Mobile phone safety?

[anhinga_anhinga]

There were some unpleasant findings a year ago.

Now the new study claims that there is no cancer link, but at the same time finds that

A significantly increased risk was found for tumours which developed on the same side of the head as the phone was reported to have been held but this was mirrored by a decrease in the risk on the opposite side of the head making it difficult to interpret as a real effect.

This finding may be due to people with glioma brain tumours linking mobile phone use to the side of the tumour and therefore over reporting the use of a phone on the same side as their tumour. This results in under reporting use on the opposite side of the head, say the authors.

from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060119232625.htm

On balance it looks to me like we have even more uncertainty about mobile phone safety than before.

Comments

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

It was I.

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

take a look?

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

Too lazy to read carefully (too many more relevanthing I have to read :)
but the conclusion seems reasonable.

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

One thing I got from looking at their data tables is that the effect is probably rather weak, if any. And it's likely to be from older/analog phones only, from the way their data look to me (despite their [questionable] conclusions about irrelevance of that factor). So, practically speaking it's OK to use.

But I will not believe their statistical tricks until I understand the mystery of 0.94 odds ratios in the beginning of their Table 2 (or how can it be less than 1.0 with these particular data). 0.94 basically says that people using cell phones had a smaller chance of getting sick (although the difference is supposedly not significant), but the other data in that row suggest the opposite conclusion.