Because it's extremely easy to make mistakes during experiments, and people usually underestimate that. Bad experiment design. Uncontroled variables. Strange statistical results dew to small numbers. I'm probably guilty of all of them! Go and find out any physics student/graduate and ask about his/her stranger laboratory "result".
To analyze a completely different example, to proclaim that a new elementary particle has been discovered, the community ask for a 5-sigma (i.e. if they are only measuring noise, the probability that the noise generate a similar signal is only 1/2000000.) The problem is that there are many many many running experiments and a 1-sigma and 2-sigma "discoveries of particles" are usual, but most of the just disappear when more data is collected. And that is done by experts, so the probability of a mistake or error in the design is smaller, but not 0 (remember to check the wires.)
The problem to give too much importance to a not reproduced, not peer review result is that many times it's interesting and feed the people's fears. Probably someone will propose to ban the wifi near the botanical garden and kindergarten because everybody knows that they kill seeds!
It could be good to discuss about these preliminary results, but with a very big warning signal that sais "STILL UNCONFIRMED". The problem is that in most of the press releasses and discussions the warning is just dropped.
"Go and find out any physics student/graduate and ask about his/her stranger laboratory "result"."
As a high school junior, I conclusively proved the strength of Earth's gravity field was ~6.1m/s^2, give or take .2m/s^2. Or at least, if you're willing to take this story and the experiments of high school students at face value, I conclusively proved it.
This isn't a science story. It's a human interest story with delusions of being a science story.
PS: And yes having a normal router having significant effects on plant life though EM radiation is about as likely as neutrino's going faster than light. Heat, contamination, or bad seeds etc is a far more likely culprit.
how is it extraordinary? Decreased sperm count from holding a cellphone in your pocket is a well-known phenomenon and has been replicated time after time.
Your only judgment about likelihood of this is based on your limited mechanistic explanation, biased by the scientific dogma that nonionizing radiation is harmless. If you look above, I posit a quite reasonable (and testable!) mechanism for this to occur.
I would point out these are rather subjective measurements. In that a person is physically looking though a microscope and making a judgement call. Worse, sperm are highly impacted by temperature and negative studies get little attention and often don't get published.
Why such attention? Well in most cases the radiation needs to go through your freaking leg which if your cells are absorbing this em radiation should act as significant shielding for some vary weak radiation.
Compare this to this plant experiment which is blatantly obvious.
agreed (except that pretty sure radio waves will go through your leg). Also of note is that Ames tests on cellphone radiation are completely inconsistent.
It's extraordinary because people have argued about the safety of EM radiation for ages. Despite the arguments, only very weak evidence of interference was ever posted.
There is a very easy solution here. Reproduce it and control all the variables. I cannot fathom why anyone would take issue with this request.
of course a more careful repeat of the experiment is should be done. Without too much prejudice to scientific "professionals" (who very often aren't) - the experiment was done by high school students, after all.
But the post I responded to did not request a repeat, it totally dismissed it by saying it was "almost guaranteed" that other factors contribute, and that's what I take issue with.
I think mainstream media (reaching billions) should only publicize replicated scientific experiments. HN (reaching tens to hundreds of thousands) is not exactly mainstream though, at least not yet.
This is not a forum for scientific research either. This is Hacker News. We are here to read news. It's not news if it's not real, and it's not real if it's not replicated.
I mean.. I'm not going to stop using a mobile phone because of this one experiment - but it is an interesting signal, and I'm looking forward to it being either proven or disproven.
I mean, yeah, we all know, article included, that this isnt necessary conclusive results, but it is interesting. And now these girls got lots of attention for it, and by reading the article it looks like a few academics/scientists are going to pick up on the research and do "real science" on it. Also, yes, it's not like we know/read how well the experiment was controlled. For all we know, they had an excellent control, and that's why they are getting all this press. Who knows, but it happened, the researches are on it, and it was interesting. I don't got time to wait, I want my news this minute!
