Left-sided Cancer: Blame your bed and TV? | Hacker News Reader

Left-sided Cancer: Blame your bed and TV?

scientificamerican.com

18 pointsConfusion13 comments

As was mentioned by several of the commenters in the article the researcher (named Olle not Ollie) received the Swedish Sceptic Societys "Misleader of the year" prize in 2004.

Allow me to translate the last two paragraphs of their motivation for the prize, for you:

The Swedish Sceptic Society has noted that Olle Johansson frequently makes claims outside of his area of research. Electromagnetic fields are without a doubt outside of his area of knowledge. As an example when Johannson speaks about microwaves it's implied that these are comparable to X-rays and gamma radiation, despite the fact that it's two completely different physical phenomenon. The important parameters when discussing these phenomenons is frequeny and intensity. If these aren't specified then the discussion about dangers is meaningless. Even Olle Johanssons claims about ruptures in DNA-strings shows a lack of knowledge. As an example Johansson recently gave (Stockholms Fria Tidning 2004-12-24) an understatement on the natural occurance of such breaches with a factor of 100 000. Someone who wants to be taken seriously should at least be using the right scale for their numbers.

Lastly it's noted that Olle Johansson has claimed a long line of sicknesses, like cancer, blood preasure problems, asthma, allergies and insomnia, could be caused by electromagnetic fields. He claims that you can get skin cancer from tv- and radioemissions. Especially noted Johansson was a few years back when he claimed that brain damage and especially mad cow disease could be caused by mobile phones. (Aftonbladet 2001-03-12).

(From the Swedish Sceptics Society: http://www.vof.se/folkvett/20051obestyrkt-om-farorna-med-ele...)

Hes been making claims in this area of research since the 1970's according to his own bio page at Karolinska Institutet. The cynic in me is guessing the university unofficially keep him employed as a money making machine, by getting all of those electromagnetic scare grants, especially during the 90s mobile scare.

Thus, as we sleep on our coil-spring mattresses, we are in effect sleeping on an antenna that amplifies the intensity of the broadcast FM/TV radiation.

How, precisely, does this work? The perpetual-motion-machine club would love to know. If it's just referring to focusing... I'm still curious as to how. And I'm still doubtful that this amount of energy has even remotely as much impact in breast cancer as the increased complexity of your left chest compared to your right.

And comparing nation A's cancer rate to nation B's and claiming it's strongly related to one difference is, I suspect, nuttery, unless an entire nation decides to camp on Chernobyl annually. How about diet? Different building materials? Different chemicals in the ground-water? Or the giant, radioactive lizards doing daily battle with the monster-of-the-day? (how DO they rebuild so quickly?!)

Still, if this is the case, wouldn't grounding your mattress solve the problem? Why not do that and see if it's different? All those metal springs are attached together by wires anyway.

Seems incredibly speculative. As far as I know there's no convincing evidence that radio-frequency waves can be linked to cancer, let alone that radio waves plus bedsprings can be linked to cancer.

And yet I'm sure there'll be thousands of people going to sleep tonight, spooked that their beds are about to give them cancer.

Well, it's possible that the coils in a spring mattress -- being conductive and of a regular height and at regular intervals -- could have some kind of RF field effect. It would still be miniscule, but it could cause a phase alignment maybe or something equally strange.

But you're right, this is nothing but speculation. I would expect that a reasonable field strength meter would be all that's required to test the theory out, so I wonder why it wasn't tested before publication?

Also, one of the two researchers is Ollie Johansson, who earned Swedish Skeptics Society's illustrious "Misleader of the Year" award: http://www.vof.se/visa-forvillare2004eng

He also formulated a theory that lung cancer wasn't due strictly to smoking, but also that it had something to do with the increase of radio waves starting in the 50s.

In this case I think it would be appropriate for amateurs to view his work in a skeptical light.

EDIT: I couldn't remember the term for them, but basically the mattress might be able to form a very crude kind of passive repeater. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_repeater ...but, again, this ought to be tested rather than speculated.

The passive repeater is for getting around things which don't allow line-of-sight, and passive because it's just routing a signal without any amplification. The image on the article receives a signal, and sends it via coax to a transmitter. Other forms mention a waveguide, used to connect two dishes. And the output is weaker than the input (necessarily), which seems to imply background noise would be stronger than the signal from your bed. Or at the very least, the bed would provide a slight shielding effect due to the cost of conducting the signal.

ie, a passive repeater looks like this:

                ______(dishes)______
                |                  |
                V                  V 
  
                \__________________/
             )  /|  (waveguide)   |\  )     signals _ (weaker)
          )      |________________|      )           \
       )       /                    \       )        |
    )      /                            \      )     |
        /            (Ground)              \      )  V
      /                                      \       )
    /                                          \

Maybe you're thinking of some kind of electromagnetic lens?

(had fun making the image, part of the reason for this comment :)

This is really stupid.

We get lots more exposure to sun on the left-hand side because of driving.

Think "truckers tan".

This explains the anomaly with the japanese, who sit on the right-hand side of their car.

In which case, why do the Japanese get it equally on both sides rather than with a right-side preference? Also should check vs other right-hand-drive car countries.

I'm unconvinced, though, because we're talking breast cancer rather than skin cancer. Few women drive around with their breasts exposed.

I bet Japanese drive a lot fewer miles per capita. Small islands. Lots of public transpo.

Then compare to Australia.

the author of the article was voted misleader of the year in 2004, so go figure...

http://www.vof.se/visa-forvillare2004eng

Is it inevitable that every major science publication written for non-scientists out there is going to give in to sensationalism? I wouldn't mind reading about this on someone's personal blog but Scientific American? Really? Looking forward to their hard hitting expose on Big Foot next month.

Shouldn't this effect of amplification of RF waves be directly measurable? Why write a speculative article about it without doing any tests?

Well, this is the dumbest thing I've read today, but it's still early. I guess SciAm is trying to reclaim some of the lucrative New Scientist demographic.

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