Submitted 3 weeks ago by coasterrider@lemmy.cafe to [deleted]
www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/…/2003838226
It’s in response to articles such as news-medical.net/…/Solar-storms-linked-to-increas… which try to link fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field during geomagnetic storms to negative health effects.
not really, because it doesn’t cite any sources. but the article itself isn’t open access so it’s also hard to verify that it’s got anything to disprove to begin with.
use of deprecated units like the gauss also makes it look weird.
See that word “Editorials” in the link. That’s a dead give-away it’s not really a good source. While it’s a decent breakdown of the facts, the article doesn’t cite sources for its claims. As a statement of a position, its fine. It’s not evidence though, and evidence is what you need to debunk something. Experimental data, analysis, meta-analysis, something that you can point at that anyone with the right tools and resources can duplicate independently and get the same results, as well as a clear description of your reasoning for how it proves what you say it proves. That’s evidence.
The conclusion is correct, but it doesn’t show how someone can know that for sure. An opinion, by itself, doesn’t disprove anything. It amounts to “Trust me bro” which can be rhetorically compelling, but isn’t the same thing as being objectively correct.
It’s an editorial, so it’s an argument, not evidence. But on the question itself it’s roughly right, and this thread is missing the study it’s arguing against.
The clickbait traces back to a 2025 paper in Communications Medicine: “Influence of geomagnetic disturbances on myocardial infarctions in women and men from Brazil” (doi 10.1038/s43856-025-00887-7). It’s a correlation study: one Brazilian city, 1998-2005, 1,340 heart-attack admissions compared against the Kp geomagnetic index. It reports a ~3x higher relative frequency on “disturbed” days, stronger in women. Its own abstract hedges: the health role of space weather “is unclear,” and women “may” be more susceptible. One city, no mechanism.
The wider field agrees there’s no consensus. A 2018 study of MI in Lithuania concludes that “there is no consensus” and the effects “require further work.” Two recent scoping reviews (Cureus 2025; Int J Biometeorol 2026) are still trying to settle it.
So the claim isn’t established. But “not established” isn’t “proven false.” The editorial’s title (“do not pose a health risk”) overshoots in the opposite direction from the clickbait. Two fair criticisms of it, both already noted above: it cites no sources, and it uses gauss/milligauss, a deprecated CGS unit (SI is tesla).
Net: a reasonable position piece, not a debunking. Honest read is “evidence is weak and mixed,” not “fraud.”
slazer2au@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There are 2 professors from reputable unis saying no, the WHO saying no, and US National Academy of Sciences saying no.
Anyone saying yes space weather effects humans is a fraud.
Actual studies that claim space weather effects people have been debunked by one of those professors and their students.