ABC Catalyst's Future Under Review After Episode Linking WiFi and Cancer
The future of the ABC’s science program Catalyst and presenter Maryanne Demasiare under review after an episode which linked Wi-Fi and mobile phones with health risks including brain cancer was found to have breached the ABC’s impartiality guidelines.
When the ABC aired “Wi-Fried?” in February several scientists, including professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Simon Chapman, said it was misleading and should never have gone to air.
Wi-Fried? relied heavily on a single US doctor, Devra Davis, who said about mobile phones: “Every single well-designed study ever conducted finds an increased risk of brain cancer with the heaviest users, and the range of the risk is between 50% to eightfold. That’s a fact.”
On Tuesday evening the ABC broadcast a correction at 8pm which said an internal investigation had found the program unduly favoured the unorthodox perspective that wireless devices and Wi-Fi pose significant health risks.
A review found that the program failed to present the weight of scientific evidence on the topic, and that credible peer-reviewed science was ignored in favour of the unorthodox and unsubstantiated view that wireless devices and Wi-Fi pose a significant health risk.
The finding is highly damaging to the Catalyst brand and puts pressure on the ABC’s director of television Richard Finlayson as it is the second major breach in three years that has resulted in an episode of Catalyst being discredited and removed from the website.
“Catalyst is a highly successful and respected science program that explores issues of enormous interest to many Australians,” Finlayson said in a statement. “There is no doubt the investigation of risks posed by widespread wireless devices is an important story but we believe greater care should have been taken in presenting complex and multiple points of view.”
Finlayson said the television division takes responsibility for the broader decision-making process that resulted in the program going to air and acknowledges it is the second significant breach for the program in two years.
He signalled the program was safe by saying he was reviewing the direction for Catalyst “with a view to strengthening this very important and popular program”.
Demasi has been suspended from air until September 2016. The presenter kept her job after the first breach in 2013 for a discredited program about statins.
After the ABC aired the two-part series on statins, which are the most prescribed medication in Australia and reduce heart attack and stroke risk, particularly for people with heart disease, a study found that a significant number of people stopped taking or reduced their dose.
On Tuesday, Demasi said on Twitter she had been “directed not to comment” on the review and she retweeted someone who said she needed whistleblower protection.
The Catalyst team has been directed not to comment on this matter. For any enquiries please contact @leysietwitter.com/tyrannicaltime…
Science Censorship in Australia: The retraction of the ABC TV Catalyst “Wi-Fried?”betweenrockandhardplace.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/sci…
The ABC’s complaints unit found a number of inaccuracies in the Wi-Fried program:
• It did not provide enough context for viewers to understand that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classification of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B)” was specifically based on a positive association found in some studies between heavy mobile phone use and glioma, and not on any potential risks having been found in relation to Wi-Fi use.
• When citing the Bioinitiative Report, it did not acknowledge that report’s significant scientific criticisms and shortfalls, and consequently overstated its credibility and independence.
• One statement in the program: “Newer studies showing that people who begin to use cell phones regularly and heavily as teenagers have four to eight times more malignant glioma, that’s a brain tumour, 10 years later” was materially misleading as it overstated the risks identified in the relevant 2009 study, and implied that that study hadn’t been considered by the IARC in its 2011 decision to classify RF electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic.
• Another statement: “When the bombs fell at the end of World War II on Japan, we followed every person who survived. Forty years is how long it took for brain cancer to develop after that exposure”, overstated the latency period for brain cancer.
The full investigation report can be read here (PDF).
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