Most of the Internet is hype and entertainment, a waste of time


This looks like it will be very interesting. Still, this is such a huge subject no one movie can scratch the surface.

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Not every story or film has to have a focused point of view, although I'm sure that a lot of the area that he covers would be well-served by a narrower focus. But that's clearly not this film, and it does look like something worth seeing, regardless.

One thing that concerns me, because I am always concerned about the spreading of myths and misinformation is how the story about, the woman with the electromagnetic hypersensitivity is treated, whether or not it's looked at with any kind of skepticism. I don't doubt that people with EHS suffer. The problem is that in blinded studies, there really is no correlation between actual Electromagnetic fields and their symptoms, leading doctors to treat it as a mental illness, and not a physical illness.

I would hate for people to believe in it as it would be of no help to the sufferers to feed their delusions.

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There is a documentary about the new wireless electric meters called "Take Back Your Power" that detailed some experiments about EM fields affected people, and there are several studies that show EM fields affect people. When I look at other industries and how they have lied and used government and the media to twist the truth about the damage they have done I don't find it inconceivable that that there are adverse health effects from electric fields. Particularly radio waves ... think microwaves. There are a lot of people who are psychosomatic. People can be driven crazy by the way our society is. Look at all the gun shooters we have? Why do you think that happens? Even if it was mental does not mean there is something in the engineering of our artificial environment that is not causing this. We are changing the human environment in a way that could be likened to taking animals out of the wold and putting them in zoos ... I don't find it surprising that some people find that distressing at an unconscious level that makes them ill in some ways?

You sound like you are closing the books on EM sensitivity and I guess I am not willing to do that yet.

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I'm not closing the book on it -- neither are science or scientists. There always will be studies and statistics and so on. The problem is that there is no evidence that such a thing is real, and until there is actual evidence, it's hubris to assume that you are right, and the vast body of data and research is wrong.

That's not the same thing as closing the book. That's simply acting rational.

I understand that when one's world view is in conflict with evidence, there's a tendency towards cognitive dissonance. You can always recognize those people because instead of either abandoning their beliefs, or even trying to find evidence that actually does support their belief, they instead attack the facts, making accusations of conspiracies, and so on.

BTW, over 35 years ago, when I was at Caltech, next to a lab where I had a class, there was research going on studying the effects of powerful magnetic fields on the human body (Ones from powerful electromagnets, not cell phones and the like), and they couldn't find anything at that time. I knew about it because I had a friend -- a physics undergrad --who was involved with it at that time. This research has been fruitless for at least that long -- no one has closed the book. But after over 35 years of research, and nothing to show for it other than negative results, you'd think that if there WAS a conspiracy, that money would have been siphoned off into other directions. But no, the research continues. So no, no one has closed the book. But things don't look very good for it.

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> The problem is that there is no evidence that such a thing is real, and until there is actual evidence, it's hubris to assume that you are right, and the vast body of data and research is wrong.

OK, so I know how you feel about it, and about anyone who doesn't agree. You are quite
comfortable being self-righteous arbiter of science ... but I do not agree with you.

First, Amazon Prime, "Take Back Your Power" ... watch it. Information at the 45 minute point.
There is some stuff I know is wrong in that documentary, and guy from the Thrive series
of utopian documentaries I have personally no use for, but there are other data that
are from reliable sources.Documentary is on You-Tube for free as well.

There are some claims that seem reasonable to me, and the fact that there are EMF
limits in the EU make me think that the EMF issue is yet another issue that the US
is in denial of because of profit.

China and Russia have EM limits for human health. I see your strategy here is to continue
on and on with longer posts in a very monotonous way claiming there is no evidence of
biological damage from EMF. You sound the same as the climate change deniers to me.
That doesn't mean you are the same, you could be open-minded, but you just do not seem
like it to me.

In 1972 the US Navy published data about health effects from EMF on the human body.

There is evidence of biological affects of EMF. To say there is not is simply an untruth,
no matter how politely you make your claims. Also, the book has effectively been closed
on it when the US and Canada limits for EMF are thousands of times higher than other
country's limits.

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I didn't want to pursue this but you keep referencing Bob Beck's film, so here is more info on the guy you are hitching your horses to:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/09/when-burning-woo-produces-deceptive-test/
Just search on his name and read.

I can't speak to the Navy's research in 1972, just that (and this is not unusual) that later studies contradicted that.

A single study does not make something true. The way the scientific process works is the following:
1. A scientist has a hypothesis -- that is an educated guess as to something that may or may not be true
2. An experiment is conceived of (that is probably flawed for a lot of possible reasons) to test that hypothesis.
3. Results are published.
4. Peer review occurs where fellow scientists in the same field attack the study, trying to poke holes in it. It could be that the experiment was based on a flawed assumption. It could be that there is a math error, or a matter of misinterpreting the data (That happens a lot in social sciences and biology as social scientists and biologists were notorious for not understanding statistics back then). Maybe there's something wrong with the equipment that was used, or the selection of test subjects. Maybe the study was on rats and the results don't translate to effects on humans (that's a VERY common problem, even today).
5. Other scientists try to replicate the results with their own experiments -- some may be better, some may be worse. Some will support the results of the first study. Some may not.
6. Each of those experiments results in a published paper, and those are up for peer review as well
7. Either there is a consensus or there isn't. If not, better experiments (and some worse ones) are proposed, and the cycle continues.

That you can find a single study that says anything is not surprising. There are studies that say that Accupuncture works, and sutdies that show that it doesn't work.

Unfortunately what often happens in the case of 'scientific woo' is that a discredited study will remain a 'strong' argument for whatever point an individual makes, long after it has been discredited. It looks good if you have a study that supports you, just be aware that there are countless more studies that contradict that study. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

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Not "hitching my horses" to anything. There are quite a few people whose ideas
and testimony I disagree with in the movie, nevertheless it is interesting in the main.

Please do not condescend to explain the scientific process to me, I am quite familiar
with it.

The other day a scientist wrote an article about how many of the studies that are
quoted in the media are not real science, and cannot be duplicated. The other problem
is that the US is so corporatized that scientific studies are not scientific, they are
done and paid for by groups that have economic interests in the outcome.

If there is an experiment that shows there are biological effects from EMF, all it takes
is one reproducible study. You are hitching your wagon to a broken system that sounds
good but that is broken like most things are in the country today because of economic
bias. Over history they are many beliefs that were thought for different reasons to be
true. A good example is the history of lead in US industry. The lead paint makers
used their economic and political influence to keep lead in common usage in the US
when it was being banned all over the rest of the world. Now there is lead all over
the place and in people's bodies.

Same things with sugar, it was a long time ago hundreds of years that people knew if
you shove sugar down the throats of a goose you make them sick with fatty liver, yet
in our world today a huge percentage of the country has fatty liver, metabolic syndrome
because the medical industry will not weigh in on the health effects of too much sugar.
Same with salt, and same with trans fats, though trans fat has recently had some actions
taken from it, though low levels are still allowed to be in foods and not labelled.

Another example is GMOs. A total failure of the scientific establishment, falling down
before the importance of research and the establishment of a new industry.

If science is the new religion, we are still the same people operating it and the same
forces of corruption are still working.

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“From an analysis of peer-reviewed studies, the authors argue that children and adolescents are at considerable risk from devices that radiate microwaves (and that adults are at a lower, but still significant, risk).”

Note from TBYP: The original January 13 version of this article is posted below, as an industry damage-control team appears to have undertaken a “re-education campaign” upon Forbes, to have the article edited. The re-educated version of this article can be seen on Forbes’ website, here.
Most parents would be concerned if their children had significant exposure to lead, chloroform, gasoline fumes, or the pesticide DDT. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IRIC), part of the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO), classifies these and more than 250 other agents as Class 2B Carcinogens. Another entry on that same list is radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF/EMF). The main sources of RF/EMF are radios, televisions, microwave ovens, cell phones, and Wi-Fi devices.

Note from TBYP: So-called “smart” utility meters are notably absent from this list, despite these facts:
1) they typically emit radiation pulses of 1,000 to 10,000 times stronger than a cell phone in use, 2) tens of thousands of complaints of functional impairments have been made following meter “upgrade”; and 3) millions have been deployed throughout the USA and internationally without disclosure or homeowners’ consent. Discerning viewers, especially those who have watched Take Back Your Power, will understand the reason behind this omission.

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Most people would agree with you and would prefer the Internet be shut down so human beings can get back to...you know... living in the real world. Before the days when every moron with a cell phone thought he was a movie director. It's a well known fact that people's IQ have gone down since the invention of the Internet. Thanks to technology, people are getting dumber and dumber.

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"Most of the Internet is hype and entertainment, a waste of time"

In the 80's and earlier it used to take 24 hours to 30 days for doctors to get up to date medical documentation on patients status.

Now if you were in the middle of a hemmoragic stroke and they decided to use coagulants that you had a allergy too in an attempt to save your life, they can get real time notifications...

Its not all bad.

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Well in his defense, he said most, not all.




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