There’s an embargo on the Interphone/WHO data that is being published by the International Journal of Epidemiology. That embargo is until 1:30am, Paris time, on the 18th of May.
That embargo hasn’t worked. Well, it has in one sense — nobody has come out and laid out the full data. What has happened instead is that the press have taken the best headlines they can from the embargoed copies of the report that have been distributed, and gone with it. This is what the press does.
And here’s the headlines:
Heavy mobile users risk cancer
Landmark study set to show potential dangers of heavy mobile phone use
Long conversations on mobile phones can increase risk of cancer, suggests 10-year study
So what has been the mobile industry’s reaction to this? Well, the GSMA has issued a press release to the same embargo as the Interphone publication in the IJE. That seems proper. So we’re not going to tell you yet what it says.
But the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, no doubt spooked by the headlines you see above, has jumped in and released a response to data that hasn’t been published yet.
Its press release, dated yesterday, says, “The International Journal of Epidemiology today published a combined data analysis from a multi national population-based case-control study of glioma and meningioma, the most common types of brain tumour.”
Except, er… it didn’t. In fact, that was yesterday, today is today, and the IEJ isn’t publishing until the morning.
There’s a debate to be had about embargoes: some people hate them, some see the necessity. But in this case, where interested parties and click-hungry sub-editors are bound to look for the cherries that attract them the most, the only mature response is to look for the full data.
And that hasn’t, officially, been published yet.