throwawayrf

> a reason to give up

I don't think Sabine is telling us to "give up". Let me give an example. Suppose there is an experiment that is solvable by building a super collider whose diameter is the diameter of the moon. Should we be rushing to fund it now? Or should we wait for lunar construction techniques to bring the costs down first?

Even a lot of physics myths around doing the hard thing to seed other tech is flat out wrong. There's an often claim that the ssc tech resulted in MRI superconducting magnets; but that tech was actually descended from NMR research done by petrochem (and if you can believe it, dairy) industries that precedes the SSC by 1.5 to 2 decades.

You'd also have to put the experimental group there, too.

Before you reach for conclusions you should at least set up a double blind experiment. Set up 8 experiments 4 on and 4 off, have a friend either plug it in (or not) while you're in the other room and see if you can feel it when you go into the room.

> but there’s no evidence Wi-Fi, cellphones or anything else radio related is hurting people

It seems like an attempt to do an epidemiological study would be highly compromised by everyday use washing out the exposure levels in the control group.

Or even a controlled double blind study. How would you even set up a double blinded experiment "do cellphones cause cancer" today?

It's not for this particular study, but here is a possible mechanism for RF harm that I've been wondering about for a long time, and it drives me up the wall that people think I'm crazy for mentioning it. I'm also tired of the "it's not dangerous unless it's ionizing" dogma.

1) we know DNA is an electrical conductor. This is work by Jackie Barton, et. al, Caltech, she's been talking about it on the talks circuit for about 10 years but the papers are now coming out.

2) it seems like DNA error correcting enzymes use electrical potentials and current (or rather lack of current due to mutations causing geometric disruptions in DNA and "opening the circuit") to reduce the search space and make mutation repair more efficient.

3) high frequency RF can induce current in DNA.

4) it's important to note that this mechanism (RF can jam error correction) does not itself cause mutations so standard tests like the Ames test, blasting mice with RF, or related, will miss the mechanism, especially in well-controlled lab environments. An experiment would need to be set up to directly test error repair. Yeast might be a good model species since there is a comprehensive knockout library so you could see if the relative repair rate is unaffected in repair-deficuent strains.

Anyways. It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. I'm not a scientist anymore, so I don't really have access to what I need to do this.