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A previous study claiming that long term cell phone use does raise the risk of brain cancer. Without getting into the details my initial response is “Of course it does!” Scientists are pretty sure that numerous types of radiation can affect the the cellular mechanisms that regulate cell growth. The most well publicized is the link between UV radiation and skin cancer. Despite all the warnings and concerns, people still survive going to the beach. What is interesting is that neither study has found an overwhelmingly high correlation. The latest study found an increased risk factor of 2 to 2.5 times with use of about an hour a day for 10 years. It would be interesting to see the results of a similarly conducted study that compares the risk of skin cancer to long term exposure to UV rays.

Update: PhIP, a compound found in meats cooked at high temperatures, has been linked to prostate cancer…if you are a rate and are feed concentrated doses every meal for 8 weeks straight.

In case you have not been following the story: Nature set out to evaluate how Wikipedia, the on-line collaborative Encyclopedia, compared to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s on-line resources with regards to accuracy of scientific entries. They sent 42 pairs of edited articles to a number of researchers according to their specialization and tallied the results. Nature concluded that the average Wikipedia entry contained four errors while Britannica averaged three. Britannica issued a statement [pdf] citing numerous fallacies on the part of Nature and defended roughly half the errors that Nature’s reviewers had cited. Most recently Nature responded with their own rebuttal.

I am curious as to why no one has responded from Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, was quoted in the article as saying he was pleased with the results and that their goal was to achieve the same or better accuracy as Britannica. I wonder why Wikipedia has not issued a statement or reported as having corrected the errors cited in the Nature study. Wikipedia has documented the competition in their entry for Britannica.

This is no April Fool’s joke. The New York Times is reporting that Iraqis are moving - resettling along sectarian and ethnic lines. The risk is not that Iraq will be in civil war for the next 5 years, it is that Iraq will divide into two fundamentalist regimes who spend the next 50 years in war over natural the resources of the region and the surrounding countries take sides.

I had been thinking recently about trying to come up with a collection of so called “move-plot threats” - at phrase seemingly coined by security guru Bruce Schneier. Well, Bruce beat me to the punch by announcing his Move-Plot Threat Contest. Come up with the wildest possible movie-plot threat and he will send the winner an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. What better way to raise awareness of false security?