This is an ‘html-only’ version of Scribblings with no database behind it. This means it is not possible to search it. I am working on a new version with which I am hoping to eventually put back into the main site. The new version is here but please note that there is no link directly back to the main site.
Saturday, 2nd June 2007
More postmodern nonsense
I find it really hard to believe that a supposedly serious newspaper such as The Independent can publish such nonsense as this piece about what has come to be called electrosmog in pseudoscience circles.
Other than the fact that there is not a shred of real evidence that ‘electrosensitivity’ is anything more than just quackery1 the article is so full of bad science that you do seriously have to wonder whether the author is seriously under-educated or simply barking mad. She seems to think, for example, that you can become radioactive simply by being exposed to the signals emitted by mobile phones and Wi-Fi base stations. She never does tell us whether her house plants got better once she’d removed all sources of electromagnetic radiation2 from her house.
One problem is that in these postmodern days we are supposed to treat all opinions, no matter how cuckoo, as equally valid so no doubt someone will email me to tell me that what I’ve just written is my own opinion while that of the Independent article’s author is hers. In a real sense, of course, that’s entirely true but it ignores the fact that what I’ve said is at least based on some sort of rationality and could be backed up with some genuine evidence instead of just hearsay, anecdote and the rantings of the alternative medicine crowd.
An apology
Since moving the site to a new server Scribblings is not as easy to find your way around as it used to be. It used to depend on a script and a database on the server but is currently served as ‘flat html’.
I have some ideas about how to make it a bit easier but they depend on writing another script. I hope to get around to it ‘eventually’.
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