EM - Diseases. Is there a link?

[SF]

Numerous BBC and Daily Mail articles ( yeah, trustworthy sources 8-| ) keep bringing this up, stating that there might indeed be a link between cellphone/radio waves and disease (usually cancer).

My mother has informed me that at the latest Romanian Neurology Convention they stated that too (I've been trying to find the research that backed that up, but haven't made much progress so far).

I know the frequencies used in radio/cellphones can't break apart our DNA, but could there be other effects? (Physiological ones, not psychological - like addiction and social isolation).
Has anything been found on this issue?

 

[jim mcnamara]

Newspapers report on what some person said or 'reported' in a paper. They don't check the person's credentials necessarily. Since it is newsworthy it gets reported. Getting reported does not mean it is scientifically sound. In 2004 54% of newspaper articles on global warming were about the 'doubts' surrounding it. At that time, ~95% of all climate researchers expressed no doubts (this is another controversial study).

Here is the problem:
You cannot disprove a hypothesis because the only way to prove a negative hypothesis is to check every possible case. This is often physically and monetarily impossible. You can only prove another hypothesis.

For example,
"intelligent aliens from another planet have visited the planet Earth in the past."

This is a hypothesis. There is no evidence to support it. But people who favor UFO's argue that it has to be 'disproven', in order to be dismissed. There is no practical way to do that because after you check everything - at great expense - the supporters can say you didn't scour every inch of the ocean floor. It's a kind of logical fallacy. You simply do not have to disprove anything, you can only prove a hypothesis of this kind.

So, what happens with acid rain, global warming, thimerosol, cell phones, and every other controversial thing like this - people who support it point to 'studies' that prove the point, or ask the scientists to disprove the dissenting point of view.

Does newspaer reprting make the statement about EMF and cell phones true or false? Scientifically, right now, to the best of my knowledge, there is no proof. And of course disproof is out of the question.

My direct answer is: find something else to worry about. Cigarette smoking is infinitely more dangerous to smokers and those next to them than any cell phone use, yet it is on the rise among young people. Worry about that instead.

The only proven hypothesis about cell phones is that using them while driving results in what you'd expect: more accidents.

 

[GoldShadow]

I think every study done so far has shown no significant link... one Japanese study I located and its abstract on PubMed:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jrr/48/1/69/_pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15517100&dopt=AbstractPlus

The paper also has long list of references you can look through for similar investigations.