Einstein and the EM Cancer
Coincidentally my wife purchased a new cell phone, and while she was busy tooling around with it, I read through the several little booklets that came with it. We can't call them manuals really because they are just warranty information, a picture that tells you where all of the buttons are, tucked into that booklet was the FCC warning regarding electromagnetic radiation (EM hereafter). The warning states that the phone is compliant and safe to use, gives a caution that the phone may get warm if pressed against the face, and that it shouldn't be used constantly against the skin. Interestingly, it leaves out why.
The movie, "Thank You For Smoking" (2005), the protagonist ends the film having set a meeting with some cell phone executives and reminding them of the mantra that there is no proven link between cell phones and cancer. This being his long time advice for cigarette companies, who historically have spent billions throwing the science that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer into doubt (to be fair though, that famous second hand study is fraught with legitimate problems*). This one scene, in an otherwise entertaining movie, implies that there is a link and that cell phone companies should begin their pursuit of sowing doubt into the established science.
The problem is that there is no established science. The reason for this is because the science can't exist, it's not possible. The only way you're going to get cancer from you phone is if you eat it.
Last post we discussed Ad Hominem. Ad Hominem covers a wide variety of sub fallacies and one of them is the appeal to false authority. If you ask your favorite search engine, or cell phone assistant (I call them "faeries:" Cortana, Siri, Alexa), you'll no doubt find a number of articles stating a positive link between brain cancer, tumors, or some kind of cancer and cell phone use. A good deal of these pieces of evidence come from sites that are on the more hippie-dippy side of things, natural news, Dr. Axe, etc. They all offer some kind of panacea to the problem as well. The problem with these reports is that none of them are science oriented. Rather, they cater to a type of person that is going to already believe the conclusion. Most of the links will cite a 2016 scientific study that claimed a link between the type of EM frequency used by cell phones and glial carcinoma and schwannomas in a set of 90 rats.
First off, let me remark that science reporting is abysmal in this country (United States). Because the need for hits offsets the need to inform, the headline "Cell phones cause cancer" would be used instead of the more accurate headline "Cell phone radiation and cancer link still not proven." The actual accurate headline would be nothing since the study was still under peer review and won't be finalized until the Fall of 2017. So any site touting the link without disclosing this fact, isn't worth reading. I don't want to disparage the authors of the study, they all seem to have legitimate credentials and the lead author even stated that the results are not conclusive but warrant further investigation. It's rather the problem of who is reporting the information and what kind of authority they give to it. Natural News, Dr.Axe, and Microwave News all claim the same thing with the reporting of this study.
One of the more interesting proofs of the cell phone link had to do with bees. This occurred during the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) panic about eight years ago. CCD itself is a problem, because it's unclear as to whether or not a widespread problem was actually occurring. World wide the stock of bees has been steadily increasing, though the problem may lie in that they haven't been increasing as steadily as they should have. I'm not entirely sure, bees and insects aren't really my thing. Nevertheless a few studies went on to show that the EM radiation from cell phones were affecting bees. Bees will not go near active cell phones (that's phones currently in use) and some bees were reported as being disoriented and straight up dying near the phones. This was taken to be a problem because, as Bill Maher put it in an episode of Real Time "Einstein once said that if there are no bees humanity would have not more than seven years."
Appealing to Einstein should have be its own fallacy. First off let's check the authority: yeah, it's Albert Einstein, the guy who toppled Newton on gravity. However, was Einstein into bees? No. Expert in agriculture? No. Expert into anything related to food or pollination? No. Dropping his name in this context doesn't do anything. In fact, appealing to him for anything outside of physics doesn't really do anything. However, his name carries weight, so what is the context in which he said it? Well there isn't any, because he never said it. The claim first appears at a European Bee Keepers rally in 1996. There are scholars who have devoted their life's work to Einstein's writings and they don't have the quote or anything like it in any of their collections.
However, in relation to bees, cell phones, EM radiation, and cancer we can cite Einstein legitimately. In June of 1905 Einstein published "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" this was the paper that won him the Nobel Prize in 1921 (not either of the Relativity papers). In the paper, amongst other observations, he proved that it was not the power of a wave but rather the frequency of it which allows it to eject a photon, i.e. you can shine a green light frequency with the force of the sun at an object and it will never eject a photon or break a chemical bond. The frequency of the wave isn't high enough on the EM scale. Anything above 3 PHZ (petahertz), which is above the visible light spectrum is considered ionizing radiation and is therefore possible to make chemical changes. Radio frequencies, such as those used by cell phones are in the MHZ and GHZ range and do not carry the right frequency thus not enough energy to cause the chemical changes needed to cause cancer or kill bees. Simply put, if cell phone radiation caused cancer it would be a groundbreaking discovery in physics, not just because of the cancer but because it would overturn a century of established physics.
But, you might say, microwaves can cause harm. That's true, but the difference is in the mechanism of harm. In microwave ovens and all types of emitters that use microwaves (defined as radiation within the 300MHZ to 300GHZ range. The harm is not from radioactivity, as usually defined, but from the effect of microwaves on water. When these waves hit water, they are absorbed then excited. Basically, water is boiled which causes thermal damage. Standing in the path of a microwave communication emitter will give you the sensation of buzzing in your ears which is the excitation of the water in the fluids of your head (do not do this), but the damage done is immediate with some long term effects depending on duration, it however is not cancerous. EM radiation from phones doesn't carry even this factor as it's frequency is too low power even for that.
In conclusion the link between cell phone radiation is doubtful to the point of being impossible. The scientific conclusion based on real authorities and a near monolithic consensus of research and experimentation is the true and just use of an appeal to authority. Challenging established science takes evidence and proof, not a mere allegation that "Galileo was wrong once" and some shill on the internet trying to sell a sticker which somehow nullifies EM effects.
*For example: if a person had a heart attack in a house with a smoker, they drew a link without taking into account any other factors such as diet or exercise. This was an EPA study done in 1993. Obviously standing in a room dense with smoke, either second hand or first hand, is bad for you but in order to be a good skeptic you have to criticize faulty science even if you agree with it. Further studies have shown second hand smoke to be extremely unhealthy but the 1993 study had numerous problems and was one of the most oft-cited when introducing smoking bans.
The movie, "Thank You For Smoking" (2005), the protagonist ends the film having set a meeting with some cell phone executives and reminding them of the mantra that there is no proven link between cell phones and cancer. This being his long time advice for cigarette companies, who historically have spent billions throwing the science that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer into doubt (to be fair though, that famous second hand study is fraught with legitimate problems*). This one scene, in an otherwise entertaining movie, implies that there is a link and that cell phone companies should begin their pursuit of sowing doubt into the established science.
The problem is that there is no established science. The reason for this is because the science can't exist, it's not possible. The only way you're going to get cancer from you phone is if you eat it.
Last post we discussed Ad Hominem. Ad Hominem covers a wide variety of sub fallacies and one of them is the appeal to false authority. If you ask your favorite search engine, or cell phone assistant (I call them "faeries:" Cortana, Siri, Alexa), you'll no doubt find a number of articles stating a positive link between brain cancer, tumors, or some kind of cancer and cell phone use. A good deal of these pieces of evidence come from sites that are on the more hippie-dippy side of things, natural news, Dr. Axe, etc. They all offer some kind of panacea to the problem as well. The problem with these reports is that none of them are science oriented. Rather, they cater to a type of person that is going to already believe the conclusion. Most of the links will cite a 2016 scientific study that claimed a link between the type of EM frequency used by cell phones and glial carcinoma and schwannomas in a set of 90 rats.
First off, let me remark that science reporting is abysmal in this country (United States). Because the need for hits offsets the need to inform, the headline "Cell phones cause cancer" would be used instead of the more accurate headline "Cell phone radiation and cancer link still not proven." The actual accurate headline would be nothing since the study was still under peer review and won't be finalized until the Fall of 2017. So any site touting the link without disclosing this fact, isn't worth reading. I don't want to disparage the authors of the study, they all seem to have legitimate credentials and the lead author even stated that the results are not conclusive but warrant further investigation. It's rather the problem of who is reporting the information and what kind of authority they give to it. Natural News, Dr.Axe, and Microwave News all claim the same thing with the reporting of this study.
One of the more interesting proofs of the cell phone link had to do with bees. This occurred during the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) panic about eight years ago. CCD itself is a problem, because it's unclear as to whether or not a widespread problem was actually occurring. World wide the stock of bees has been steadily increasing, though the problem may lie in that they haven't been increasing as steadily as they should have. I'm not entirely sure, bees and insects aren't really my thing. Nevertheless a few studies went on to show that the EM radiation from cell phones were affecting bees. Bees will not go near active cell phones (that's phones currently in use) and some bees were reported as being disoriented and straight up dying near the phones. This was taken to be a problem because, as Bill Maher put it in an episode of Real Time "Einstein once said that if there are no bees humanity would have not more than seven years."
Appealing to Einstein should have be its own fallacy. First off let's check the authority: yeah, it's Albert Einstein, the guy who toppled Newton on gravity. However, was Einstein into bees? No. Expert in agriculture? No. Expert into anything related to food or pollination? No. Dropping his name in this context doesn't do anything. In fact, appealing to him for anything outside of physics doesn't really do anything. However, his name carries weight, so what is the context in which he said it? Well there isn't any, because he never said it. The claim first appears at a European Bee Keepers rally in 1996. There are scholars who have devoted their life's work to Einstein's writings and they don't have the quote or anything like it in any of their collections.
However, in relation to bees, cell phones, EM radiation, and cancer we can cite Einstein legitimately. In June of 1905 Einstein published "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" this was the paper that won him the Nobel Prize in 1921 (not either of the Relativity papers). In the paper, amongst other observations, he proved that it was not the power of a wave but rather the frequency of it which allows it to eject a photon, i.e. you can shine a green light frequency with the force of the sun at an object and it will never eject a photon or break a chemical bond. The frequency of the wave isn't high enough on the EM scale. Anything above 3 PHZ (petahertz), which is above the visible light spectrum is considered ionizing radiation and is therefore possible to make chemical changes. Radio frequencies, such as those used by cell phones are in the MHZ and GHZ range and do not carry the right frequency thus not enough energy to cause the chemical changes needed to cause cancer or kill bees. Simply put, if cell phone radiation caused cancer it would be a groundbreaking discovery in physics, not just because of the cancer but because it would overturn a century of established physics.
But, you might say, microwaves can cause harm. That's true, but the difference is in the mechanism of harm. In microwave ovens and all types of emitters that use microwaves (defined as radiation within the 300MHZ to 300GHZ range. The harm is not from radioactivity, as usually defined, but from the effect of microwaves on water. When these waves hit water, they are absorbed then excited. Basically, water is boiled which causes thermal damage. Standing in the path of a microwave communication emitter will give you the sensation of buzzing in your ears which is the excitation of the water in the fluids of your head (do not do this), but the damage done is immediate with some long term effects depending on duration, it however is not cancerous. EM radiation from phones doesn't carry even this factor as it's frequency is too low power even for that.
In conclusion the link between cell phone radiation is doubtful to the point of being impossible. The scientific conclusion based on real authorities and a near monolithic consensus of research and experimentation is the true and just use of an appeal to authority. Challenging established science takes evidence and proof, not a mere allegation that "Galileo was wrong once" and some shill on the internet trying to sell a sticker which somehow nullifies EM effects.
*For example: if a person had a heart attack in a house with a smoker, they drew a link without taking into account any other factors such as diet or exercise. This was an EPA study done in 1993. Obviously standing in a room dense with smoke, either second hand or first hand, is bad for you but in order to be a good skeptic you have to criticize faulty science even if you agree with it. Further studies have shown second hand smoke to be extremely unhealthy but the 1993 study had numerous problems and was one of the most oft-cited when introducing smoking bans.
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