| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/49330/Suicides-linked-to-phone-masts- Anyone think this is daft? I've done some reading on it this morning and my initial view that it could be clutching at straws has changed. And could it really be what has been happening to the bees...? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
It sounds like the latest irrational panic to me. This seems relevant: http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/06/suicide_phone_masts.html | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
And more: http://www.skepticreport.com/pseudoscience/rogerandme.htm I can't find a web site for Coghill himself. Am I right to think that in one of the quotes on the site above he appears to find a correlation between AIDS and phone masts or something of the kind? I think it's worth searching for references to him on this useful site: http://www.randi.org/ | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I've now found his web site. http://www.cogreslab.co.uk/default.asp It makes fascinating reading. I'm especially struck by the "Coghill Challenge" to "power utility workers". Decide for yourselves how seriously he should be taken as a spokesman about science. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
But sometimes even fools can speak the truth. These truths can be lost in all their fluff. And he's not alone in bringing it up. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
He seems scientifically unreliable, to put it mildly. If there were more credible evidence, surely the Sunday Express would print it instead. Notice how someone even felt the need to give him a doctorate he doesn't possess. "But sometimes even fools can speak the truth..." Possibly, but it's no use until it's verified. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
They did tests with people who claimed they were getting adverse effects off masts and it showed that they couldn't tell when a mast in the next room was on or off. Maybe these suicides were psychosomatic? Chortle. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
His ankle wraps at £29.00 each are a genuine bargain. I'm buying three. One for spares. What's that conspiracy theory? That those 'in the know' keep feeding us crap to keep us scared and spending... | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Did you read about that research that shows images of death increases our desire to spend? I've been watching adverts for subtle images. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Actually, I used to live near a radio mast, and since the mutation, I'll need that extra ankle-wrap, after all. Sorry, Tony, but it's all a bit daft, isn't it? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
What this illustrates is something Robert Winston is always pointing out: bad, poorly conceived and poorly evidenced 'science' is rarely evaluated critically by the media. Some of it comes from unqualified mavericks, but some of it – like James Watson's recent racist outburst – comes from successful scientists who happen to be full of shit. Winston has used the example of an academic paper published in the USA in the fifties 'showing' that the chromosomes in the somatic cells of a Negro were grossly disordered and damaged in comparison with those in the somatic cells of a white person. The accompanying diagrams were, it is safe to say, not based on microscope studies. They do not resemble any existing microscope images of human cells, and the number of chromosomes is markedly different from that in a human cell. But how many newspaper editors, let alone readers, would be able to judge that? The value of scientific research depends on peer reviews, back-up studies and linkage of accurate information to a properly understood context – a 'right' answer arrived at through ill-founded guesswork is no right answer at all. As the narrator of WITHNAIL AND I says, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
And even more importantly, even statistically valid findings only SUPPORT a hypothesis. They do not PROVE it. All scientific data should be open to falsification (except in very specific circumstances). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
The exceptions are one-off situations about which a claim can finally be determined as either true or false. For example, the theory that the moon is made of cheese was confirmed by the Wallace and Gromit Expedition of 1991, no further research being necessary. Cracking Nobel Prize, Gromit! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Mann-Whitney tests have shown that Joel Lane's jokes are positively correlated in terms of quality, and are statistically significant at an alpha level of 0.05. However, we have yet to figure out just what this quality level is. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Joel's jokes (as I have experienced them over the years) are interesting from the point of view of the Intentional Fallacy. I cannot imagine the author of 'The Lost District' making such jokes in a million years. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.247.154 |
Joel was joking? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Des, as I've said many times before, the concept of the intentional fallacy only works if the author is not available for consultation. I grew up reading Harlan Ellison collections (I now have 22 of them) in which every story is prefaced by a statement of what he meant the story to say, why he wrote it and who he was in love with (or not in love with) at the time. The other sense in which the 'intentional fallacy' concept rings true is if you assume an author is only capable of one attitude, persona or mental state. This is so clearly untrue of people in general that, if it were true, it would make authors uniquely dull people. And are you trying to tell me the moon isn't made of cheese? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
He was also Stephen as well. (He likes a good pun. Unfortunately that wasn't a . . .) | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Alas, my last post now makes less sense than ever, as Joel and I posted at the same time. Sigh. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
A more likely explanation for what's happened ot the bees is climate change and the introduction of a particularly nasty species of bee eating horribleness, Tony. There are many reports concerning phone masts, and although it's hard ot put together clear statistical evidence to say they're nasty, there is a lot of hearsay and rumour. I'd rather not live near on the off chance, just as I'd rather not drive by the big radar stations (they have an odd habit of frying car engines' electrics). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Exactly, Joel. What you say makes my belief in the Intentional Fallacy even firmer. One can assume nothing about one attitude writers or Harlan Ellison, whatever they tell you. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I used a bit of a tale by Ramsey in my PhD and asked him about its 'intentions', but having written the piece in 1987, he couldn't really remember. That, I guess, links with the second point Joel makes: folk change. The intentional fallacy has something in it even for living authors, but it does kind of presuppose an 'essentialist' view of human nature. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Is there something unusual about the stats for the "Bridgend area", Gary? | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.55.33 |
I have Dangerous Visions, Again Dangerous Visions 1 and 2. I really enjoy Ellison's introductions to the writers and stories. I'm really looking forward to starting a collection of his own work with commentary. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
Most scientists seem to agree that several factors are working together to cause CCD (colony collapse disorder), including, among others, viruses, poor nutrition (consuming nectar from only one type of plant, as commerical bees are often encouraged to do so that farmers can yield large fields of crops like blueberries and pears, etc), pesticides, and possibly an AIDS-like retrovirus. There is little evidence that any mites or insect predators are causing harm to the bees. There may also be little correlation between the causes of CCD in environments as diverse as China, the US, and Spain. Since the problem first arose in the US in late 2006, there has been much study of CCD and little consensus about its causes. The cell-phone theory arose, I'm told, because of an poorly researched(and quite irresponsible) article in The Independent. Scientists seem to agree that this theory has no evidence to back it up. (I'd offer some articles to support the information above, except they all appear to have been removed online.) | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
This was a good program on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/6reveg | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.197.28 |
Ally, if you can find it, get The Essential Ellison: it's a brilliant, sprawling overview of his whole career. As for original collections, I'd suggest Strange Wine, Deathbird Stories and Angry Candy for a good representation of his fiction. You can't really go wrong with any of his books, though. His own readings of his stories on CD are well worth getting too. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.55.33 |
Thanks Huw - it is so very exciting to be on the threshold of all this to come. Shivering with anticipation. I needed a spark tonight to give me something to look forward to. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
I suppose what it all boils down to is that people are frightened, and if no easy answers pop up they look at the abstract because these things inexplicably frighten them to begin with. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Remember when Radium was the wonder material of the modern age? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
And yet a mobile phone can give you cancer face? And they say the power of the radio waves are too low in these masts to alter brain chemistry? And yet they give you face cancer? Christ. You call that scientific reasoning? CHORTLE. What matters is that data is accurate or not. IS it? Are these masts closer to people than on average? If there is a correlation then it needs looking at. We seem to be getting rather blaise about science. We don't even know what particles are. We don't know much about anything. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
That should be face cancer. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Is it true that he's on a Government board regarding this? They seemed to find him qualified enough. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
You write well but your science needs improving. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
That's what I find especially disturbing, given his web site. Atlantis? The Ark of the Covenant? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
You make "chortle" unsettling, like there's something worse to come. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Huh? To the above three posts. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Sorry! To "Is it true that he's on a Government board regarding this? They seemed to find him qualified enough." I replied "That's what I find especially disturbing, given his web site. Atlantis? The Ark of the Covenant?" | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Ally, SHATTERDAY is another amazing Ellison collection. And there's a terrific 'best of' from the 1970s called ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW. THE ESSENTIAL ELLISON is superb but massive and not easy to take to work with you. Ellison is one of those fascinating writers, like Leiber, who has had different phases and written in different styles. Urbane satire, dirty realism, surreal fantasy, violently intense horror, existential SF – what matters to him is emotional impact and personal message, not delivering a neatly packaged plot within the confines of reader/publisher expectation. His best work mostly falls between 1960 and 1990, but his earlier and later work has its moments. Also, you have got to read his two volumes of TV commentary from around 1970, THE GLASS TEAT and THE OTHER GLASS TEAT. Angry, radical, splenetic, manic, hilarious, scary. Ellison wrote at such a pitch of intensity, so prolifically for so long that it's not surprising that – like Dylan – he eventually suffered a kind of burnout. He's been mostly quiet for the last decade, but the sustained howl of rage that is his work still shatters windows in unexpected places. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.61.163 |
Thanks Joel! I look foward to it all. I remember seeing a piece of film a year or so ago about the fact that a writer should be paid. Ah - here it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE In one of local libraries I'm talking about the history of horror writing, why I write it and how I first became published, soon. I was asked if I wanted paying - I said no, the first one is on me :>) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
It's a loss leader. :-) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Ramsey, Gordon is obviously hoping 'Dr' Coghill can lead him to the Knights Templar. How else is he going to plug that budget gap? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
Ugh. James Randi. Why do such folk want to dip their oar in if people are content to believe what they want? Have they been hurt by such folk? Fake psychics have never made a penny out of me, and I've never approached them for answers. I've met psychic people (not earning money from it) who seem very genuine as well as questioning their abilites, and feel convinced by their integrity. It will always puzzle me why people into horror sniff at such things so often (not that I'm suggesting you are doing this here Ramsey). I love stories of Bigfoot, ufos, ghosts, Nessie etc because they really do make the world an interesting place. I don't accept very many stories about these things but for me the idea of their presence is almost enough, and to remove that sliver of their possiblity would sadden me. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
'Fake psychics have never made a penny out of me, and I've never approached them for answers' What a stupid line. I hope you know what I meant.  | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>"That's what I find especially disturbing, given his web site. Atlantis? The Ark of the Covenant?" Is Coghill seeking these things then? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Seems he does. http://www.cogreslab.co.uk/prehistory.asp Ramsey seems to be quite interested in this debunkery lark. Same here, although I challenge anyone here to explain the two slit experiment with photons without sounding like a kook. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec13.html | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I see no reason why we should have been the only section of humanity to have developed science to such a degree. Given the nature of man I can see how such potential past golden eras would have been in danger from the very science it manifested. Metal rusts. Facts become myths. Although you couldn't believe this to a degree that was of any use. I see little problem with scientific men who may spend their own time and money in grey areas. It would be arrogant to do otherwise. And as for this Government thing. They probably treat everything he says with a pinch of sodium chloride. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
What about the alien county in America, the ones the Indians talked about and avoided? It was populated by weird little white figures with odd, advanced weapons. A lot of tribes have described them. Even if daft it's fantastic, eerie notion. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.103.184 |
And through history a lot of renowned scientists and thinkers have had what might be considered daft ideas. Bell reckoned his phone could and would be used to contact the dead, for instance. We may scoff but that white noise phenomena but - ah, yadda yadda. We believe what we believe and it's all ok. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
James Randi on YouTube is great fun, watching him trip up supposed masters of odd phenomenon. My favourite's the one where he exposes the guy blowing the pages of a telephone directory open and claiming he's using psychic powers to do it. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.17.91.5 |
Are these Bridgend Suicides statistically anomalous? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I don't believe so. Not in the wider period of a year. Just a blip at the moment, which will even out over the area and year, they were saying on World at One the other week. So in truth, no, which is all the sadder, because it means that number of people is vansihing into the end across the rest of the country too . . . There's a bunch of feet in plimsoles being washed up on the beach near Vancouver, though. mostly the right foot. Five so far, I believe. Serial killer or hungry polar bear? | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
With human feet inside, the shoes, I should add. |