Mobile phone risk is different. Why?
Yes mobile phones have been linked to brain cancer – again. Despite widespread coverage, I have yet to see mad panic or mass binning of mobile phones. Why not, I wonder.
Man, if it isn’t dropping out or beeping from a low battery it is going to give me cancer. Yes mobile phones have been linked to brain cancer – again – at least according to some robust media analysis of new World Health Organisation-backed research.
Despite widespread coverage, however, I haven’t seen mad panic or mass binning of mobile phones. Although I have yet to consider this properly, I do wonder why not?.
You would be forgiven for thinking you are experiencing déjà vu, but even if the media actually managed to present an accurate analysis of the latest research into links between mobile phone usage and cancer, I think it would, as it appears to be, have zero effect on mobile phone usage. Brain cancer, it seems, is a risk we are prepared to accept to have 24 hour access to the world.
So to the media headlines – a couple of Australian examples
Brain cancer link to mobile phones (Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and News.com)
Study unable to rule out link between mobile phones and brain cancer risk (The Age)
To be fair, the body of some media articles did actually consider, to some extent, the limitations of the study.
The reality – well a closer version of it
Nature News responded to the media flurry with what I believe is a more considered and robust analysis of the statistics and data related to the research.
From the Nature News article:
No link found between mobile phones and cancer
Unfortunately, the results from this study are not entirely straightforward. “Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones,” the study says.
The study suggests we are reasonably safe, but there is still a uncertainty as revealed in the study limitations.
Such uncertainty even the totally false (scientifically speaking) uncertainty promulgated by the media in the MMR vaccination debacle sparked a worrying decline in MMR vaccination rates in the UK and a long-lived war of words. The introduction of even the faintest uncertainty is sometimes a powerful tool used by deniers or interest groups to justify their cause, demands, ideology, existence…
So what is the difference between mobile phones and MMR vaccination, or climate change?
I have barely heard a rumble of complaint or seen a hint of fear or anxiety in the eyes of any mobile phone user – which is just about everyone. The communication of risk with technologies is not my area of expertise, but it is fascinating in a nerdy sort of way. What makes the public react passionately to one risk (MMR), but not another (cancer from mobile phones)? Is it because with phones we are personally taking the risk (real or perceived)? That is, it is our choice to use such a technology? In contrast, with the MMR vaccine we are placing another – our child – at risk and removing any choice that child has? Climate change might be different as there are many vested interests here and it is not an area I have explored deeply.
Is there anything in this? Am I making a pandemic out of mild cough, or is there something in this to extract and learn from for future communication activities?
Stuff to ponder on.
The WHO-backed research was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology
And here is a University of Sydney media release on Australia’s part in the research.