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Comment by sosilkj | Hacker News Reader

"fashionable moral panic"

Would you be able to share some scientific research that supports the idea that the proposed antennas are completely, without-a-doubt safe? (I assume that's what you're implying by your statment.)

Edit: ok, forget that I used the words 'completely' and 'without-a-doubt' which causes a knee-jerk reaction amongst the armchair epistomologists here. How about just evidence in general that suggests that they're safe?

edit edit: my apology if the phrase 'knee-jerk reaction amongst the armchair epistomologists' rubbed anyone the wrong way. just being snarky but perhaps wasn't helpful to the conversation.

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Where are the studies proving anything is completely without-a-doubt 100% safe?

Painting a wall a novel color is a new, unstudied EM radiation exposure.

I'm open to the possibility they're not safe if and only if the proper evidence is provided. As it stands, no peer reviewed evidence has being provided to show that there is a casual link between radio waves emitted by cellular equipment and cancer diagnosis.

Thanks. I have better understanding of where you're coming from now.

"Assume safety until shown otherwise" has not always been the best option in the past.

("Assume safety and viscously attack anyone who suggests otherwise" has some advantages, though.)

I'm not proposing our default position should be to assume safety until proven otherwise. I'm proposing that if one wishes to claim something is not safe which is counter to existing scientific literature then one needs to provide the proper evidence. I'm not willing to easily discard existing literature on the basis of what someone said.

For 100 years there was no peer reviewed journals that stayed that trans fats was bad. Yet it turned out they were really bad.

Simply because there is examples of things that we thought to be safe but were in-fact harmful does not award you the right to make bold claims without the proper evidence. That would be a very slippery slope. If you believe something to be harmful, go and prove it.

Because we were wrong in the past about some things, I'm going to make the claim without evidence that visible light kills. Everyone who has ever died of cancer was exposed to visible light for very long periods of time. Don't expose yourself!

guaranteed complete safety is not a goal; it;'s not economic. All the matters is that it is shown to be Safe Enough for the Value it Provides, and nobody has demonstrated it is not safe enough.

> Would you be able to share some scientific research that supports the idea that the proposed antennas are completely, without-a-doubt safe?

Can you link to a scientific study that proves anything is completely safe? Ironically more money has been spent proving electromagnetic radiation and vaccines are safe than most naturally occurring substances, because the public is paranoid about those things/it is a "sexy" area of research.

They've literally put animals into cages and exposed them to 1000%+ levels of typical EM exposure, and still not witnessed this supposed cancer link. But science cannot say anything is "completely safe" because that isn't how logical reasoning or the scientific method work. All we can say is that a mechanism of unsafety has yet to be discovered.

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