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I'm glad you don't believe it, but isn't there some harm to even entertaining the idea when people react so strongly to someone mentioning a 'possibility' howev

I'm glad you don't believe it, but isn't there some harm to even entertaining the idea when people react so strongly to someone mentioning a 'possibility' however obscure? It's good to play devil's advocate and conceive of possibilities within our knowledge of biology/physics or what-have-have but I'm afraid that a large portion of the public wants to jump to conclusions on mere thought experiments.

carbocation 16y ago
I think that the most intellectually honest thing to do is to say, "Well, we performed an epidemiological study that looked for an association between cancer and cell phone usage, and we found nothing. In fact, nobody has ever found anything, and we are confident now that there is no association; we can put a statistical upper bound of the effect of cell phone radiation on cancer at X (small effect size) within Y (years) of exposure. In fact, the evidence is equally supportive of the idea that cell radiation is protective as it is of the notion that it is harmful." What I don't think is intellectually honest is to say, "Physics says X can't happen." I don't care if microwaves cause DNA breakage. I care if microwaves somehow ultimately cause cancer, and if it doesn't happen through the mechanism that physicists posit, then we'd be in a world of hurt if we acted as though it was impossible because it didn't fit their model. So in summary, yeah, I normally never bring up this point of view because it's probably more helpful to deliver a correct message than a subtle one, but that's because the correct response to "Does X cause Y" has to do with biology and epidemiology, not physical claims of biological impossibility.[1] When someone does the latter, I think it's more important to be intellectually honest (and intellectually humble; admitting how little we know) by giving a more complete picture. [1] = Unless they are actually claiming something that is physically impossible, too, such as superluminal signalling between organisms or something.

carbocation 16y ago

I think that the most intellectually honest thing to do is to say, "Well, we performed an epidemiological study that looked for an association between cancer and cell phone usage, and we found nothing. In fact, nobody has ever found anything, and we are confident now that there is no association; we can put a statistical upper bound of the effect of cell phone radiation on cancer at X (small effect size) within Y (years) of exposure. In fact, the evidence is equally supportive of the idea that cell radiation is protective as it is of the notion that it is harmful." What I don't think is intellectually honest is to say, "Physics says X can't happen." I don't care if microwaves cause DNA breakage. I care if microwaves somehow ultimately cause cancer, and if it doesn't happen through the mechanism that physicists posit, then we'd be in a world of hurt if we acted as though it was impossible because it didn't fit their model. So in summary, yeah, I normally never bring up this point of view because it's probably more helpful to deliver a correct message than a subtle one, but that's because the correct response to "Does X cause Y" has to do with biology and epidemiology, not physical claims of biological impossibility.[1] When someone does the latter, I think it's more important to be intellectually honest (and intellectually humble; admitting how little we know) by giving a more complete picture. [1] = Unless they are actually claiming something that is physically impossible, too, such as superluminal signalling between organisms or something.