4 ms·

I'm open to both harm and interference, but what keeps me skeptical about these people's claims is that the effect level always seems to be hovering at the phan

by jerf 2y ago

I'm open to both harm and interference, but what keeps me skeptical about these people's claims is that the effect level always seems to be hovering at the phantom p-ghost level... that is, exactly the level you'd expect if you keep running low powered experiments and occasionally, whether deliberately or otherwise, you end up with a p-hacked experiment that seems to maybe suggest something is there, until you look again. It's a common pattern and generally means no, there is nothing there, just p-hacked phantoms. If you claim Wifi gives you a headache within a few minutes, and I put you in a Faraday cage with a Wifi router, and your headache flares up precisely when the wifi router's lights blinks, but not when it is actually on, because for the purposes of the experiment the two indications have been severed, then that's pretty conclusive in my opinion that there's nothing there for that person. And that experiment has been done, and that's exactly the result that came out. Now, that doesn't therefore prove that no radio waves ever affect any human in any way, and it also doesn't prove that there isn't "something" going on in the person reporting headaches (they could getting headaches and just dead wrong about why; goodness knows I've spent enough of my life in that exact situation myself, I'm in no position to complain! add a bit of trying to get the result they expect and/or want and it's not hard to understand what's going on), but it does seem to leave us with a dearth of evidence to date that radio waves have immediately detectable impacts.

LorenPechtel 2y ago
And that sort of test should be done. Just be careful about isolation! (Remember the EM-drive, physics said it shouldn't work but tests showed a small effect with widely varying results. The electric current of the power supply, flowing through a wire in a magnetic field. There's also the contraptions that will rise if sufficient voltage is applied. It works--in atmosphere.) And remember what I said about ultrasonic sounds from power supplies? Someone who doesn't understand how to test and was sensitive to one device might believe they're sensitive to all.
- jerf 2y ago
  "physics said it shouldn't work but tests showed a small effect with widely varying results" A valid point, and why I phrased it as I did. If you claim that Wifi gives you a headache in, say, 5 minutes, then that's a strong signal that can be tested for. If it fails, then there's a lot of statistical power there. If you claimed that being in a Wifi field for a few days gave you a headache, then my answer is... actually that you're very unlikely to be correct because carefully testing such a problem requires individual trials that take weeks apiece, which you have almost certainly not done. I know from experience; I've done some of my own personal health optimization that takes similar time frames. Some of my results have required years to determine because of the insensitivity of the testing and how long a single trial takes to get significance, and I still wouldn't be my life I've got all the details correct.
schiffern 2y ago
>If... your headache flares up precisely when the wifi router's lights blinks, but not when it is actually on... then that's pretty conclusive... ...of nothing, because that's also how the body will react to known stressors. A recovering alcoholic can feel sick at the mere smell of alcohol (simultaneous stimuli), but that's not "pretty conclusive" evidence that drinking alcohol has no deleterious effects. That "experiment" is only evidence of one thing: that you can trick people using Psych 101 combined with bad experimental design. If you wanted to actually prove or disprove the effect, a properly designed experiment would omit the trickery (or at least run a matrix experiment with a trickery/no-trickery variable).
- jerf 2y ago
  "...of nothing, because that's also how the body will react to known stressors." You say that like it's some sort of brilliant revelation, but that they are reacting to some other stressor and not actually to Wifi is the point. Since the question under study is not "do people react to perceptions" but "does this person actually react to Wifi signals, specifically Wifi signals and not anything else", it is quite to the point. If Wifi gives you a headache immediately, which is to say, a strong, relatively quick signal, but you can't detect it reliably in a contained environment, then you're wrong about the cause of your headaches, which, as I said, is not even remotely a shocking result. Headaches do not come with labels attached telling you what caused them, unfortunately.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    >You say that like it's some sort of brilliant revelation, but that they are reacting to some other stressor and not actually to Wifi is the point. The "and not actually" clause used above is unscientific and not causally connected. That's precisely my point. Whether or not they're reacting to other stressors doesn't tell you whether or not they're "actually" reacting to WiFi. It only confuses the matter. A proper experimental design would disable the lights and just have the RF signal be on/off, then you can cleanly measure the effect. With the lights, your measurement variable is invariably distorted by overlaying a known (placebo) signal. (saying the placebo effect is non-zero and measurable isn't a "brilliant revelation" either, so you'll probably poo-poo me again based on a claim I never made, but c'est la vie :-P ) The presence of the lights is completely unnecessary. We already know people will react to placebos. It doesn't tell us anything scientific, it only serves to confuse the participants and reduce the number of useful trials measuring the actual variable. Adding lights has negative scientific value. Real science is about eliminating confounding variables (see Young's rat maze experiments[1]), not throwing in extra ones solely so you can later spin a better "gocha" narrative in the public press. -_- Perhaps the experimental design in the original paper was much better than this game-of-telephone retelling suggests, but lacking a citation (or even an authorship hint) it's hard to really know. [1] https://gwern.net/maze https://gwern.net/maze

by jerf 2y ago

LorenPechtel 2y ago

And that sort of test should be done. Just be careful about isolation! (Remember the EM-drive, physics said it shouldn't work but tests showed a small effect with widely varying results. The electric current of the power supply, flowing through a wire in a magnetic field. There's also the contraptions that will rise if sufficient voltage is applied. It works--in atmosphere.) And remember what I said about ultrasonic sounds from power supplies? Someone who doesn't understand how to test and was sensitive to one device might believe they're sensitive to all.

jerf 2y ago
"physics said it shouldn't work but tests showed a small effect with widely varying results" A valid point, and why I phrased it as I did. If you claim that Wifi gives you a headache in, say, 5 minutes, then that's a strong signal that can be tested for. If it fails, then there's a lot of statistical power there. If you claimed that being in a Wifi field for a few days gave you a headache, then my answer is... actually that you're very unlikely to be correct because carefully testing such a problem requires individual trials that take weeks apiece, which you have almost certainly not done. I know from experience; I've done some of my own personal health optimization that takes similar time frames. Some of my results have required years to determine because of the insensitivity of the testing and how long a single trial takes to get significance, and I still wouldn't be my life I've got all the details correct.

schiffern 2y ago

>If... your headache flares up precisely when the wifi router's lights blinks, but not when it is actually on... then that's pretty conclusive... ...of nothing, because that's also how the body will react to known stressors. A recovering alcoholic can feel sick at the mere smell of alcohol (simultaneous stimuli), but that's not "pretty conclusive" evidence that drinking alcohol has no deleterious effects. That "experiment" is only evidence of one thing: that you can trick people using Psych 101 combined with bad experimental design. If you wanted to actually prove or disprove the effect, a properly designed experiment would omit the trickery (or at least run a matrix experiment with a trickery/no-trickery variable).

jerf 2y ago
"...of nothing, because that's also how the body will react to known stressors." You say that like it's some sort of brilliant revelation, but that they are reacting to some other stressor and not actually to Wifi is the point. Since the question under study is not "do people react to perceptions" but "does this person actually react to Wifi signals, specifically Wifi signals and not anything else", it is quite to the point. If Wifi gives you a headache immediately, which is to say, a strong, relatively quick signal, but you can't detect it reliably in a contained environment, then you're wrong about the cause of your headaches, which, as I said, is not even remotely a shocking result. Headaches do not come with labels attached telling you what caused them, unfortunately.
- schiffern 2y ago
  >You say that like it's some sort of brilliant revelation, but that they are reacting to some other stressor and not actually to Wifi is the point. The "and not actually" clause used above is unscientific and not causally connected. That's precisely my point. Whether or not they're reacting to other stressors doesn't tell you whether or not they're "actually" reacting to WiFi. It only confuses the matter. A proper experimental design would disable the lights and just have the RF signal be on/off, then you can cleanly measure the effect. With the lights, your measurement variable is invariably distorted by overlaying a known (placebo) signal. (saying the placebo effect is non-zero and measurable isn't a "brilliant revelation" either, so you'll probably poo-poo me again based on a claim I never made, but c'est la vie :-P ) The presence of the lights is completely unnecessary. We already know people will react to placebos. It doesn't tell us anything scientific, it only serves to confuse the participants and reduce the number of useful trials measuring the actual variable. Adding lights has negative scientific value. Real science is about eliminating confounding variables (see Young's rat maze experiments[1]), not throwing in extra ones solely so you can later spin a better "gocha" narrative in the public press. -_- Perhaps the experimental design in the original paper was much better than this game-of-telephone retelling suggests, but lacking a citation (or even an authorship hint) it's hard to really know. [1] https://gwern.net/maze https://gwern.net/maze