Note: This study found no significant biological effects under its experimental conditions. We include all studies for scientific completeness.
Whole Body / General176 citations
Recall bias in the assessment of exposure to mobile phones
No Effects Found
Authors not listed · 2008
Brain tumor patients and healthy people make similar memory errors about phone use, validating mobile phone health studies.
Plain English Summary
Summary written for general audiences
Researchers analyzed mobile phone records from 212 brain tumor patients and 296 healthy controls to check if people accurately remember their past phone use. Both groups made similar memory errors - underestimating call frequency by 19% while overestimating call duration by 40%. This finding suggests that memory bias likely doesn't skew mobile phone health studies significantly.
Cite This Study
Unknown (2008). Recall bias in the assessment of exposure to mobile phones.
Show BibTeX
@article{recall_bias_in_the_assessment_of_exposure_to_mobile_phones_ce927,
author = {Unknown},
title = {Recall bias in the assessment of exposure to mobile phones},
year = {2008},
doi = {10.1038/jes.2008.27},
}Quick Questions About This Study
No more than healthy people do. Both brain tumor patients and controls overestimated call duration by the same factor of 1.4 and underestimated call frequency by 0.81, showing no systematic bias between groups.
Not very accurate. People typically underestimate the number of calls they make by 19% while overestimating how long each call lasted by 40%, with large random errors on top of these systematic biases.
This INTERPHONE validation study found little evidence for differential recall bias overall, suggesting that memory errors don't systematically skew case-control studies comparing brain tumor patients to healthy controls.
Network operators provided actual mobile phone records for 212 brain tumor cases and 296 controls across three countries, covering an average of 2 years of usage data for comparison with interview responses.
No, the opposite appears true. The ratio of reported to recorded phone use increased with higher usage levels, meaning heavier users showed greater discrepancies between their memories and actual records.