Saturday 14 May 2011

What a load of utter beeshit

Step 1, a paper is published is says that putting mobile phones in beehives discombobulates bees. Doesn't seem to mention death

The audiograms and spectrograms revealed that active
mobile phone handsets have a dramatic impact on the behavior of the bees, namely by inducing the worker
piping signal. In natural conditions, worker piping either announces the swarming process of the bee colony or
is a signal of a disturbed bee colony.

Step 2, a Daily Mail story has mixes into reporting of the paper with some extrapolation to this being the cause for mass bee carnage.

  • Phone signals confuses bees and cause them to begin flying erratically before suddenly dying

Signals from mobile phones could be partly to blame for the mysterious deaths of honeybees, new research shows.

Step 3, a “Green Design” site reports on the Daily Mail story leaving out virtually all of the content of the original paper and focussing on the dead bee bit

It’s Official – Cell Phones are Killing Bees

Scientists may have found the cause of the world’s sudden dwindling population of bees – and cell phones are to blame.

Step 4, the last story is the one that spreads fear, doubt and uncertainty throughout social networks via the medium of people being wrong on the internet.

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