Magnetic madness. ...again (sigh)

Tough one, figuring out the D’Souza family of metro Sacramento.

The D’Souzas live in a pleasant ranch house on a pretty cul-de-sac in Natomas. Well, it used to be pleasant, until they started piling up hideous layers of corrugated sheet metal all over the house. The D’Souzas say the metal is there to protect them from, to quote media reports, “unknown neighbors who have been bombarding them with radio waves and making them sick.”
Sacramento code enforcement has declared that the sheet metal has to come down.
But a little compassion might be in order.
In truth, they really are victims, victims of a technophobic popular culture all too willing to believe every  horror story that comes off the grapevine or the rumor mill.
Remember how, since 1979, everyone's been looking askance at power lines. That was the year a questionable report seemed to indicate electricity radiation increased children’s chances of getting leukemia? The study involved samplings that were dangerously small for legitimate research and relied heavily on inference instead of actual measurement.
No matter. It was about radiation!
The obsession over power lines persists in popular culture to this day even though a much more detailed, thorough and scholarly study released in 1997 found no connection between power lines and childhood leukemia.
The flames of fear were stoked further by another  study in 1992. In that episode, A scientist at the Lawrence Berkely Laboratory claimed his data showed that anything that emits an electromagnetic field can cause cancer. This would include cell phones, stereos, toasters, electric blankets, even the wiring in a home.
But this report was more than just badly done. It was downright false.
A 1995 analysis of the data in that study revealed key parts of it were falsified. It was bogus!
That belated injection of inconvenient facts into the issue mattered not. The zeitgeist's bottom line on these addle minded exercises remains “danger danger! Your clock radio will kill you!”
The tragedy is that none of this information is new.
 Just like sensationalist journalists forever in pursuit of the most lurid tales of freakish behavior or bloodshed, some researchers subvert science to their need to achieve a headline grabbing statistic, preferably the most terrifying number possible. Only by establishing a dire threat, can these mercenaries attract more funding for still more research.
At the other end of the equation are the D’Souzas. They’re unaware that the critical imperative for activist health researchers is not to scientifically seek out the truth, but rather to back up their own worst case scenario with as much persuasive pseudo science gobbledygook as possible. All these poor dupes know is that at one point they heard that electromagnetic radiation will kill you.
Plenty of preposterous urban myths just float around arousing anxiety. Yes, most of the biggest, most pernicious and most damaging have indeed already been soundly refuted. Unfortunately, nobody remembers the part of the story where we learned “Never mind. It was all a mistake (or a hoax).”
Stanley Kubrick's classic movie "Dr. Strangelove" delivers a beautiful picture of the truly bizarro power and endurance of insane technophobic myths in the character of General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). He starts World War III because he thinks fluoride in drinking water is a communist plot to make him impotent.
Ultimately General Ripper succeeds in destroying the world and while contemporary delusions may not yet have gone quite that far, they've burdened America's economy to the tune of billions of dollars. That's the kind of money being wasted on "mitigation" efforts to protect people from the threat of harm from electromagnetic radiation, a threat which there is currently no reputable proof even exists.
As far back as 1994, Congress' General Accounting Office estimated the needless expenditures on electromagnetic field protections had already surpassed $1 billion. Power companies, municipalities and school systems spend millions rerouting cables, installing shielding, or burying power lines. Rather than confront the public with facts, and rather than risk jackpot awards in frivolous lawsuits, utilities often just roll over and squander money on expensive measures unsupported by science.
Why not? It's only the ratepayers' money.