•  
• EDN Europe MAGAZINE
•  
• Free SUBSCRIPTION
• Subscription Renewal
• View Media Kit

• EDN
• EDN Australia
• EDN Asia
• EDN China
• EDN Japan

EDN Europe's Editor Graham Prophet posts a selection of comments and insights prompted by the many items of industry news and rumour that cross the editorial desk or are gathered on his frequent travels to interviews, press conferences and events around Europe - and further afield - and somehow never find their way to the magazine or the web site, recovering some of the information otherwise lost in the noise level...

Monday, January 21, 2008

Sleep deprivation

| Permalink | Email This | Comments (0) |

| Digg This | Slashdot This | add to Del.icio.us |

Yet another study published into the supposed health effects of using mobile phones. This time, the researchers claim to have found that if you use your phone late in the evening you will have more disturbed sleep that night. (Press release here).

Really. I’ve tried to be civil about these studies in the past, accepting that you can’t prove a negative (ie no matter how much you study, you can’t prove that cellphones have no deleterious side effects,) but they begin to try one’s patience.

Did they, I wonder, factor that if you have to use your phone late in the evening, the subject matter of the call it is rather likely to be something that leaves you in a more agitated state of mind than before, and that that might be robbing the research subjects of peaceful slumber? Or perhaps the subjects were simply annoyed by being asked stupid questions when they were trying to get some sleep.

On the other hand, if the study has actually been conducted with appropriate rigour (and given the credibility of the groups involved, there’s no reason to doubt that), there are some interesting aspects – they have rather cleverly eliminated any influence of people who believe themselves to be rf-field-sensitive, for one thing. On the other hand, again, (you need to be an octopus for this) it’s quite a small sample group….

The cynicism bypass is beginning to cut in here. It seems that each of these bits of research gives all parties involved the chance to air their views without any real conclusion being reached. The phone-phobics get to cry, “you see, we told you, these things really do affect your health” while there’s enough lattitude for the phone industry to say, “there’s no real effect here, it’s all OK.” And for researchers to say, “we need to do more research” (followed quickly by, “more grants, please”). Strange effect, that. Publicity for all concerned. Self-perpetuating process?

Next scare story, please.

Post a comment

* Display Name
* Comments
* Anti Spam security code	To pervent spamming, please enter the anti-spam code as shown above to proceed with the submission