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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

I was with you until the bees thing. That's pseudoscience at best.

Is it? I wasn't aware of this so I did some googling and found this study:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x

This doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me, but I don't really have context here. Is this considered to be a poor study or a disreputable journal?

Edit: Apparently it's been cited 61 times since publication: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=270710047801738518

Edit 2: Okay, there's definitely skepticism: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cell-phones-kill-bees-study_n...

I'm not sure if I'd call this "pseudoscience" as much as "speculative and controversial."

Here's a study that looked at microwave absorption in insects at different frequencies (picture):

https://media.springernature.com/lw900/springer-static/image...

"All insects showed a general increase in absorbed RF power at and above 6 GHz, in comparison to the absorbed RF power below 6 GHz. Our simulations showed that a shift of 10% of the incident power density to frequencies above 6 GHz would lead to an increase in absorbed power between 3–370%."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3

It doesn't seem like pseudoscience to me either. In fact it looks to me like more real science needs be done on this subject, to figure out if there is a real danger or not.

prev. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537839

(I recall much longer discussion, but could not find)

That's a completely fair point. I'd read a little on it, nothing conclusive, and as md224 pointed out, there's been some back-and-forth, and the science isn't settled. I figured that including "possibly" in my OP covered my bases. I recognize that this might be seen as manipulative though. Could someone suggest an alternate phrasing?

Regardless of the veracity of the bee thing though, I think the salient point is that having lots of EM radiation in the environment will have non-obvious effect, so we should seek a rationale FOR the technology, rather than need a reason to reject it.

(thanks to adsfqwop and avip for providing context below.)

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