Help with Fact, please?

[charlottezweb]

Has anyone seen this article or know what the facts are behind it?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/warning-using-a-mobile-phone-while-pregnant-can-seriously-damage-your-baby-830352.html

It's all over the place and scaring the moms on my smothering mother boards to death. I can't seem to find anything on the net, other than references back to that same article, all quoting the "authoritative research" line.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

no idea. however, it says the study will be published in july, so you can read it for yourself then. it's one study, though, and i'd be very skeptical until it's replicated.

[dr-brat.livejournal.com]

Um, would that be Russian children who talk on Russian made handsets are more likely? Even since the late 1990s in more advanced countries than Russia, the technology has moved forward. I'm a bit sceptical.

Cell phone dangers

[betonica.livejournal.com]

Mini Dissertation answer:

The study appears to be part of a large one, for which other correlations have been reported in the past (mostly that cell phones are not hazardous in various cases). This looks like it's a bunch of data that has been newly extracted from the huge data set, correlating cell phone use with behavioral problems in children. And yes, the study won't be out until July, so I can't read it until then (or maybe late June). It's probably a pretty good study, but the big question is whether the data are being interpreted accurately.

(Hm. Just thought of another point. If you keep extracting new bits of data from a huge data set, sooner or later you will *accidentally* come up with something that looks like an important correlation, but's really just random error. I hope they mention that in the July publication.)

The research based on interviews of over 13000 Danish women who gave birth in the late 90s, according to the secondary literature at the url you give. The women were asked about their cell use during pregnancy, and the cell use of their children. The women were asked about their children's behavior / behavioral problems. Women who didn't use cell phones back then were compared with women who did. When these two groups were compared, the second group (with the cell phone use) were much more likely to have children with behavior problems.

(The Russian thing I think is unrelated, but quoted as a "similar" concept. I'd ignore it.)

Important Note: The authors of this secondary article state, of the authors of the study: "They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children." Well, DUH. Wouldn't you *check* parental attention as a first step, before you assume it's the radiation from the cell phone that caused the problem??

Important note 2: Women in the late 90s with cell phones are probably a very different group from women in the late 90s without cell phones. All kinds of differences could exist between the two groups, that might well result in the "cell phone" group having more "hyperactive" (etc) children than the other group, but not *caused* by actual cell phone use. If the researchers did their work well - and if the data set includes the info - they'll have shown that the two groups are actually quite similar except for cell use. We'll have to wait until July to see.

Important note 3: Note that this is all based on questions asked of the mothers. Women who use cell phones a lot might be more likely to *interpret* their children as having behavioral problems than women who don't use cell phones, independent of the children's actual behavior.

Important note 4: Are women back then who used cell phones more likely to be urban, vs non-users rural/suburban? Richer vs poorer? Into technology (the boob-tube as babysitter) vs low-tech? As I said, all kinds of differences that could account for the differences (real or perceived) in the children.

I'll have to see the actual article to tell you more, and to tell you how likely any of my notes above is. In the mean time, though, I'd suggest being modestly cautious about lots of cell phone use, but more importantly, *pay attention to your kid* (I'm betting you're good at this), and perhaps look in to other things that might "cause" behavioral problems in children. E.g., in addition to the amount of attention that's paid to the child, there might well be other differences between cell phone users and non-users, again not actually *dependent* on that cell phone use, that impact child behavior. In those cases, you could adjust those things to the benefit of your child without having to reduce your cell phone use.


-Dr. AT.