevorJ2• 17 years ago

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.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

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

jerf3• 17 years ago

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.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

I'm of the same persuasion, but I'm also not going to say it's nonsense.

If 1 out of 100,000 people would really suffer from this it would take a major test to figure out who those people are, especially if - like almost every other radiation sensitivity - the effect is cumulative rather than instantaneous.

Let's make an analogy with sunshine:

A person is asked to determine whether sunlight is on a small section of their arm or not. After several guesses we determine that they can't determine this with a probability higher than what you'd arrive at if you guessed.

We can then conclude that 'light sensitivity' is nonsense. But absense of light over longer periods of presense of too much light will definitely have an effect.

If being sensitive to HF is cumulative then we need a completely different test regime than to simply ask people if they can sense a wifi transmitter is on or off.

You'd have to test over periods of days or even weeks.

dejb9• 17 years ago

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.

jackdawjack• 17 years ago

"the nervous system is essentially an electrical aparatus using very low powerlevels"

Signal propagation in neurons is not by electrical conduction, in the wire sense, i believe that this would actually be incredibly slow for the conductivities / currents involved. Rather signals are transmitted by an active chemical process where potassium ions are pulled into and out of the axon in serquence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential.

I'm not sure that this has a direct implication for any kind of interference effect, but just wanted to point out that nerves don't really work like metal wires so how external fields effect the internal currents is not trivial. Also skin-depth/screening is going to play a big role in stopping most of the external radiation.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

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

jcl• 17 years ago

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

dooyah• 17 years ago

just like global warming...

tybris• 17 years ago

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

There is no WiFi allergy: newspapers misreport PR as science

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