A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Journals Address Conflicts of Interest

September 21, 2006

More and more scientific societies are considering adopting disclosure rules to shed light on potential conflicts of interest.

Environmental Science & Technology reports that the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society are weighing such a policy, while the Society for Risk Analysis is now requiring authors to sign conflict-of-interest statements. These three groups publish Geophysical Letters, Journal of Climate and Risk Analysis, respectively.

No one, however, yet appears to be addressing how to deal with journal editors who themselves have potential conflicts, as is the case at Radiation Research, which is published by the Radiation Research Society (see July 31 and August 7).

In the meantime, Radiation Research continues to favor papers showing that EMFs and RF radiation have no biological effects. There are two more in the September issue. One of these is by Vijayalaxmi —her sixth paper on RF genotoxicity, or rather its lack thereof, to be published in Radiation Research. The U.S. Air Force paid for this one, like many of the others in her long-running series. Vijayalaxmi is still trailing Joe Roti Roti, who, with ten Radiation Research RF-genotox papers, is the undisputed leader. This is a very informal competition: Roti Roti, whose principal patron is Motorola, is a coauthor of two of Vijayalaxmi's Radiation Research papers.

Others continue to see effects. In a paper accepted for publication in Life Sciences, a Brazilian team reports that exposing rats to RF during pregnancy leads to offspring with changes in their DNA. The radiation levels used in this experiment are below current health guidelines.