Quackery in Oregon

Blogging, Medicine, Science, Technology No Comments , ,

I’ve got three articles here, and in them the comments sections are just gorgeous, gorgeous piles of crazy and the poor souls desperately trying to outshout the woo.

Pseudoscience on the RationalWiki. Click to view.

Pseudoscience on the RationalWiki. Click to view source & definition.

Apparently, there’s a smallish contingent of folks who think the radiation from cellphones, cellphone towers, WiFi and suchlike are harmful and carcinogenic and cause all sorts of diseases and health issues and whatnot, and one of ‘em has sued a school here in Oregon over the school WiFi. Here’s the articles:

Needless to say – or at least, it should be needless to say, wifi and wireless signals don’t give you cancer or memory loss or genital warts or whatever it is these folks are worried about. Look, even Wikipedia says so:

In response to public concern, the World Health Organization established the International EMF Project in 1996 to assess the scientific evidence of possible health effects of EMF in the frequency range from 0 to 300 GHz. They have stated that although extensive research has been conducted into possible health effects of exposure to many parts of the frequency spectrum, all reviews conducted so far have indicated that exposures are below the limits recommended in the ICNIRP (1998) EMF guidelines, covering the full frequency range from 0–300 GHz, and do not produce any known adverse health effect.

For future reference, feel free to file the wifi worriers alongside the people who think vaccines cause autism and magnets can cure cancer.

Quite a lot of the people in the comments sections are angry that taxpayer money is having to be wasted to defend the school from this law suit, which is definitely a good point. As my James said last night, however, “I don’t mind the money being spent. It’s a school’s job to fight the stupid.”

Marci Sischo

After watching her parents murdered by a mugger in a back alley, Marci Sischo grew up vowing to become the world's greatest detec -- wait, that's Batman. Theorizing that one could time travel within her own lifetime, Marci Sischo stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished -- no, no. That's Dr. Sam Beckett. Drat. Marci Sischo grew up in northern Michigan, and moved to Oregon in 2009. Yes! She's the Commuter's webmaster, pursuing a journalism degree at LBCC, and in her dwindling spare time, she's co-authoring an urban fantasy novel.