Hey Kent German… meet Devra Davis

… no, JunkScience.com is not trying to compete with Match.com. We’re just trying to keep naive media types from falling for old junk scientists.

CNET.com cell phone reviewer Kent German’s column on this week’s cell phone scare (“Cell phones and health? A debate worth having,” Feb. 23) relied solely on infamous hysteric Devra Davis for scientific input:

Dr. Devra Davis–an epidemiologist, environmental health researcher, and founder of Environmental Health Trust–characterizes the finding as stunning. “This demonstrates that cell phone use affects brain activity,” she told CNET. “The study used real people and was as close as you can get to a biopsy on a living brain.”

Davis, who authored the 2010 book “Disconnect: The Truth about Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide it and How to Protect Your Family,” also cautioned against making firm conclusions from the study, but she takes a forceful role in advocating for more research. “The notion that we have enough information is completely wrong,” she said.

Yes, we only have 25 years of wide-spread, real-world experience with cell phones and many more with military radio operators — and Davis is excited because “cell phone use affects brain activity.” Really?

Mr. German… meet Sir Richard Doll and Richard Peto, two of the most prominent epidemiologists of all time. As reported by Science (November 1990), here’s what Doll and Peto had to say about Davis’ claim that brain cancer was on the rise:

Peto and Doll seemed overcome with ennui about this subject when Science contacted them at their Oxford University lab. They found [Davis’ article in The Lancet] “uninteresting,” “quite uninformative,””boring,” “old junk,” and “well known for years.”

That may be a vintage critique — but it’s one that Davis has yet to contradict or shake-off over the past 20 years.

Yes, let’s meet Devra Davis…then…

Devra Davis, circa 1990

… and now…

Devra Davis, today

New hair. Same old junk.

Oh, and I almost forgot… Devra Davis claims to be a “Nobel Prize winner” for her work on the discredited IPCC. LOL.

2 thoughts on “Hey Kent German… meet Devra Davis”

  1. Can you point us to the *thousands of studies*? Despite some year-to-year declines and increases, incidence rates and mortality rates for brain cancer and other nervous system cancers in the United States have remained about the same over the past twenty years [i.e. since before ‘universal’ use of cell phones].
    http://endeavors.unc.edu/spr2009/targeting_tumors.php
    Genetics (as represented by racial data) is a far more important factor, with whites being twice as susceptible as Asians/Oceanians.

  2. I don’t understand what the author of this article is trying to prove. He is saying that two people called Devra Davis’ work boring so that means something?? What kind of idiocy is this. What proof does he have that there is something wrong with Devra Davis’ assertions and the thousands of studies that confirm biological problems with RF.

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