Independent on Sunday in mobile madness

The Independent on Sunday (IoS) and in particular their environment editor, Geoffrey Lean, like nothing more than a bit of indulgent scaremongering Sunday. Today Mr Lean has written an article on the dangers of mobile phones that begins

Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study.

Apparently this research, funded by the mobile phone industry, concluded

The people who had received the radiation took longer to enter the first of the deeper stages of sleep, and spent less time in the deepest one. The scientists concluded: “The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals components of sleep believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear are adversely affected.”

Sadly Geoffrey Lean did not provide a link to the actual paper so his readers cannot find out for themselves if this is accurate reporting. Mr Lean has previous form in reporting on the dangers of mobile phone radiation, reporting that they could kill bees, a conclusion that ignores far more credible explanations. So lets see of Mr Lean’s latest article is supported by the paper he based it on, but forgot to cite.

The researchers describe their methods, using 71 subjects, as follows

The exposure was designed to be consistent with worst case exposure occurring in real-life situations, but with extended duration.

in this case the duration was 3 hours. This is a remarkably long time, in conditions the researchers acknowledge are worst case, so doubt is immediately cast on the relevance to the real world of any conclusions. After exposure participants carried out performance and memory tests, scored self-reported symptoms and state of mood. They were then subjected to EEG recordings as they slept to analyse their sleep patterns. The researchers also divided participants into two groups, those who claimed they were electrosensitive and those who did not.

The results section is where this paper starts to look really dodgy. They don’t provide the data that informs their statement

Sleep initiated one hour after exposure was found to be a®ected. Under the RF exposure condition, participants exhibited a longer latency to deep sleep (stage 3, meanRF=0.37, (SD=0.33), mean-Sham=0.27 hours (SD=0.12); F=9.34, p=0.0037). The amount of stage 4 sleep was also decreased meanRF=37.2 minutes (SD=28), meanSham=45.5 minutes (SD=28); F=10.7, p=0.0019).

so there is no way of telling if their calculations are correct. It is also odd that the stage 3 results are presented as a fraction whereas the stage 4 results are presented as minutes. Indeed their respectable p values start looking a little iffy when the data is plotted on a graph with SD shown (my figure below, converted fractions into minutes).

What the data actually shows is that the stage 3 results differ by 6 minutes and the stage 4 by 8 minutes but the SD bars show variation in excess of this average difference. Dodgy.

*edit*

Martin adds:

It doesn’t matter if the SD (or error) is larger than the difference; you can still get different trends in very ‘noisy’ data. In those cases though you need a large enough sample size.

The authors also don’t present their data on headaches, they merely assert that there is a difference. Dodgy. One interesting finding, which again they present no data for, is that

Participants were not able to differentiate RF exposure conditions from sham exposures more often than would have been expected by statistical chance alone. Neither were there any statistically significant differences between the SG (electrosensitive)and NG (non-electrosensitive) in reliable detecting results.

this result, although a large pinch of salt is required given the lack of data, further confirms previous reports that electrosensitive individuals cannot sense the presence of EM radiation.

In their conclusions it appears the authors do accept that their paper lacks a bit of punch and to correct this state that

Future analysis of the current study will further assess various biological, neurophysiological, and cognitive outcome measures, e.g., spatial memory, performance, and EEG data. We will also attempt to assess the possible clinical relevance of the observed findings.

This is interesting as it implies the authors assessed a wide range of variables and possibly rushed the strongest results out in this paper. I can’t help but wonder if they fell victim to selection bias and discarded a whole series of measurements showing no difference. So this paper has enough weaknesses and oversights to throw doubt on its conclusions.

This has not stopped Mr Lean from conflating the results of this paper with another suggesting that teenagers who used their phones after going to bed found themselves more tired than those that did not.

It also complements other recent research. A massive study, following 1,656 Belgian teenagers for a year, found most of them used their phones after going to bed. It concluded that those who did this once a week were more than three times – and those who used them more often more than five times – as likely to be “very tired”.

This, of course, is an utterly spurious conflation that ignores the most obvious explanation for the Belgian results that stimulating the brain through teenage chitchat makes it harder to fall asleep. Frankly this is absurd and you would hope that any editor reading through this piece would have questioned this unsubstantiated link. Unfortunately it seems not, this is the front page of today’s IoS.

Note that the editors are more than happy to put this spurious conflation on the front page with a massive headline drawing attention to it. It a shame to see that the IoS is maintaining its reputation for scientific illiteracy.

thanks to afterforty, lecanardnoir, Martin, BobP, GMcP and apgaylard