"Balanced reporting" does not mean always showing both sides of an argument with equal weighing. For example: Flat Earthers still believe the Earth is flat regardless of the huge amount of contradicting data. A show about geography/astronomy should *not* place any credence on flat-Earth beliefs. In the same way the "facts" presented in this Catalyst segment were not (facts, that is), they were scaremongering of the worse kind. The problem isn't that the show was showing a biased report, it's that it shouldn't have been duped into doing it in the first place.
Australia's ABC suspends presenter over 'Wi-Fi is dangerous' claims
Australian public broadcaster ABC has suspended the presenter behind its unscientific “Wi-Fried” Catalyst programme that aired earlier this year. Presenter Dr Maryanne Demasi of the popular science program swallowed wholesale the claims of scare-mongers like Devra Davis and Canadian opponent of Wi-Fi in schools, Frank Clegg. …
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 09:07 GMT Pascal Monett
I doubt very much that it was "duped" into showing that information.
That Demasi woman (what gives her the right to put "Dr" in front of her name ?) quite obviously intentionally chose to present things like she did. She is clearly either convinced she's done right (which only demonstrates feeble intelligence), or she did it on purpose for ratings (no such thing as bad publicity, right ?).
As far as I'm concerned, her name is now prominently featured in my personal black list of people I will never listen to.
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 09:41 GMT Gordon 10
Her wikipedia entry suggests Catalyst has form for medical media scare stories (cf Statins episode). Unfortunately the doctorate appears valid.
Is this the Aussie equivalent of BBC Horizon (preferably the 1990's vintage) or a science-y version of C4's Cutting Edge (UK Investigatory news program full of graduates from Daily Mail school of reporting e.g. LIFE KILLS YOU, CANCER IS GONNA GET YOU, PEEDO's ATE MY BABY)
Enquiring Brits need to know.
**Edit reading the comments below I'm guessing the latter**
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 10:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
"That Demasi woman (what gives her the right to put "Dr" in front of her name ?) "
She completed a doctorate in medical research at the University of Adelaide and worked for a decade as a research scientist specialising in rheumatoid arthritis research at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
So I think that's what gives her the right.
-
-
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 01:10 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Indeed
She is called Dr because she has a doctorate not because she is a medic
True, but it is a doctorate in medical research. Perhaps you missed that.
FWIW, long before the program she did on statins, The Git was prescribed statins by a doctor at the Royal Hobart Habattoir. When obtaining a second opinion from a specialist cardiologist, The Git was told taking statins when you don't need them was irrational. Heart disease has many causes, not just above average cholesterol in the blood.
Worth a read:
Statins and All-Cause Mortality in High-Risk Primary Prevention
the absence of prior convincing data for all-cause mortality has led some researchers to question the benefits of statins among individuals without a history of CHD, including Abramson et al who stated that “in some subgroups statins cause serious unrecognized harm, which negates the beneficial effects if the benefit is small—ie, most primary prevention settings.”
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 08:44 GMT Terry 6
Re: Indeed
A PhD doctorate usually means that you did a bit of original research supervised by an academic, in a university somewhere. That is not any guarantee of authority beyond ( at most) the specific field in which you did that research. A PhD who'd specialised in the effects of WiFi or statins or vitamin deficiency or whatever has some authority within that area alone.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 01:22 GMT Notas Badoff
Would that be mammatus or dramatus?
"..., the review could well put the entire Catalyst program under a cloud."
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 03:34 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Catalyst has form - especially Presenter Dr Maryanne Demasi
It's a science show, right?
About as "scientific" as the Science Show.
What if I told you pedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthmatics, or that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous, but there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths, distorting the science. These distortions of science are far from trivial, our neglect of what may be clear and urgent problems could be catastrophic and now a professor of psychology at UWA has shown what he says is the basis of this unrelenting debauchery of the facts…
[Robyn Williams, on The Science Show, Saturday 24 November 2012]
Needless to say there have never been any such statements.
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 06:45 GMT Magani
Catalyst has lost its Catalysis
'Catalyst' and its predecessor, 'Quantum', used to be essential viewing for popular science, well delivered. However, over the last few years, it's all gone downhill.
It now comes across as very one-sided, and as a seeming mouthpiece for the Greens, anthropogenic global warming, scientific distortions and dubious health scare/cure journalism.
Sorry, ABC, but Tuesdays at 8pm is not an ABC timeslot any more, and that's something I regret having to say.
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 08:52 GMT JetSetJim
Re: Career move
>The discredited "Dr" Maryanne Demasi
Not giving weight to her position, but sticking her qualification in quotes implies it's from a quack university, rather than an accredited institution. Assuming she's not been wiki-fiddling, she's a bona-fide Doctor, and a cut above "Dr" Gillian McKeith, at least.
I'm not saying she can't still be wrong and/or stupid, though
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 12:10 GMT JetSetJim
Re: Career move
>> she's a bona-fide Doctor
>Then her awarding institution should consider rescinding it. She may have been a scientist once but no longer.
That doesn't invalidate her results, though. Sure, if it's found to be plagiarised, falsified, or some other breach of ethics is involved then revoke it, or possibly even if it was an honorary doctorate, but if the content is valid and meets the criteria for passing a doctoral viva, then it should stand.
I shudder to invoke Godwin, but the only cases I've found of valid doctoral titles being revoked was under the Nazi regime
http://www.dw.com/en/cologne-university-grapples-with-its-nazi-past/a-1817081
-
-
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 10:10 GMT Doctor_Wibble
Re: But WiFi is dangerous
> Er No.
Actually yes. You may think that your televisual experience is a result of seeing and hearing the transmitted wisdom but actually the idiot box is a cunningly disguised machine whose sole purpose is to beam inanity directly into your brain USING WIFI and the sooner people wake up to this the better!
Further attempts to spread such misinformation will result in you being sent to the disciplinary re-education centre and I don't mean the one where you get a fur-trimmed PVC outfit...
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 04:58 GMT Pu02
Crackpot because you can't sense it?
Maybe you are more sensitive in other areas, and others more sensitive in this one.
I've had a number of analog mobile phones and using one for a couple of minutes would make my ear hot, Any longer and I could sense my head getting warm on that side. It was the same with all those phones, and when searching online about it the advice from otherswas to use an earphone and place the mobile away from your body- advice that worked.
OTOH digital phones are much better but in marginal locations/between cells the radiation levels are not just measurable but quite high. In most cases I can use a 3G iphone without an earphone for 5-10 minutes without side-effects, but beyond that they become noticeable. Not enough experience using LTE yet. And as the phones get better the frequency ranges (2G-3G-4G-5G) used are increasing... what might be the reason for that? Is it the lawyers telling the oligopolies that incremental increases only slightly increase the risk calculations of promoting personal devices that emit this EMR as safe?
If you noticed your hand was hot when you use a microwave oven, would you tell your family not to worry, 'it's perfectly safe'? Remember that these days, kids sleep with their phones by their heads, all the while belching social media via WiFi and/or cellular networks.
I'm still hoping it's ok, but am glad that its not my kids that are the guineau pigs. After all, its not 50 years since we were publicly using soldiers and indigenous people to test the effects of nuclear collisions. We learned that gamma rays were bad for the body then, but did we learn much more?
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 21:13 GMT Pompous Git
Re: WibbleMe
There are a few bits not provable there either. Think of prime numbers for example.
Easy enough to determine whether any given number is prime or not although tedious for very large numbers. And there are several proofs that there is an infinite number of primes.
I would have thought Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems would be a better example.
-
-
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 05:14 GMT Pu02
Re: WibbleMe
I am not sure this is true, as you would encounter a lot of trouble learning anything. Modern knowledge is mostly theory, and the tests these rely on are seldom closed to some form of challenge.
After all, can you certainly prove that the cancers growing in soldiers exposed to radiation emitted in nuclear bomb tests are from gamma rays? Or could some of them be other, less powerful forms of EMR that were generated by that or some other nuclear reaction? Can you prove without doubt that gamma rays are bad for all living things when some do survive with no attributable ill-effects?
Look how long it took to link cancer to smoking and begin controlling the sale of a lethal product with little practical use to the masses. How might the science against mobile phones receive a better welcome by vested industries?
-
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 13:25 GMT pffut
> Now here how to cook and egg with a bunch of mobile phones.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ge9M54l7E
If we were to uncritically believe Youtube videos, all our energy worries would be solved, as there's a ton of videos on there that [claim to] show over unity power and free energy devices.
Sadly, not everything shown on Youtube is what it looks to be - please engage brain when viewing anything more technical than cat videos.
-
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 01:34 GMT Pompous Git
Hey WiFi is energy passing through our body, how can it not do something
I don't think anybody is suggesting that EM radiation from WiFi (and mobile phones for that matter) don't do "something". If I were you, I'd worry more about neutrons from radioactive substances such as potassium in bananas and potatoes (K40) and radium in brazil nuts. Come to think of it, there's C14 in everything that has been alive within the last 50,000 years or so. Maybe you should only eat stuff that died at least 50,000 years ago.
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 11:10 GMT %%#root
At what watt does wifi become harmful?
I didnt watch the show, however it should be at least acknowledged that
wireless comms can be dangerous "if" they are powerful enough.
You can easily get a sub dermal burn from a radio antennae.
Max transmit power for wifi is around 4w
Thankfully all small wifi transmitters for home use are below any measurable effect
(unless you have unshielded nerual implants and your tinfoil hat has a few holes in it)
But If you were wardriving and had a very powerful illegal wifi transmitter then yeah you may have problems if your antennae is on your lap...pretty sure the program wouldn't be about that tho...
I wouldn't stand in front of a OTH radar antennae when on just saying...
Upvote Chemtrails
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 12:50 GMT Peter2
Re: At what watt does wifi become harmful?
The physics people reakon that >4w might, maybe start to have some effect, but anything under this is definately fine.
20w somewhere in the UHF band is enough to cause burns if held in skin contact, as per British squaddies complaining about RF burns from early versions of the BOWMAN radios. All of this is non ionising radiation so has no long term effect.
I can't immediately remember any cases of people being fried while doing stupid things like painting an antenna tower while it's turned on etc, so one assumes that either the frequency is wrong to cause heating despite hundreds of kilowatts of power, or their proceedures are very good. Given how stupid people can manage to be, I am going to assume that it's the frequencies. :/
-
Thursday 7th July 2016 05:20 GMT Pu02
Re: At what watt does wifi become harmful?
It is not just power, the frequency of the EMR is crucial.
Low frequencies can heat/burn cells. Higher frequencies mess do this too, but also mess with DNA can cause cancers. The questions is more how much is safe, and when. How many young children are allowed to play with the old phone, and might be exposed at some very crucial point of their development?
-
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 12:41 GMT Stevie
Bah!
Gotta love the Smart Meter Loons bleating about having "no alternative but to relocate". Perhaps a little more attention paid to real science would have suggested the cheaper option of sheilding the back of the meter with a ground plane. The thing only needs to be read from one direction FFS.
-
-
Wednesday 6th July 2016 19:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Light
Look at all the scaremongering about skin cancer, to the point that some children are now vitamin D deficient because they never get any sunlight (and presumably don't get enough from their diet)
There's a happy medium between "laying in the sun for hours slathered in baby oil" and "wearing SPF 50 on all exposed skin even if you'll only be out in the sun for 10 minutes walking to lunch and back" but you wouldn't know it these days.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
