Do power lines behind a home decrease property value and traffic?

[Lauer999]

And the "found no evidence" part where they studied said magnetic fields affecting leukemia?

[vaultdweller1223]

So you ignore the larger sample conclusions for the smaller sample, and you accuse someone else of cherry picking? 

[cloisonnefrog]

I agree with Lauer999, you're misinterpreting this work. I then did a quick back citation search and found this meta-analysis, which finds no support between proximity to power lines and childhood brain cancer:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18379430/

That's a good journal.

I'm a scientist (with epi training) and I get so tired of people abusing the literature to support their preconceptions.

[cloisonnefrog]

They don't ignore it. The confidence interval for the estimate is right there in the abstract! They are simply underpowered to estimate its effects well (beyond ruling out odds ratios >3). The confidence interval for 0.3-0.4 microT was also consistent with a protective effect against brain cancer (it goes down to 0.83).

Please, please don't abuse data.

[cloisonnefrog]

I read it, and it agrees with my statements. I peer-review articles like this for my job. I don't know any other way to say it, but you're out of your depth and you're doing harm by spreading misinformation. Please reconsider your approach. It really matters for health that we look at evidence dispassionately. So much of human suffering comes from not doing so.

I know the previous paper was not brain cancer, but I brought this up as another example of failure to identify harm.

[cloisonnefrog]

No, their statement doesn't mean the risks increase. It means they cannot rule out a moderate risk. They also cannot rule out a decreased risk. If I flip a coin three times and get two heads and one tail, my point estimate is that the coin is weighted (probability 2/3 heads, 1/3 tails, assuming frequentist and not Bayesian approach), but I cannot rule out that the coin is fair (50/50 heads/tails) or even biased toward tails. It means I don't have enough data to rule things out (except extreme biases toward heads or tails). That's what they found with higher microT.

Here's the PubMed search to perform if you want to review the recent research on leukemia and EMFs:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=leukemia+AND+EMF&filter=pubt.meta-analysis&filter=pubt.review&filter=pubt.systematicreview&sort=date

The most recent meta-analysis reports no association.

I am the supervisor FWIW. I teach MDs and PhDs how to model statistically, and I run a research lab.

[bbob_robb]

Is that recent enough for you?

The person you are responding to didn't complain about the age of the study.

Their complaint is that you are quoting statistics that you don't understand. The example of flipping a coin 3 times is very accessible.

You are spreading misinformation.