5 ms·

What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry

What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities. The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a specific level that's far from the continuous spectrum, but useful for some other chemical to interact with. To detect low frequency radiation, these usually require very specific materials with nearly continuous energy bands (think carefully doped semiconductors or possibly photoreceptor proteins). These are also highly unlikely to occur - again, unless you've engineered it to happen, 10^{-5} is probably an extreme overestimate on the probability. But if you know a plausible mechanism, I'd love to hear it. Feel free to provide references or go into physical detail.

maxerickson 11y ago
Maybe people with low sperm concentrations tend to sit around using their cell phone while it is plugged in? The abstract doesn't really propose a mechanism, it just notes the correlation. Pushing people with certain usage patterns to get screening for low t (or whatever) can still be a useful outcome of the further research. Not that I think they really need to get funding to pursue it, but you are imputing the proposal of a causative radiation mechanism.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Right - I'm charitably assuming that their study supported causality with p=0.02. In reality it doesn't.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    My statement above but you are imputing the proposal of a causative radiation mechanism. is poorly phrased. A better way to put what I was getting at is that they are not claiming that radiation effects are the only possible causative mechanism. They found some observation in some data and published it, probably in the service of a future grant proposal. Saying they didn't prove anything for this publication is like saying water is wet. Should hn spend much time discussing the result (or really, observation)? Absolutely not. Should they get grant funding for this? I dunno, I hope there are better proposals out there, but really have no idea.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      Isn't it the case that we can expect roughly one in fifty studies with p<0.02 to be the result of statistical noise?
      - schoen 11y ago
        As dramatized at https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/
dekhn 11y ago
Again, you're making a ton of assumptions about mechanisms. Saying low intensity RF has a negligible effect on chemistry belies the fact that cell receptors can be exquisitely sensitive and those receptors can cause large changes in cells via DNA transcription. The current most plausible mechanism is localized cell heating. We already know that RF can cause cell heating. There are a number of physical responses to cell heating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein) which can have large effects on cell morphology. I am not claiming that is the mechanism. But I've seen enough epidemilogical studies that have been conducted carefully enough to suggest there is some mechanism by which negative health effects may be occurring, and I think that alone makes it worth being a bit more creative than trying to disprove the observed evidence by claiming one of the plausible mechanisms isn't. (I have a PhD in Biophysics; I've worked up and down the molecular stack, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if the epidemiologists carry out a good study, and the meta-analysts confirm the effect, it's always a good idea to be open minded about the cause).
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Of course I'm making assumptions - the biggest one is that quantum chemistry works. If you are now retreating to thermal effects, they a) can be easily measured and b) are vastly smaller than effects like wearing tighty whities or walking past a radiator in winter. Is your sole claim that using a cell phone might have an effect 1/100th as large as blow drying one's balls after a shower? Let me reason by analogy, to explain the probabilitistic intuition here. Study: we threw golf balls at aircraft carriers and cargo vessels, and concluded that they are an effective naval weapon. The probability of observing this result by random chance, assuming golf balls don't sink aircraft carriers, is 2%. Would you draw the conclusion that golf balls are likely to sink aircraft carriers from such a study?
  - dekhn 11y ago
    No, my sole claim is not that using a cell phone would have 1/100th the effect of blow drying ones testicles after a shower (why????) After all, the phone stays around a lot longer (temporal effect) and I have certainly noticed that when the phone is using lots of bandwidth it stays warm for hours at a time. Many effects in biology can occur from extended exposure (cumulative dosage effects) when they don't have an effect from acute exposure. And vice versa, of course. Anyway, reasoning from probabilistic intuition here is probably a mistake: the epi studies show stuff that doesn't agree with our intuition (this is common) and that leads theorists and experimentalists to go search for other causes. In the history of science, we have a long list of things that weren't intuitive but ultimately were figured out. Finally falling back on "I assume QC works" isn't really informative in this case. I assume QC works to and I don't see why that negates the possibility that cell phones can have negative health effects caused by physical mechanisms.
sageikosa 11y ago
Warm battery in front pocket? Testicles are outside the body to help control temperature.
50CNT 11y ago
This is probably silly speculation, but I'm neither good at testicle models nor the more squishy sciences. So sperm virility is correlated with temperature. My phone gets very warm if I leave an app running. I keep my phone close to my testicles. The wikipedia page on "Semen quality" is now in my browser history. I mean it's spurious, but I wouldn't be surprised if a running cellphone heats up the inside of your pants just enough for you to take a minor hit to semen quality. There's also a blood vessel that leads to the testicles that sits fairly close to where my phone sometimes goes. My browser history now contains anatomical diagrams of scrota. This could interfere with the thermoregulation of the testicle. That or the tails act as tiny antenna. I'm sure glad that I'm nowhere near the field of Biology, and I'm sure Biology is glad too.
- dlsx 11y ago
  Are you a fuckongfucking retardeded???
Retric 11y ago
Indirect, People carry cellphones in there pants pockets. Said pants are going to be tighter which hampers sperm production. Posture, people that sit differently during a phone conversation which may be constricting airflow / blood flow / heating. Direct heating, phones get fairly hot during charging which may cause other issues. Related behaviors, people that use there phone a lot may also use-laptops in there lap which case heat issues. PS: Sure, the study may just be random statistical noise. But, your better off investigating things that don't seem reasonable than assuming your world view covers everything.

maxerickson 11y ago

Maybe people with low sperm concentrations tend to sit around using their cell phone while it is plugged in? The abstract doesn't really propose a mechanism, it just notes the correlation. Pushing people with certain usage patterns to get screening for low t (or whatever) can still be a useful outcome of the further research. Not that I think they really need to get funding to pursue it, but you are imputing the proposal of a causative radiation mechanism.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Right - I'm charitably assuming that their study supported causality with p=0.02. In reality it doesn't.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  My statement above but you are imputing the proposal of a causative radiation mechanism. is poorly phrased. A better way to put what I was getting at is that they are not claiming that radiation effects are the only possible causative mechanism. They found some observation in some data and published it, probably in the service of a future grant proposal. Saying they didn't prove anything for this publication is like saying water is wet. Should hn spend much time discussing the result (or really, observation)? Absolutely not. Should they get grant funding for this? I dunno, I hope there are better proposals out there, but really have no idea.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Isn't it the case that we can expect roughly one in fifty studies with p<0.02 to be the result of statistical noise?
    - schoen 11y ago
      As dramatized at https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/

dekhn 11y ago

Again, you're making a ton of assumptions about mechanisms. Saying low intensity RF has a negligible effect on chemistry belies the fact that cell receptors can be exquisitely sensitive and those receptors can cause large changes in cells via DNA transcription. The current most plausible mechanism is localized cell heating. We already know that RF can cause cell heating. There are a number of physical responses to cell heating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein) which can have large effects on cell morphology. I am not claiming that is the mechanism. But I've seen enough epidemilogical studies that have been conducted carefully enough to suggest there is some mechanism by which negative health effects may be occurring, and I think that alone makes it worth being a bit more creative than trying to disprove the observed evidence by claiming one of the plausible mechanisms isn't. (I have a PhD in Biophysics; I've worked up and down the molecular stack, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if the epidemiologists carry out a good study, and the meta-analysts confirm the effect, it's always a good idea to be open minded about the cause).

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Of course I'm making assumptions - the biggest one is that quantum chemistry works. If you are now retreating to thermal effects, they a) can be easily measured and b) are vastly smaller than effects like wearing tighty whities or walking past a radiator in winter. Is your sole claim that using a cell phone might have an effect 1/100th as large as blow drying one's balls after a shower? Let me reason by analogy, to explain the probabilitistic intuition here. Study: we threw golf balls at aircraft carriers and cargo vessels, and concluded that they are an effective naval weapon. The probability of observing this result by random chance, assuming golf balls don't sink aircraft carriers, is 2%. Would you draw the conclusion that golf balls are likely to sink aircraft carriers from such a study?
- dekhn 11y ago
  No, my sole claim is not that using a cell phone would have 1/100th the effect of blow drying ones testicles after a shower (why????) After all, the phone stays around a lot longer (temporal effect) and I have certainly noticed that when the phone is using lots of bandwidth it stays warm for hours at a time. Many effects in biology can occur from extended exposure (cumulative dosage effects) when they don't have an effect from acute exposure. And vice versa, of course. Anyway, reasoning from probabilistic intuition here is probably a mistake: the epi studies show stuff that doesn't agree with our intuition (this is common) and that leads theorists and experimentalists to go search for other causes. In the history of science, we have a long list of things that weren't intuitive but ultimately were figured out. Finally falling back on "I assume QC works" isn't really informative in this case. I assume QC works to and I don't see why that negates the possibility that cell phones can have negative health effects caused by physical mechanisms.

sageikosa 11y ago

Warm battery in front pocket? Testicles are outside the body to help control temperature.

50CNT 11y ago

This is probably silly speculation, but I'm neither good at testicle models nor the more squishy sciences. So sperm virility is correlated with temperature. My phone gets very warm if I leave an app running. I keep my phone close to my testicles. The wikipedia page on "Semen quality" is now in my browser history. I mean it's spurious, but I wouldn't be surprised if a running cellphone heats up the inside of your pants just enough for you to take a minor hit to semen quality. There's also a blood vessel that leads to the testicles that sits fairly close to where my phone sometimes goes. My browser history now contains anatomical diagrams of scrota. This could interfere with the thermoregulation of the testicle. That or the tails act as tiny antenna. I'm sure glad that I'm nowhere near the field of Biology, and I'm sure Biology is glad too.

dlsx 11y ago
Are you a fuckongfucking retardeded???

Retric 11y ago

Indirect, People carry cellphones in there pants pockets. Said pants are going to be tighter which hampers sperm production. Posture, people that sit differently during a phone conversation which may be constricting airflow / blood flow / heating. Direct heating, phones get fairly hot during charging which may cause other issues. Related behaviors, people that use there phone a lot may also use-laptops in there lap which case heat issues. PS: Sure, the study may just be random statistical noise. But, your better off investigating things that don't seem reasonable than assuming your world view covers everything.