As a service to readers, I'd love to see Engadget include a quick statement about the funding sources for each of these cellphones-are/aren't-dangerous studies. I just remember the tobacco industry's funding of studies for decades that never managed to find any link between smoking and ill health effects of any kind, while every study not funded by them found the opposite. Thousands of them. This phony debate went on for decades as the industry shielded itself (because what average person investigates funding sources behind research studies that result in reports that result in articles that result in headlines that they scan for 5 seconds? They just read it, hear "science" and believe it.).
I'd like to think that all research is independent and objective, but when industry dollars enter the mix, I can't feel entirely confident trusting the scientific results. And it's easy to just read quick blurbs like these and assume that they wouldn't be reported if they weren't true. I mean, it's science, right?!
Looking into this particular case, it appears fine. I found no specific listing of the funding sources beyond this, "The Programme received approximately £8.8 million of funding from a variety of government and industry sources." But the rest of the details of the project, e.g., the academics that oversaw it, the report that prompted it, the independent experts group that wrote the report, the radiological health protection agency that convened the experts group, and the UK health ministry that requested that agency to convene that group and which oversees the money all sound solid. Even if cellphone industry money went into it, there appears to be more than enough government and academic scrutiny and oversight, both financial and scientific, to eliminate any possible influence the industry might theoretically have liked to inject (not that they necessarily did).
The current consensus appears to be that none of the major studies that have looked at this issue have found any link, except for two whose methods are at least questioned by the scientific community. So hooray. But do keep your eye on who has funded these studies and who funds future ones. Help us out if you can, Engadget.
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As a service to readers, I'd love to see Engadget include a quick statement about the funding sources for each of these cellphones-are/aren't-dangerous studies. I just remember the tobacco industry's funding of studies for decades that never managed to find any link between smoking and ill health effects of any kind, while every study not funded by them found the opposite. Thousands of them. This phony debate went on for decades as the industry shielded itself (because what average person investigates funding sources behind research studies that result in reports that result in articles that result in headlines that they scan for 5 seconds? They just read it, hear "science" and believe it.).
I'd like to think that all research is independent and objective, but when industry dollars enter the mix, I can't feel entirely confident trusting the scientific results. And it's easy to just read quick blurbs like these and assume that they wouldn't be reported if they weren't true. I mean, it's science, right?!
Looking into this particular case, it appears fine. I found no specific listing of the funding sources beyond this, "The Programme received approximately £8.8 million of funding from a variety of government and industry sources." But the rest of the details of the project, e.g., the academics that oversaw it, the report that prompted it, the independent experts group that wrote the report, the radiological health protection agency that convened the experts group, and the UK health ministry that requested that agency to convene that group and which oversees the money all sound solid. Even if cellphone industry money went into it, there appears to be more than enough government and academic scrutiny and oversight, both financial and scientific, to eliminate any possible influence the industry might theoretically have liked to inject (not that they necessarily did).
The current consensus appears to be that none of the major studies that have looked at this issue have found any link, except for two whose methods are at least questioned by the scientific community. So hooray. But do keep your eye on who has funded these studies and who funds future ones. Help us out if you can, Engadget.