Today's Technology supplement carries a short article looking at whether mobile phones and Wi-Fi really are responsible for all the evil in the world, or at least the headache-y and disappearing bee-y parts of it.
Just to wrap up on the bees. As I surmised in a previous post, the Independent on Sunday article that got all this kicked off a couple of weeks ago was based on a very small study. And that actually looked at DECT (cordless home) phones - and DECT base stations at that. Not mobile phones, or mobile phone masts, which transmit a different frequencies. Though bees navigate by the sun and light polarisation anyway. Update: and magnetism too - they have some magnetic particles in their stomachs which are, apparently, used for navigation. Interesting question: were the DECT emissions strong enough to make any difference? That would imply the bees were being degaussed - but that requires an oscillating, comparatively strong, magnetic field. While it's a subtle distinction, an electromagnetic wave isn't the same as a degaussing field.
If someone with a tiny bit more time can figure out the strength in (probably) microgauss of a bee's magnetic field, and then what the degaussing field would be, and then compare it to a DECT's output... you'll have something interesting, though it might be a proof or disproof of the contention about DECT and bees.
In the International Herald Tribune, one of the researchers on the study, Stefan Kimmel says:
"It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data," said Kimmel. "Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."
Well, he can hope.
