User talk:Benphen

Cell tower news story

Hi. It's important, when dealing with articles that are dealing with scientific topics, to ensure that sources being quoted are reliable sources. While it is certainly an interesting claim, and noteworthy enough to include the existence of the claim, the reality is that it is only a press release that gives no actual details of the study itself, and only a snippet of an interview with an environmentalist who has no bee research credentials, and was in fact working on research to show human health risks of cell phone towers ([1]):

According to Sainuddin Pattazhy, president of the Kerala Environmental Researchers' Association, a study undertaken by the association has found that radiation from the BTS has been posing public health problems. It also shows that a good number of people residing in the surrounding areas of these towers were found to have been contracted eye and sleep disorders.

As such, the appropriate course is to point readers to the new story without reproducing it in its entirety (especially since the reporter has mistakenly used the phrase "cell phone" when it should have read "cellular phone tower"), or lending it undue credence. Given that it has recently been demonstrated that CCD is caused by a virus, the inclusion of the EM theories is presumably itself on the verge of being eliminated from this article, along with the pesticides, GM crops, and other theories that have no scientific evidence to support them.

I would prefer not to get into some back-and-forth editing war over something like this, and perhaps I can offer a reasonable compromise: (1) When the actual details of the study become public, then we can add a link to the data, and expand on the content (2) if there are articles and commentaries made public that criticize the study (e.g. [2]), then those should also be included, so as not to allow readers to think that the claims are NOT being questioned.

Wikipedia does not exist to promote sensationalist claims and foster public hysteria; there is a cautionary principle involved, and a story such as this sets off too many red flags to just slap it into Wikipedia as if it has established some sort of credence. Sincerely, Dyanega (talk) 01:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)