1. Do Cell Phones Cause
Brain Tumors?
By: Grace Ravenscroft and Eion Plenn
2. Subjects / Experimental Units
Population: Cell phone users
Sample: 10,000 cell phone users across
America
Subject: Cell phone user
To find volunteers we will make a post on Tumblr detailing our experiment and
asking for volunteers. We will need 2,500 of each block (13-25 y.o. males, 13-
25 y.o. females, 26-32 y.o. males, 26-32 y.o. females)
4. Treatment
1. Antenna Phone
a. Antenna phones emit radio waves, a form of non-ionizing radiation.
Tissues nearest to where the phone is held can absorb this energy,
therefore creating a risk of Brain Tumor development.
Control
1. Smartphone (Android)
a. Radiation amounts are insignificant and therefore cannot cause brain
tumor development.
6. Experimental Design Compare
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7. Design continued...
The experiment will run for two years, but there
will be continuous check ups on tumor
development with the subjects after the
experiment is completed.
8. Key Design Elements
Control Group:The control is applied in the study so that we can compare the
development of brain tumors in people who used androids (no cancerous radio
waves) to people who used brick phones from the 80’s (significant cancerous
radio waves).
Randomization: Randomization is applied when we are assigning the subjects
to an android or an antenna phone. We do this by assigning each subject in
each block a unique integer between 0001 and 2,500 and the first 1,250
numbers to be pulled out will be assigned to the Antenna phone (treatment).
Replication: There is a large sample size therefore quantifying natural
variation
9. Blocking
Gender block: We blocked by gender due to the fact that women and men
have different skull thicknesses therefore reducing the effect of skull thickness
as a lurking variable
Age Block: We blocked by age due to the fact that cell phone use may have a
more pronounced effect on brains that are still developing than brains that have
finished developing. We excluded people over 32 from the study due to the fact
that the elderly are more prone to developing cancer than younger people, and
because people older than 32 are more likely to have owned and used one of
the antenna phones, which would affect the development of brain tumors.
10. Irrelevant Design features
Cell phone usage block: We did not block by amount of cell phone usage
because today’s cell phones have a negligible amount of radiation, and we
excluded those from the study who would have used high-radiation phones
from the days of old.
Blinding: Blinding is not being used because the development of brain tumors
is not affected by the patients knowledge of cell phone radiation. Brain tumors
don’t discriminate.
11. Concerns
The ethicality of potentially causing subjects to
develop brain tumors is questionable.
The cell phone usage in the experiment could
vary person to person. However, there are
enough subjects that it should not have too big
of an impact.
