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<!-- Hello and welcome to discuss these guys to the universe. Today is wednesday, april fourth, twenty eighteen and this is your host, stephen avella. Joining this week are bob novella,
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Oh! My gosh, i'm telling you you guys should go it's really great it's and as i mentioned before, i think i started to mention i was there during science season which is a couple weeks in the wet season kind of coming into dry season when the when rainforest expeditions really welcomes and encourages people who are super interested in participating in citizen science to come and they've all these great programs so they're wired amazon project so you can participate in helping tio identify healthy castagna trees which are brazil nut trees which are really really important to the local economy you can help try and look for jaguars on camera traps. you can go out to light traps at night and collect tiger moths to try to identify new species and i think since they've been doing it in the past couple of years they've already identified eleven new species and they often name them for the visitors to the lodge which is super cool. yeah it's just a lot of fun oh and by the way monkeys. so incredible monkeys with incredible calls second time i've ever seen primates in the wild other than humans so it was like really exciting experience for me for sure -->
Oh! My gosh, i'm telling you you guys should go it's really great it's and as i mentioned before, i think i started to mention i was there during science season which is a couple weeks in the wet season kind of coming into dry season when the when rainforest expeditions really welcomes and encourages people who are super interested in participating in citizen science to come and they've all these great programs so they're wired amazon project so you can participate in helping tio identify healthy castagna trees which are brazil nut trees which are really really important to the local economy you can help try and look for jaguars on camera traps. you can go out to light traps at night and collect tiger moths to try to identify new species and i think since they've been doing it in the past couple of years they've already identified eleven new species and they often name them for the visitors to the lodge which is super cool. yeah it's just a lot of fun oh and by the way monkeys. so incredible monkeys with incredible calls second time i've ever seen primates in the wild other than humans so it was like really exciting experience for me for sure -->


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== What's the Word <small>(7:22)</small> ==
== What's the Word <small>(7:22)</small> ==
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== News Items ==
== News Items ==
=== Cell Phones and Cancer <small>(13:43)</small>===
=== Cell Phones and Cancer <small>(13:43)</small>===
* [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-nation-indulges-in-some-particularly-egregious-fear-mongering-about-cell-phones-and-cancer/ Science-Based Medicine: The Nation indulges in fear mongering about cell phones and cancer]
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|article_title = The Nation indulges in fear mongering about cell phones and cancer
|publication = sbm
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<!-- Yeah, let's. Go on to some news items. So mohr fearmongering about cell phones and cancer. No she's. Just one of the things i ever going to be rid of there's. An article recently in the in the nation, which is a left wing political paper, but the article was basically fearmongering. About cell phone and the risk of developing cancer, i thought actually, was. They did a very dated, a terrible job. They tried to say, oh, we're not saying that cell phones cause cancer will let the scientists decide that we're just saying that the telecom industry is hiding evidence that cell phones cause cancer. It was it was really it was really a bad piece of work. But it's, a lot of this is coming. From a recent study that was published that was in rats. This is from this is the national toxicology toxicology program study. They actually released their findings preliminary findings of a couple of years ago because they said all of these here we have some preliminary analysis. There's a lot of public inch this we want to get the results out there before, you know, would take a couple more years to get all the full data analysis out there and there. And they purported to show that there was a connection between exposure to the kind of radiation that's used in cell phones and cancer risk on then more recently, we've got the full data. There's still some, you know, find these in there that you can cherry pick if you want to make an argument that there is some some risk. But the data is basically negative. So let's, go let's delve into that. This is, you know, given a lot. This study, the tp the national toxicology program study has given a lot of fuel to the cell phone cancer alarmists on dh so it's important to to evaluate it. So, first of all this the study in rats and mice, they basically had four groups of test animals. Male rats, female, right that smell, mice, female mice. So they were exposed to radio frequency radiation for nine hours a day, every day for two years, starting in utero. And then they looked at multiple different types of potential cancer, essentially anywhere in the body. In these four groups, you know, the male female rats, male female rights might. Do you think they found pre cancer is something, maybe the so they must have found something if everybody's reporting. Yeah, yeah, they found some. They found something because because they were looking at so many different potential correlations right as we've discussed before every time you do a comparison in the study is another throw of the statistical dice right it's another opportunity to find a correlation especially for using point o five p value as the threshold for statistical significance that's not that much so if you do the calculations or was actually like an eighty percent chance that something was going to be significant in this study just based upon all of the different comparisons that they made so it's not surprising that they found some correlations if you correct the statistics for the fact that made multiple comparisons they were not statistically significant further you have to look at the pattern right especially you doing a toxicology study you're trying to say is there any hazard from this exposure ? Is there any correlation there you you'd like to see is a consistent dose response effect that lends a lot of credibility to it ? The absence of a of a good dose response type of pattern makes it seem like the results or random noise in this study they found a positive correlation for malignant gliomas that's a type of brain cancer but on lee in the male rats not on the female rats not in the male or female mice they also found a positive correlation for cardiac schwann omagh's cardiac sonoma's schwan don't want sells ? Yeah, the glial cells in the brain. Okay again on lian male rats not in any of the other three groups but also if you compared thieves the highest exposure to the lowest exposure to the no exposure groups it was not statistically significant it only becomes statistically significant if you do this certain kind of analysis where you're look at all the different exposure levels and see if there is a trend right they look at the six three one point five zero and so if you compared it there was three cases of cardiac sonoma in the group exposed to six watts per kilogram none in the other three groups and so you do two different kinds of statistical analysis on that one is positive one is negative right and just the straight up comparison of this six what for killed gang group zero watt per kilogram group was not statistically significant so all of that is consistent with random noise right you got to see that how it's like always in one sex but not the other and why the heart versus something else you know on lee if you do certain kinds of statistical analyses but not others there's no dose response curve you're talking about just a few rats you know that could one random you know rat getting a tumor is really all it would take in order to create results like this this totally has the look of of random noise. There is no clear signal in this data and therefore horrendous health effects in humans yeah so if anything if anything this study is pretty reassuring evidence that the radiation from cell phones it does not is not a hazard for cancer because they had these rats and mice exposed for two years from uterus hours at six nine hours a day the whole body whole body exposure nine hours a full time job yeah so obviously were exposed to it in their in their cage so under these extreme conditions you get get random noise yeah there's no clear signal of any kind of cancer but of course if your narrative is that cell phones cause cancer you could pull out the cherry pick the the apparent you know, significant effects without putting into the context of doing an actual a thorough statistical analysis by accounting for multiple comparisons right ? So it's fake it's just not a really not really significant it just only significant if you ignore the full evaluation right here if you cherry pick so did they not correct for the number of contrast they were doing in that know how did this get past reviewers ? Yeah exactly. So all right i think the reason is is that there's a difference between hazard and risk ? This is actually a good one word type that's like subject and target i get it so hazard and that's like a good example of this is i got that bob if you if you have a poison in your under your sink and you're in your kitchen that that poison is a hazard, but it's only a risk if you drink it. There's no risk to you just from it being there it's a hazard because it's a potential toe have a risk. But there is no anyway, so toxicologists like to identify potential hazards. And so they do studies in such a way to say, is there any possibility here that of a biological effect ? They're not asking the question ? Is there a biologic of low effect or risk of one in real life exposure situations ? That's a different question. So this study is really just asking about hazard, not risk they're not asking what's the risk of using a cell phone, they're asking, is there any hazard to cell phone radiation ? And then even in that farm or limited sense, the answer appears to be no it's an overall negative study, so even for hazard, which in and of itself i mean there's lots of things that are hazardous, like sharks or hazardous but there's no, but i'm not zero risk for sharks if you go swimming in a tank with a shark that's risky, so it makes sense oh, sure so but this hasn't stopped people from fearmongering about cell phones and cancer now the problem with the nation article is that it really is taking on a particular narrative which you know i hate narratives because it's basically you know it is a story that then is put above the facts logic and evidence and i've already seeing this narrative pere it'd in the comments on our facebook page when published like to our science based medicine article on those people are just parroting the narrative as if it's like an original thought to them always embarrassing so the narrative is that big telecom is doing the same thing that big tobacco did with the risk of tobacco of smoking tobacco and that the fossil fuel industry did in terms of global warming and that they're trying to sow doubt and confusion about the risks of cell phone use and they also said plus they're about to do this big five g rollout with even a mohr you know more radiation a massive radiation increase and they're trying to hide the risks from the public etcetera etcetera and this is the kind of evidence that they're cherry picking in order to make that narrative so again i never assumed that any industry or any company is benign i think we have to keep an eye on them absolutely they're in the business of making money they can or cannot choose to be good citizens and we never give them an assumption that they are right so but there's no reason to think that the telecom industry is claim is hiding actual data showing that there's any risk to cell phone use and we have lots of independent evidence showing us that there isn't there very reassuring you know, just the mere fact that there hasn't been any increase in brain tumors over the last thirty years when cell phone use has increased dramatically and of course the more time that goes by the more reassuring that data becomes because you know initially you could say well there's a lag was a five year like a ten year like a twenty year like ok well it's been twenty years six come ufo photos from cell phones yeah where are they ? I know it's hard to make the negative statement but the longer you go with the lack of any signal lack of any affect, the more reassuring it gets you could never say the risk is zero but you could say the risk is so loan at this point that i wouldn't worry about it right ? I mean the point is with the amount of people that use cell phones on a daily basis globally it's over a billion it's got to be over, you know, a seventh of the population if if not dramatically more than that we would absolutely no i think at this point if there was something in developed countries is like ninety percent of adults. So and even in developing countries it's a really high percentage now, like it's, cheaper and easier to get a cell phone than it is to have clean water in many area to compare it to something like tobacco which there's so much evidence of the different answers. Agents it's such a contrast, but they use it. That's the boogie man, they have to invoke it in order to give it legitimacy. Nothing else. So anyway, don't worry about it, you know, here oh, there is the study which shows, you know that cell phones are associated with cancer. It's not true is actually a very reassuring study. You know, this rat study things like they did everything they could to give these rats, you know, cancer from the silver radiation, and they got nothing. They got basically a negative study with just the used e absolutely statistically expected noise. Random crap that you would expect from this kind of study. Get more radiation, you get a bunch of bananas and they would be wait there's so many other sources of radio frequency. Electromagnetic, you know, effects in our environment, cell phones were actually quite negligible. Onda and i have to point out that it's, non ionizing radiation, right, it doesn't penetrate the skin thing s o the plausibility of non ionized radiation causing cancer by any mechanism you know you can't say that it zero just to be you you know a conservative scientist but it's pretty damn freakin low you know ionizing radiation yes, because it knocks causing mutations it could break bonds and molecules like the no or turn you into a super hero or villain oh, nice qualifier there, bob super behaving or villain but you know this is obvious something that will be continued to be followed to be studied i mean, bob, if your cell phone made you into a superhero, what would your lame power said ? Be right the cell phone reception download app you could like you could text like instantaneous text into somebody's mind what candy crush power fast recharge pretty lame above all lame all your teeth will turn blue  -->
<!-- Yeah, let's. Go on to some news items. So mohr fearmongering about cell phones and cancer. No she's. Just one of the things i ever going to be rid of there's. An article recently in the in the nation, which is a left wing political paper, but the article was basically fearmongering. About cell phone and the risk of developing cancer, i thought actually, was. They did a very dated, a terrible job. They tried to say, oh, we're not saying that cell phones cause cancer will let the scientists decide that we're just saying that the telecom industry is hiding evidence that cell phones cause cancer. It was it was really it was really a bad piece of work. But it's, a lot of this is coming. From a recent study that was published that was in rats. This is from this is the national toxicology toxicology program study. They actually released their findings preliminary findings of a couple of years ago because they said all of these here we have some preliminary analysis. There's a lot of public inch this we want to get the results out there before, you know, would take a couple more years to get all the full data analysis out there and there. And they purported to show that there was a connection between exposure to the kind of radiation that's used in cell phones and cancer risk on then more recently, we've got the full data. There's still some, you know, find these in there that you can cherry pick if you want to make an argument that there is some some risk. But the data is basically negative. So let's, go let's delve into that. This is, you know, given a lot. This study, the tp the national toxicology program study has given a lot of fuel to the cell phone cancer alarmists on dh so it's important to to evaluate it. So, first of all this the study in rats and mice, they basically had four groups of test animals. Male rats, female, right that smell, mice, female mice. So they were exposed to radio frequency radiation for nine hours a day, every day for two years, starting in utero. And then they looked at multiple different types of potential cancer, essentially anywhere in the body. In these four groups, you know, the male female rats, male female rights might. Do you think they found pre cancer is something, maybe the so they must have found something if everybody's reporting. Yeah, yeah, they found some. They found something because because they were looking at so many different potential correlations right as we've discussed before every time you do a comparison in the study is another throw of the statistical dice right it's another opportunity to find a correlation especially for using point o five p value as the threshold for statistical significance that's not that much so if you do the calculations or was actually like an eighty percent chance that something was going to be significant in this study just based upon all of the different comparisons that they made so it's not surprising that they found some correlations if you correct the statistics for the fact that made multiple comparisons they were not statistically significant further you have to look at the pattern right especially you doing a toxicology study you're trying to say is there any hazard from this exposure ? Is there any correlation there you you'd like to see is a consistent dose response effect that lends a lot of credibility to it ? The absence of a of a good dose response type of pattern makes it seem like the results or random noise in this study they found a positive correlation for malignant gliomas that's a type of brain cancer but on lee in the male rats not on the female rats not in the male or female mice they also found a positive correlation for cardiac schwann omagh's cardiac sonoma's schwan don't want sells ? Yeah, the glial cells in the brain. Okay again on lian male rats not in any of the other three groups but also if you compared thieves the highest exposure to the lowest exposure to the no exposure groups it was not statistically significant it only becomes statistically significant if you do this certain kind of analysis where you're look at all the different exposure levels and see if there is a trend right they look at the six three one point five zero and so if you compared it there was three cases of cardiac sonoma in the group exposed to six watts per kilogram none in the other three groups and so you do two different kinds of statistical analysis on that one is positive one is negative right and just the straight up comparison of this six what for killed gang group zero watt per kilogram group was not statistically significant so all of that is consistent with random noise right you got to see that how it's like always in one sex but not the other and why the heart versus something else you know on lee if you do certain kinds of statistical analyses but not others there's no dose response curve you're talking about just a few rats you know that could one random you know rat getting a tumor is really all it would take in order to create results like this this totally has the look of of random noise. There is no clear signal in this data and therefore horrendous health effects in humans yeah so if anything if anything this study is pretty reassuring evidence that the radiation from cell phones it does not is not a hazard for cancer because they had these rats and mice exposed for two years from uterus hours at six nine hours a day the whole body whole body exposure nine hours a full time job yeah so obviously were exposed to it in their in their cage so under these extreme conditions you get get random noise yeah there's no clear signal of any kind of cancer but of course if your narrative is that cell phones cause cancer you could pull out the cherry pick the the apparent you know, significant effects without putting into the context of doing an actual a thorough statistical analysis by accounting for multiple comparisons right ? So it's fake it's just not a really not really significant it just only significant if you ignore the full evaluation right here if you cherry pick so did they not correct for the number of contrast they were doing in that know how did this get past reviewers ? Yeah exactly. So all right i think the reason is is that there's a difference between hazard and risk ? This is actually a good one word type that's like subject and target i get it so hazard and that's like a good example of this is i got that bob if you if you have a poison in your under your sink and you're in your kitchen that that poison is a hazard, but it's only a risk if you drink it. There's no risk to you just from it being there it's a hazard because it's a potential toe have a risk. But there is no anyway, so toxicologists like to identify potential hazards. And so they do studies in such a way to say, is there any possibility here that of a biological effect ? They're not asking the question ? Is there a biologic of low effect or risk of one in real life exposure situations ? That's a different question. So this study is really just asking about hazard, not risk they're not asking what's the risk of using a cell phone, they're asking, is there any hazard to cell phone radiation ? And then even in that farm or limited sense, the answer appears to be no it's an overall negative study, so even for hazard, which in and of itself i mean there's lots of things that are hazardous, like sharks or hazardous but there's no, but i'm not zero risk for sharks if you go swimming in a tank with a shark that's risky, so it makes sense oh, sure so but this hasn't stopped people from fearmongering about cell phones and cancer now the problem with the nation article is that it really is taking on a particular narrative which you know i hate narratives because it's basically you know it is a story that then is put above the facts logic and evidence and i've already seeing this narrative pere it'd in the comments on our facebook page when published like to our science based medicine article on those people are just parroting the narrative as if it's like an original thought to them always embarrassing so the narrative is that big telecom is doing the same thing that big tobacco did with the risk of tobacco of smoking tobacco and that the fossil fuel industry did in terms of global warming and that they're trying to sow doubt and confusion about the risks of cell phone use and they also said plus they're about to do this big five g rollout with even a mohr you know more radiation a massive radiation increase and they're trying to hide the risks from the public etcetera etcetera and this is the kind of evidence that they're cherry picking in order to make that narrative so again i never assumed that any industry or any company is benign i think we have to keep an eye on them absolutely they're in the business of making money they can or cannot choose to be good citizens and we never give them an assumption that they are right so but there's no reason to think that the telecom industry is claim is hiding actual data showing that there's any risk to cell phone use and we have lots of independent evidence showing us that there isn't there very reassuring you know, just the mere fact that there hasn't been any increase in brain tumors over the last thirty years when cell phone use has increased dramatically and of course the more time that goes by the more reassuring that data becomes because you know initially you could say well there's a lag was a five year like a ten year like a twenty year like ok well it's been twenty years six come ufo photos from cell phones yeah where are they ? I know it's hard to make the negative statement but the longer you go with the lack of any signal lack of any affect, the more reassuring it gets you could never say the risk is zero but you could say the risk is so loan at this point that i wouldn't worry about it right ? I mean the point is with the amount of people that use cell phones on a daily basis globally it's over a billion it's got to be over, you know, a seventh of the population if if not dramatically more than that we would absolutely no i think at this point if there was something in developed countries is like ninety percent of adults. So and even in developing countries it's a really high percentage now, like it's, cheaper and easier to get a cell phone than it is to have clean water in many area to compare it to something like tobacco which there's so much evidence of the different answers. Agents it's such a contrast, but they use it. That's the boogie man, they have to invoke it in order to give it legitimacy. Nothing else. So anyway, don't worry about it, you know, here oh, there is the study which shows, you know that cell phones are associated with cancer. It's not true is actually a very reassuring study. You know, this rat study things like they did everything they could to give these rats, you know, cancer from the silver radiation, and they got nothing. They got basically a negative study with just the used e absolutely statistically expected noise. Random crap that you would expect from this kind of study. Get more radiation, you get a bunch of bananas and they would be wait there's so many other sources of radio frequency. Electromagnetic, you know, effects in our environment, cell phones were actually quite negligible. Onda and i have to point out that it's, non ionizing radiation, right, it doesn't penetrate the skin thing s o the plausibility of non ionized radiation causing cancer by any mechanism you know you can't say that it zero just to be you you know a conservative scientist but it's pretty damn freakin low you know ionizing radiation yes, because it knocks causing mutations it could break bonds and molecules like the no or turn you into a super hero or villain oh, nice qualifier there, bob super behaving or villain but you know this is obvious something that will be continued to be followed to be studied i mean, bob, if your cell phone made you into a superhero, what would your lame power said ? Be right the cell phone reception download app you could like you could text like instantaneous text into somebody's mind what candy crush power fast recharge pretty lame above all lame all your teeth will turn blue  -->
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<!-- in ninety seven days, nexus two thousand eighteen's happening guys july twelve to the fifteen can't wait. Eso general registration has opened we have everything all the info about the about the conference up online, i could see our complete list of speakers, you could see all the workshops, all the nighttime activity, this is going to be one hell of a year. We've got a lot of patriot on members coming in as well, which i'm really excited we're going to meet me in great i'm going to be setting that up with a lot of listeners, i think that's going to be a lot of fun, we have the stu private show and, ah, a couple of other things that we're trying to pull together, that we can't say right now, but if they happen, it would be really cool. So please do come to nexus two thousand eighteen, we will all be there and, you know if you aren't, then you won't know how cool it is to be there, right ? I mean it's. Pretty simple for me. J j i really like my workshop topic for this year, so for the workshop, i'm going to be talking about how to read a scientific paper finally way yes, we go all used after. That talk you will have some idea how to evaluate the quality and the actual findings of a sign to the paper and at this and also how to read a science news item about a scientific paper right ? So it's not just even if you don't find your way back to the original paper itself you're just reading journalists right around i will tell you how to two think about that how to evaluate and like how to really dig dig down so i think it's a good course skill set tohave all right, well, thank you all for joining me this week welcomes they've good to be joined to you and until next week, by the way next week is us to you episode number six six six oh boy, we've got to do something that's somewhat way we'll see we'll see well until next week. This is your skeptics guide to the universe  -->
<!-- in ninety seven days, nexus two thousand eighteen's happening guys july twelve to the fifteen can't wait. Eso general registration has opened we have everything all the info about the about the conference up online, i could see our complete list of speakers, you could see all the workshops, all the nighttime activity, this is going to be one hell of a year. We've got a lot of patriot on members coming in as well, which i'm really excited we're going to meet me in great i'm going to be setting that up with a lot of listeners, i think that's going to be a lot of fun, we have the stu private show and, ah, a couple of other things that we're trying to pull together, that we can't say right now, but if they happen, it would be really cool. So please do come to nexus two thousand eighteen, we will all be there and, you know if you aren't, then you won't know how cool it is to be there, right ? I mean it's. Pretty simple for me. J j i really like my workshop topic for this year, so for the workshop, i'm going to be talking about how to read a scientific paper finally way yes, we go all used after. That talk you will have some idea how to evaluate the quality and the actual findings of a sign to the paper and at this and also how to read a science news item about a scientific paper right ? So it's not just even if you don't find your way back to the original paper itself you're just reading journalists right around i will tell you how to two think about that how to evaluate and like how to really dig dig down so i think it's a good course skill set tohave all right, well, thank you all for joining me this week welcomes they've good to be joined to you and until next week, by the way next week is us to you episode number six six six oh boy, we've got to do something that's somewhat way we'll see we'll see well until next week. This is your skeptics guide to the universe  -->


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SGU Episode 665
April 7th 2018
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SGU 664                      SGU 666

Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella

B: Bob Novella

C: Cara Santa Maria

J: Jay Novella

E: Evan Bernstein

Guest

ML: Mark Lynas, British author

Quote of the Week

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Plato (The Republic)

Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.


What's the Word (7:22)


News Items

Cell Phones and Cancer (13:43)



Robot Bees on Mars (27:18)


Largest Dinosaurs (37:00)


Who's That Noisy? (44:31)


Questions and Emails

Question 1: Math Correction (50:16)

  • F of Y/F – 1 = Y/((1-.3)*Y) – 1 = 1/.7 – 1 = 42.9%.


Question 2: Interstitium (53:09)


Interview with Mark Lynas (1:01:57)


Science or Fiction (1:27:16)

(Science or Fiction music)

It's time for Science or Fiction

Item #1 The pirarucu is a large carnivorous fish that grows up to 3 meters long and has teeth on its tongue. Item #2 The Cyclosa spider is tiny, but it will build a large decoy spider replica in its web out of leaves, twigs, and dead insects. Item #3 Pink river dolphins get their pink color from the shrimp that is their primary food.


Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:39:24)

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. — Plato, The Republic


Announcements

Book Progress (1:39:53)

NECSS 2018 (1:43:49)

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

[top]                        

Today I Learned

  • Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference[2]
  • Fact/Description
  • Fact/Description

References

  1. ↑ Science-Based Medicine: The Nation indulges in fear mongering about cell phones and cancer
  2. ↑ [url_for_TIL publication: title]

Vocabulary

  1. ↑ Wiktionary: atavism
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