The Steel Forest on Sandia Crest
I should have known better. Earlier this month, after District Court Judge Sarah Singleton denied Arthur Firstenberg’s request for a preliminary injunction to keep his neighbor from using her cellphone and other electronic equipment (please see Electromania 4), I predicted that the case would be quietly settled with the defendant, Raphaela Monribot, receiving compensation as the victim of a frivolous lawsuit. But Mr. Firstenberg is not giving up. Yesterday, in a motion asking the court to reconsider the denial, his lawyer, Lindsay Lovejoy, submitted an affidavit from Olle Johansson, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and one of the few scientists on earth who believe that electrosensitivity is not psychological.
Coincidentally I mention Mr. Johansson in a piece published today in Slate, On Top of Microwave Mountain:
Those who believe they are somehow allergic to electromagnetism point to a supportive paper, Electrohypersensitivity: State-of-the-Art of a Functional Impairment, by Olle Johansson . . . But you probably won’t see them citing studies in the journals Psychosomatic Medicine and Bioelectromagnetics concluding that no robust evidence for electrosensitivity exists.
Mr. Johansson is a lone voice in the woods, which Ms. Monribot’s defense can easily establish. Meanwhile the legal costs for both sides must be skyrocketing.
George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review
