Wi-Fi Panorama / Melodrama - Wow that was really scientific!! ... Not!
Having seen the BBC news item this morning even I was intrigued. Well, Panorama has already been criticised for its piece on wi-fi by the Guardian.
They quote leading scientists, and call it a scare story! Here are some excerpts ...
"... the experiment carried out by the programme did not take into account a
"basic" scientific concept and presented a bogus comparison, critics
say."
"Paddy Regan, a physicist at the University of Surrey, criticised the
experiment at the heart of Panorama's claims because the measurements
of signal power had not been made at equal distances from the mobile
phone mast and the Wi-Fi laptop. A spokesman for the programme told the
Guardian that the "three times higher" comparison was based on
measurements taken one metre away from the laptop and 100 metres away
from the phone mast, although material sent to journalists promoting
the programme did not make this clear."
Dr Regan said: "It's a basic
fundamental of science measurement, that if you are trying to compare
things you have to take into account the so-called inverse square law."
To make a fair comparison between two radiation sources the
measurements should be taken at the same distance away. The levels
measured by the Panorama investigation were 600 times lower than levels
considered dangerous by the government. "It does sound like a scare
story to me," said Dr Regan.
The programme's evidence was criticised as "grossly unscientific" by
Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering
at Royal Berkshire hospital. "It's impossible to draw any sort of
conclusion from the data as presented there."
As if LA's and schools don't have enough to do!