TOK Journal Entry 5: Looking at the mobile phone popcorn experiment - Can we trust authorities of knowledge? - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Some people in the past have speculated whether mobile phones can cause cancer. This specific popcorn experiment, as you will see in this entry, sparked a heated debate. Let's see what the outcome of this was. I hope you enjoy!💜😀
Can we trust the authorities of knowledge?
Recently, in one of my nature of science lessons, we talked about the topic of whether phones and other pieces of technology cause cancer. We watched a short video clip that was filmed quite a while ago where three friends each put their phones together and placed popcorn cornels in the middle of the circle of phones. When the three friends rang their mobiles on separate phones, it looked like the popcorn cornels popped because of the phones. However, there was some doubt in my mind about whether this was actually true because when you pop popcorn cornels inside a saucepan, it takes a significant amount of heat energy to make the popcorn. In contrast, the video did look very convincing and so I could understand why many people at the time were led to believe that phones caused cancer after watching that video. To check if the theory that phones cause cancer was true, we decided to do some research that included more scientific reasoning.
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A mobile phone works by receiving microwave signals from a nearby phone mast and sends the signals back to the other receiver. Long pieces of information can be transmitted in a short spaces of time through these short bursts of microwave radiation signals. Where people think mobile phones can cause cancer is the fact that although much of the microwave radiation will be absorbed by your skull when you place your phone close to your ear to make a call, some of the radiation could pass through to your brain and supposedly cause cell mutations. However, the energy carried by these microwave signals are still much too weak to cause damage to cells in the way that X-rays and Gamma rays do.
The Bluetooth headset retailer, Cardo Systems, claimed that they were the ones who created this hoax mobile phone popcorn video trend. The company said that they created this amateur-looking video to ignite a trend that everyone could take part in so that they could promote their headsets to their customers. They edited the video to make it look like the popcorn cornels popped because of the phones. According to the company, the campaign was not meant to be created to scare people about the dangers of mobile phones, it was just created to advertise the brand's products.
However, this rather manipulative campaign did make me question, can we trust some authorities of knowledge? After hearing what Cardo Systems did, I believe that there should always be an element of doubt about the information that gets handed down to us. Sometimes, we don't always have a choice to believe something because sometimes, there isn't always other information that is given to us. However, I think doubt is healthy and it prevents us from getting misled by information that is either manipulative or not true because it gives us a sense of consciousness and awareness about the impact some authorities of knowledge have on us. To me, unless we don't have a choice, we should always doubt things if businesses or people are spreading this information to make money because they're probably thinking about the finances instead of the wellbeing of their customers.
What do you think? Can we trust all authorities of knowledge? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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