Cell phone and fluoridation pseudoscience

Kids, meet cell phone pseudoscience

Drumming up totally scientifically unsupported scares about cell phones causing cancer, especially in kids, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, wants parents to ban kids from using them.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s plenty of social and psychological reasons for parents to “pull the antenna.” But this pseudomedical claim isn’t actually a reason.

And, this isn’t the first bit of “medical” pseudoscience this week. Earlier, I got a red-flag-waving e-mail from a member of an anti-fluoridation activist network noting that the National Kidney Foundation had signed off on the idea that fluoride causes bone cancer, etc.

This, at bottom line, illustrates just how unscientific medicine is compared to the natural sciences.

And, until medicine tightens up the p value on medical research tests from 5 percent to, say 2 or 3 percent --- still loose enough to not screen out lifesaving outliers, but enough to screen out more pseudomedicine, it’s going to remain that way.

But, that’s not half the issue on the Kidney Foundation.

The anti-fluoridation activists list naturopaths, chiropractors and acupuncturists among the “professionals” signing their petition to ban fluoridation of drinking water.

When I asked the e-mail troll for his or her name, and affiliation with one of these activist groups, as well as any actual NKF connection, the person stopped e-mailling.

The p is the acceptable rate of false positives. In physics, it’s 0.01 percent, FAR tighter than in medicine.