Can You Hear Me Now? The Truth about Cell Phones and Cancer: Scientific American
Their suggestion follows the precautionary principle, which holds that if something has any potential for great harm to a large number of people, then even in the absence of evidence of harm, the burden of proof is on the unworried to demonstrate that the danger is not real. The precautionary principle is a weak argument for two reasons: (1) it is difficult to prove a negative—that there is no effect; (2) it raises unnecessary public alarm and personal anxiety. Cell phones and cancer is a case study in the precautionary principle misapplied, because not only is there no epidemiological evidence of a causal connection, but physics shows that it is virtually impossible for cell phones to cause cancer.
The latest negative findings mentioned by Time come out of a $24-million research project published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (“Brain Tumour Risk in Relation to Mobile Telephone Use”). It encompassed more than 12,000 long-term regular cell phone users from 13 countries, about half of whom were brain cancer patients, which let researchers compare the two groups. The authors concluded: “Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma [the two most common types of brain tumors] was observed with use of mobile phones.