Comments on: Reporting the gaps http://wongablog.co.uk/2007/09/12/reporting-the-gaps/ like balloons, only with dancing Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:59:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Skuds http://wongablog.co.uk/2007/09/12/reporting-the-gaps/#comment-6258 Skuds Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:59:15 +0000 http://wongablog.djcounsell.org/?p=2647#comment-6258 The story was supposedly written by a science correspondent... I was wound up by it's tone and wanted to criticise it then found it was not saying anything too wrong: just presenting it a bit sensationally. Scientists couldn't find proof of any effects of ten years' use in a six-year study of technology that is only twenty years old and only became really common in the last ten years... but they couldn't find proof of a lack of effects either so that lack of proof becomes a "hint" of potential problems. It all sounds as open-minded as those witch-ducking trials! No proof of the lack of harmful effects means just that it does not imply any sort of proof that there are harmful effects. (Absence of proof is not proof of absence!) The story was supposedly written by a science correspondent… I was wound up by it’s tone and wanted to criticise it then found it was not saying anything too wrong: just presenting it a bit sensationally. Scientists couldn’t find proof of any effects of ten years’ use in a six-year study of technology that is only twenty years old and only became really common in the last ten years… but they couldn’t find proof of a lack of effects either so that lack of proof becomes a “hint” of potential problems.

It all sounds as open-minded as those witch-ducking trials! No proof of the lack of harmful effects means just that it does not imply any sort of proof that there are harmful effects. (Absence of proof is not proof of absence!)

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