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As if skeptics didn't have plenty to facepalm about, this recent study published in PLoSOne implies that it has identified a model in which anthropogenic (meaning, human-acquired) RF emissions are enough to cause hurting in amputees. It also claims to reconcile anecdata from "power lines requite me a migraine" types with the overwhelming public and scientific consensus that anthropogenic RF EMFs don't actually accept agin effects. But information technology fails hard at supporting its claims.

If you sift through the written report, the actual hypothesis becomes clear, and it has niggling to practise with the deeply misleading printing release. Sleight-of-headline aside, the team claims that they've institute a neuropathology that makes rats sensitive plenty to RF emissions that they tin can experience pain from anthropogenic RF like what cell towers produce. The condition is called a neuroma: a usually-beneficial growth on a damaged nervus that'southward already known to cause feelings of electrical shocks. Neuromas are also known to contribute to phantom limb pain, which happens to amputees.

The paper says that rats with neuromas react to less than a watt per square meter of practical microwave-frequency energy. It goes on to hypothesize that this happens considering neuromas accept too many of a sensory receptor usually used to sense heat. Those things on their own are testable. And they're the only things about this written report that make whatever sense.

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The report and its printing release have some major bug that I invited the lead writer, Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega, to discuss via e-mail (he didn't respond).

Higher up the fold, the press release rests on the personal feel of retired Maj. David Underwood, a veteran of the Iraq state of war whose injuries resulted in the amputation of his left arm — which he believes hurts when he drives past cell towers, or gets close to cell phones on roam. Buried below the fold in the press release, information technology adds that as a result of interactions with Maj. Underwood, one Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega conducted this study on rats and cell cultures in vitro. And because at that place exists anecdotal evidence, simply no scientific consensus or human studies, Dr. Romero-Ortega opines that the results of this study in rats are "very probable" generalizable to humans.

Neuromas are known to cause neuropathic pain all on their ain. The premise of this study is that the researchers injured rat sciatic nerves and gave them neuromas, and that those rats experienced hurting in the presence of 915 MHz RF radiations. Why does it surprise us that rats who were already in pain from their neuromas acted like they were in hurting? Why does the law of parsimony not have united states of america back to the null hypothesis?

Besides, the numbers merely don't work. The numbers don't even come up close to working, fifty-fifty with extremely generous margins. To start with — the authors' own data doesn't actually follow the inverse square constabulary — the RF field apparently increases with increasing distance from the source, and if they actually used the numbers they published for their model, it belies the whole thought of the RF emissions being the problem. Then, the RF dose they practical to the rat amounted to less than a third of what an iPhone 5 puts out, and non what you'd really be getting at 40m from a prison cell tower broadcasting at 50W. And even assuming that the authors' estimation of RF emissions strength over distance was correct, their own graph shows that they red-picked the high outlier in their data (the yellowish dot among all the reds, below) to use for a representative value.

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Seriously, any reasonable best-fit line fails the changed-square law. Image credit: report authors.

There's a disharmonize of interest that's of import hither, too. Dr. Romero-Ortega is a well-established neuroscientist and professor of neurology and plastic surgery — and he's likewise the founder and Chief Scientific Officeholder for "Nerve Solutions Inc.," a company which is currently "beneath the radar" because it's having "market challenges" selling the devices he invented, including one he claims can relieve pain by limiting the germination of neuromas.

But in the RF paper, he claimed that he didn't have any patents to disclose. Washed like this, it really looks like he had a saleable idea, but realized ex post facto that he needed some science to support his marketing claims. It wouldn't exist the first fourth dimension a scientist has taken real research, used it to lampshade pseudoscience, and co-opted information technology to turn a profit off the less scientifically literate. The university'southward own press release goes on to say that their next stride should exist building a device people can use to block RF signals. Charging people in hurting for Faraday cages to cake RF signals? Either this is groundbreaking, game-changing original inquiry that just hasn't hit the mainstream even so, or it's one slick infomercial removed from tinfoil hats.

Now allow me exist very clear. I am not trying to deride people who take unexplained issues, merely because my thoughts on the etiology of the problems differs from theirs. Nor practice I wish to disparage Maj. Underwood's experiences or Dr. Romero-Ortega's inquiry. Amputees accept experienced shocking pains since long before cell towers were conceived.

In medicine, the maxim goes, pain is any the experiencing person says it is. Nobody's saying amputees don't have pain. It's just that we are dancing on the edge of Ockham'southward razor in trying to say information technology's the cell towers causing pain. Boggling claims require boggling show, and a single conflicted report does not constitute boggling bear witness. Science is supposed to be accessible to everybody. The only way we tin keep it like that is past being scrupulously honest most what we can claim.