Have a look over here at Ben Goldacre’s very good column on the idiocy that is the Wi-Fi scare story.

Have another look over here at his blog post earlier in the week.

Read through the comments. Then check back with the Guardian piece.

There’s a number of criticisms and jokes that move from that comments section to the published piece (my own snark about holographs being hand written documents for example).

At this point someone is going to accuse me of something or other, my wanting credit perhaps, but that’s entirely not what I mean or am interested in. I’ve done exactly the same myself, as this blog post morphed into this Times piece. Taken the suggestions and arguments  from commenters (who after all are, both collectively and individually, cleverer and more witty than I am) and incorporated them, to the great improvement of the finished article (sorry).

Thus an example of the benefits to journalists (perhaps columnists is a better description, or opinion piece writers) of the blog. You get to try out a piece, run the arguments past a large group of editors and subs, find out where the holes in the argument are, pick up some good lines and jokes and in the end, get a much better piece.

Some very good jokes from that comments section that didn’t make it into the Guardian though, ones that I think deserve more attention:

…so doing the maths, is the Independent now reporting science at a level of 5 DMWU’s?*

*Daily Mail Woo Units
…
“mobile phones owned by over 95 per cent of the population” – 6% of the
English population are under 5. So a significant number of
pre-schoolers are on pay-as-you-gnaw contracts then?
…

I’ve cracked it… these people get broadband with wi-fi installed,
then within days they get “skin problems, exhaustion, blurred vision,
and symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome”… Dr Johnson
(homeopath) “suspected that they might be sensitive to electromagnetic
radiation (EMR).”

They’re just staying up all night, staring at their computers and wanking.  It all makes sense.

….

“The real problem is that genetic mutations that normally would have
died out are now being allowed their own newspaper columns.”

…

There’s a lot more there too, worth reading them all.