Escépticos

The Basque TV station EITB recently transmitted the third programme in its "Sceptics" series, which considered a popular and controversial non-scientific fallacy, namely the supposed causal relationship between the electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone antennae and cancer. In light of current reasonable doubts in society as a whole, this topic was approached much more carefully than previous episodes as, in contrast to astrology, which often features on the programme, and in the opinion of the presenters, it deserves serious intellectual study. A group of university physics students were particularly critical, with one of them joking that, according to the false logic of "Post hoc ergo propter hoc", the Spanish Constitution also causes cancer. Indeed, they noted that the whole argument is based on confusing coincident correlation with causality. The programme demonstrated that, in the absence of a plausible causal connection, the correlation between the increased incidence of cancer and modern waves is just as significant as that for the Constitution. As tends to be the case with this programme, the real lesson to be learned concerns the application of critical thinking to any topic: it covers the tendency to treat anecdotes with the same weight as demonstrable proof; how alarmist media perceptions affect legislation; who is responsible for providing this proof; and the causality fallacy and relief experienced when discovering that an illness is caused by WiFi, microwaves or a phone antenna. (Verleiher-Text)