ReasonedResponse.com

A study just published in the Australasian Journal of Clinical Environmental Medicine links the rise in Wi-Fi use to the global rise in autism among children.

But before you flee in terror, let's note that the Wall Street Journal carried a piece last September from a leading researcher that says that most reported research today is flat wrong.  Add to that the fact that most science and medical journals around the globe lack the peer review and documentation requirements that are considered necessary by US journals, and the claim of a Wi-Fi/autism link seems less credible.

Finally, it may be important to remember that the study's author, one Dr. George Carlo, has also spent the last decade claiming that autism is caused by cell phone usage - a claim supported by no other credible research.  We don't know what causes autism or why the incidence of autism is growing, but ascribing it to the growth of Wi-Fi just because both occur in the same time period smacks of witch doctoring at its worst.

Why this sudden rash of anti-technology stories in the media?  Well, they are hardly sudden.  The same kind of claims have been made about the telegraph, radio, television (remember how the radiation from color TV tubes was linked to brain cancer back in the '60s?) and computers.  Usually, these stories are just an over-reaction to the disruption and change that technologies bring.  It would be sad, however, if the Wi-Fi industry would have to endure the decade of junk science and bad claims that have dogged the cell phone industry for the past two decades.