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Schools and Cellphone Towers

David McLoughlin

Recently I took my almost-five-year-old daughter, Philippa, to an introductory session at the school she'll soon be attending. I was pleasantly surprised to find the teacher talking to his class of new entrants about gravity. Surprised, because until then I'd seen scant sign of anything remotely scientific in the classrooms during the six years my two older children have been at the same school. Pleased, because the kids were obviously enjoying themselves, putting up their hands eagerly to raise such things as how hard it would be to go to the toilet in space "because you'd float off the seat." It seems former Education Minister Lockwood Smith's long fight to get a science curriculum into primary schools is finally making progress.

Science does not faze many of today's five-year-olds, who've been brought up with VCRs and computers and for whom the marvel of space travel is somewhat old-hat. Unfortunately, it does faze too many adults, including many teachers. How else to explain the astonishing drama playing at primary schools around the country, where teachers are threatening to close schools and parents are threatening to withdraw their children if cellphone transmitters are built nearby?

Recently, I had to write a magazine article about the cellphone controversy. The first place I started was our university physics departments and the National Radiation Laboratory in Christchurch. They confirmed what I had assumed from my limited personal knowledge, that cellphone transmissions are so low-powered that they have no known effect on humans whatever. My subsequent extensive reading of the relevant international literature revealed the same.

I asked the university professors and the NRL staff how many schools, parents and journalists had approached them for similar information. "Hardly any" or "none" were their replies. I was astounded. Here is one of the biggest scientific debates taking place in this country, yet nobody asks the scientists.

The schools are saying cellphone transmitters cause everything from learning difficulties and sleep disorders to brain tumours and premature births. There is no valid, tested, reproducible scientific study to support those assertions, but the schools (and the news media which quote their teachers and board members) are stating these alarming propositions as scientific fact. If they haven't asked the scientists, where are they getting their information?

As I visited various schools in Auckland and Christchurch, I asked the teachers and boards of trustee members two questions. "Where did you get your information about cellphones?" and "Have you approached a university physics department or the National Radiation Laboratory about your concerns?" In each instance, the answers were the same. Their information came from Associate Professor Ivan Beale, a psychologist at Auckland University, and Dr Neil Cherry, a meteorologist from Lincoln University. And no, they hadn't approached physics departments or the NRL.

I visited the good Professor Beale and the good Dr Cherry. I found them pleasant, sincere, concerned people who genuinely believed cellphones might be dangerous. They have picked through the international literature in search of material supporting their fears. Naturally, they have found some. That they choose to ignore the 98% of studies which have found no cause for concern does not mean they are wrong. It also does not mean they are right.

What absolutely astounds me is that the hypothesis of Professor Beale and Dr Cherry is the only one given credence by schools and most of the news media.

I don't blame anyone for being dismissive of Telecom's claim that the transmitters no more dangerous than a radio-controlled toy car. As a journalist, I too tend to doubt the impartiality of a large company promoting its own products. But that's healthy scepticism. The failure of schools and the media to seek alternative information to that provided by Professor Beale and Dr Cherry is shameful, especially as that alternative information is readily available and just a phone call away.

As a journalist, I despaired for my "profession" recently when I saw the New Zealand Herald, the country's largest newspaper, approach the principal of a primary school for comment on the safety of a new kind of cellphone transmitter Telecom is installing on lamp posts in Auckland's central business district. The newspaper's only apparent reason for seeking the principal's comment was that she has been vocal in her determination to close her school if a cellphone tower is built nearby. As far as I know she has no relevant scientific qualification which makes her the expert the Herald reporter treated her as.

I have waited, and waited and waited for the Herald, or indeed almost any other mainstream news media, to approach an appropriately qualified scientist for their comment on this important public issue. Perhaps it doesn't occur to journalists to do this. There are fewer scientists in journalism than there are in the teaching profession.

The more likely explanation is more disturbing. I suspect the main reason neither journalists nor teachers bother seeking impartial scientific advice about cellphone safety is that scientists are not really trusted much anymore.

In this new age of doubt and dissent, of distrust of politicians and the establishment in general, when many people half-believe the X-Files is a documentary, when science has become a Cinderella subject in schools and universities, I suspect the people who are scared of cellphone transmitters don't want to believe anything contrary to their fears anyway. When the Berlin Wall fell, certain American academics talked about "the end of history." What we're seeing now is "the death of science".

The scientific community really needs to speak up more often, and much louder, than it does, to counter the scare-mongering and pseudo-science that dominate the news media and public debate.

Some of the scientists I approached while researching my cellphone article told me they preferred not to speak publicly because the opponents of cellphones and similar new technologies would label them as lackeys of Telecom and shout them down.

While I sympathise with their concerns, scientists who are too fearful of countering the garbage that too often passes for public debate are letting society and science down. They are letting the Luddites, the fearmongers, the ignorant and the fruitcakes win. In the long run that will help nobody at all.

David McLoughlin is a journalist currently working for North & South.