The latest research from Britain has also yet to make this connection. However, people want assurances that no risk will be discovered in the future, and that life under the pylons will never result in disease. Scientific research is a strange business, with every fact and bit of knowledge assumed to be only conditionally true until it is proven otherwise.
Absolute promises are dangerous to make.
For this reason scientists constantly scrutinise one another's work, testing and retesting claims made by others. This is intended to ensure that the work is original, was properly done, and that strict controls were placed on the collection and interpretation of the experimental data. The latest of many scares relating to power lines arose this week from work done by two researchers from the University of Bristol. Their studies claim to show both how the power lines might cause a hazard and that the hazard causes illness. The hazard was defined by Prof Denis Henshaw in two research papers published in the International Journal of Radia- tion Biology last December, so these are not strictly new.