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Comment by ahh | Hacker News Reader

If you discovered a mechanism by which it was possible for a cell phone to cause cancer, you'd win a Nobel Prize in physics.

Not "you discovered that they did, in fact, cause cancer"; just discovering a way that it is physically possible for them to do so.

This dates back to Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect: it's easy to show (and the only thing consistent with all of 20th century physics!) that light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Any radio signal from a cell phone isn't. End of discussion.

Unless you are being actually cooked by a microwave, your cell phone does not and cannot cause cancer.

"Radiation" is a scary word for non experts, but the California Health Department should know better.

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>End of discussion.

Science is not a static. Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept that it may be wrong is as harmful to our advancement as those who refused to acknowledge that the earth isn't flat (they also used their limited understanding to justify their position).

To reuse your opening statement, you'd also win a Nobel Prize if you could conclusively prove that "your cell phone cannot cause cancer" and "any radio signal from a cell phone [doesn't]."

> Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept that it may be wrong is as harmful

You are missing the primary thrust of the argument. They are saying: "This goes against known science -- proving otherwise would be a massive scientific discovery which would require reconceptualizing a century of work. This is highly unlikely".

Assuming the commenter is operating with robust scientific understanding [1], then there isn't any dogmatic belief here.

[1] I haven't researched this cellphone cancer thing personally so I can't strongly argue that point one way or another. However, my cursory understanding is that there isn't strong evidence for it.

I looked up „Dogma“: Prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group.

Seems to be exactly what a lot of folks here are trying to do - „non-ionizing radiation cannot cause cancer, period.“

It's called "strong opinions weakly held".

There are good scientific reasons to think cellphones don't cause cancer. However, if enough compelling evidence was found otherwise, then it would be important to update our understanding accordingly.

The wording “X causes Y” is slippery. Saying “X increases the probability of Y”, is another thing. Thinking about smoke, with “smoke causes cancer” I expect every smoker to have cancer. It isn't so. If the effect of X on the probability that Y occurs is too much small, maybe it's just that we haven't enough statistical data (yet) to see it. Then, even if the effect could be statistically seen, telco companies could always say that it's safer than driving a car… Or a new business for body-cellphones shields could be made… Or, more likely, some people will pay more attention at to where they put their cellphones.

I was under the impression that low frequency waves (all the studies being on frequencies lower than those used by cell phones, so I still haven't been concerned, but maybe I should be) showed that they could vibrate DNA and chance how it is folded, adjusting its epigenetic profile. Why do you assume that the only way to cause cancer is "molecular damage"?

Biomolecules are remarkably fast (picosecond timescales) at dissipating excess heat into the solvent, like heat from an excited vibrational mode. In order to cause serious damage through unfolding, I think, you would need much higher intensities than a few milliwatts from a cellphone. Serious local heating requires visible, UV light and above. Sunlight, however, does massive damage to all parts of your skin, including base pair changes in your DNA beyond epigenetics but your body has repair mechanisms, which recover changes and/or destroy damaged cells. Proof of cellphone induced damage would be remarkable.

That only accounts for ionization which is the most common way of damaging cell tissue and most importantly DNA through the breaking down of molecular bonds.

However other effects can also cause biological processes to differ or fail for example heat e.g. boiling an egg.

Now I’m not saying that the radiation form a cellphone can cook you but we don’t have a clear understanding of how non-ionizing radiation affects all biological processes such as protein folding but we know that it does:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007673/#!po=2....

https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/119421

The fact that nonionizing radiation can affect biological processes has been well documented and is being studied.

Again this doesn’t mean that cellphones cause cancer or any other harm but you really don’t need new physics for them do so.

Photobiomodulation is known to have a beneficial effect on cells, but excess infrared light can have adverse effects. This is widely known, and it‘s the reason infrared therapy devices don’t operate at 1kWh, but rather 2-4 orders of magnitude lower. Exciting electrons is enough to stimulate or stifle cytochrome-c-oxidase.. and there are other similar processes in the body that are simply not well researched. And this is no BS research but a field with 1k+ papers, many of them well cited. Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation. I don’t see how people like you can still be so sure of that „no adverse effects“ claim. If there are beneficial effects, there must also be detrimental effects at some point.

If you are interested, look at Prof Hamblin‘s work.

> light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.)

Then we can presume you wouldn't mind being microwaved? Or simply heated to 6000 Kelvin? Both would be low frequency options.

Then we can presume you are afraid of ambient temperature increases of 1 degree? They likely have far more effect on the human body than a cell phone.

Of course not. I've written nothing to justify such an assumption.

I just don't subscribe to the preposterous belief that only extremely short wavelengths matter.

I wonder if the studies that do find weak correlations (but are rarely replicated) also ask the participants about air travel, where one is exposed to ionizing radiation (both from the higher altitudes and backstar x-ray, etc..) I.e., frequent air-travelers could be more frequent cell phone users.

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