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June 3, 2011 01:57 pm PDT

Talking to the public about cell phones, safety, and cancer risks

This week, the World Health Organization re-categorized cell phone usage as a possible cancer risk. That sounds scary, but as many people have pointed out, a "possible cancer risk" means something different to scientists than it means to the public. I've already posted links to some very nice explainers by Ed Yong and Matthew Herper that really get to the heart of what is going on behind the headlines, and why the fear this whole incident has inspired isn't necessarily justified. We don't know whether or not cell phones cause certain types of brain cancer. There's some evidence out there that leads scientists to want to know more. But the majority of what we do know tells us that the risks are likely to be very small, if not completely non-existent. That's the issue everybody's been talking about, but what's captured my interest is the way we talk about it. Throughout the week, I've felt like scientists, public health experts, journalists, and the general public have been speaking past one another—using language that looks the same, but means something very different to different groups of people. Context is key, I wrote on Tuesday. But, invariably, when we talk about almost any public health issue, it's the context that's the first thing to go missing under our collective couch cushions. To find out more about why that is, and what we can do to fix it, I called Bradford Hesse, chief of the National Cancer Institute's Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch. He studies the way scientists talk to the public about cancer risk, and had a lot to say about probability, risk mitigation, and why the Internet is both a source of confusion and the way out of our communication quagmire....


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/95zLVFv_pOk/talking-to-the-publi.html

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