News & Comment

The precautionary principle should be applied to public exposures to RF radiation. So say four senior academic scientists —including the former director of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP)— in a strongly worded appeal, published today.

Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research, Paul Ben Ishai, Linda Birnbaum, Devra Davis and Hugh Taylor point to a “plethora of both experimental and epidemiological evidence establishing a causal relationship between EMF and cancer and other adverse health effects.”

My wife and I spent a few days in Basel, Switzerland, earlier this month. One afternoon as we were walking through town, I spotted a carefully crafted warning on the side of an otherwise unremarkable building. “The Odious Smell of Truth,” it called out.

With a little Googling, I learned that the expression comes from the title of an exhibition held at the Royal College of Art in London in the spring of 2017. The show was organized by Peter Kennard, a noted British political artist, and his students. They called themselves the Rage Collective. What does it mean, they wanted to know, to tell the truth in a world of false news and social media misinformation.

As it happens, a few days later, I received an email from Peter Hensinger, the scientific director of Diagnose:Funk, with a commentary he had just published which was sharply critical of Martin Röösli, an associate professor at the University of Basel.