No, a rat study with marginal results does not prove that cell phones cause cancer ... [View all]

[HuckleB]

No, a rat study with marginal results does not prove that cell phones cause cancer, no matter what Mother Jones and Consumer Reports say
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-a-rat-study-with-marginal-results-does-not-prove-that-cell-phones-cause-cancer-no-matter-what-mother-jones-and-consumer-reports-say/

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To be fair, NaturalNews includes Adams’ usual conspiracy-mongering about vaccines, GMOs, and the like, linking them all to “government coverups,” but when you are a mainstream publication like Consumer Reports or Mother Jones and your headlines and much of your text are not that far removed from something published on NaturalNews, you are doing it wrong. As Matthew Herper put it writing for Forbes about the reporting on this study, “Yesterday’s cell phone cancer scare scares me a little about the future of journalism.” In fact, if you look at some of the stories linked to above, you’ll note that many of them include notes at the end mentioning something like, “This article was updated to reflect criticism of the study’s conclusions by outside researchers.” That’s the press jumping first and being forced to backtrack under reasonable criticism. Unfortunately, none of them seem actually to make it very clear specifically how the stories were altered in response to criticism, which is bad.

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Still, from the standpoint of basic science, specifically basic physics and biology, the likelihood that radio waves can cause cancer is incredibly unlikely, or, as I like to put it, not quite homeopathy-level implausible but damned implausible nonetheless. Indeed, from a biological standpoint, a strong link between cell phone use and brain cancer (or any other cancer) is not very plausible at all; in fact, it’s highly implausible. Cell phones do not emit ionizing radiation; they emit electromagnetic radiation in the microwave spectrum whose energy is far too low to cause the DNA damage that leads to mutations that lead to cancer. While it is possible that perhaps heating effects might contribute somehow to cancer, most cell phones, at least ones manufactured in the last decade or so, are low power radio transmitters. It is also necessary to acknowledge the possibility that there might be an as-yet-undiscovered biological mechanism by which low power radio waves can cause cancer, perhaps epigenetic or other, but the evidence there is very weak to nonexistent as well. Basically, based on what we know about carcinogenesis, a postulated link between cell phones and cancer is highly implausible.

In the absence of better basic science that nails down a heretofore-undiscovered potential biological mechanism by which exposure to radio waves could cause cancer, I have a hard time managing to muster any enthusiasm about recommending more studies than the ones that are already going on, particularly in light of various recent studies that we’ve examined that purport to find a link between cell phones and cancer but really do not, as described in these posts dating back to 2008, listed for your convenience if you want more in-depth information and discussion:

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In other words, as a skeptic who’s probably the most open-minded (perhaps almost to the point of my brains falling out) to the claim that cell phones cause cancer, I still consider the claim, on basic science considerations alone, so incredibly implausible as to be an incredible, albeit not quite physically impossible, claim. I base this opinion on a preponderance of evidence that shows that brain cancer incidence is not increasing, inconsistent cell culture and animal studies that suffer from publication bias and when considered in the context of Bayesian prior plausibility are in fact negative, several epidemiological studies that failed to find a cell-phone cancer link, and the fact that the only epidemiological studies that claim to find a cell phone-cancer link have come from one group in Sweden whose principal investigator is known for being an expert witness in lawsuits against mobile phone companies.

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It's best to go to the link to get the full picture.

Here's another piece on this study:

Underwhelming Cell Phone Rat Study
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/underwhelming-cell-phone-rat-study/

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Whether one agrees fully with the author or not, at the end of the day, I hope everyone sees how the media blew this story with unnecessary hyperbole, and a nearly complete lack of context.