re: #136 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

Antivaxxeer crap is a weird version of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

This sometimes occurs in other fields of science. A study in Sweden examining health effects of living near high-voltage power lines over twenty-five years came up with a positive correlation between living within three hundred metres and about eight hundred different ailments. In particular, childhood leukemia came up four times more often than across Sweden by average.

The anti-sciencers then went to the Swedish Parliament to get laws passed to do something to “protect the children.”

The problem was with such a large number of ailments in a relatively small population being assessed (eight hundred ailments of people within three hundred metres), a cluster of some disease was very likely.

They drew the target around “childhood leukemia” and said “See?”

That particular study comes up occasionally now in discussions of high-voltage transmission lines, particularly as a counter to building new ones.

They’re the modern day equivalent to the nutbars who claimed telegraphs and electrical power lines caused the flu back in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries… Also, is it known whether you have clustering both with overhead wires and with underground cables, or didn’t the research bother to differentiate between the two?

HV Underground cables have lesser electrical fields around them, but they are a PitA to deal with engineering-wise. Magnetic fields are of similar magnitude, but the thing with magnetic fields and those “allergic” to electricity is that things do not quite add up.