Why care about these water meters?

Reading my comments about the water meter controversy, you might be left wondering why I bother writing about it. So what if folks come across studies on the Internet that tell them radio waves cause cancer? Why shouldn't they be free to make their own choice?

It's true that I experience no harm from my neighbor not wanting a wireless meter. But the discussion on this issue -- the alarmist rhetoric, studies from a small group of 'concerned scientists,' implications of corporate greed, accusations of trampling on freedom -- has a familiar, disturbing ring to it.

In 1998, a British doctor published a small case study suggesting autism was caused by a common vaccine. We now know that he fabricated data and owned a financial interest in a competing vaccine, academic crimes that led to his being disbarred from medicine in the UK, but it took over a decade for the truth to come out, long after the damage had been done. One man's fraud, and a community of well-meaning Internet activists who enabled and perpetuated his lies, caused millions of parents in America and Europe to choose not to vaccinate their children. Now there's an outbreak of whooping cough right here in Dane County...and today we found out one of the kids at my daughter's day care has it.

I don't doubt that the people spreading concern about Madison's new wireless water meters have the best of intentions. And I don't blame them for the piss-poor job that public health researchers and other social scientists do with educating decision-makers and the general public on the limitations of their knowledge and methods (especially as they're often dishonest with themselves about those limitations). Those of us who know better have an obligation to educate and inform.

So that's why a skeptic like me cares about an issue like spreading panic over wireless water meters, because the evidence is all too real that letting public alarmism go unchallenged in our Internet age can have serious consequences.