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Using the photo-sharing site Flickr and a personal history of studying whale photos, she identified a picture, taken in 2001 by tourist Freddy Johansen in Madagascar, of an Antarctic humpback known to scientists as number 1363. Two years earlier, researchers had spotted 1363, a female, swimming alongside another whale in Brazil. Brazil to Madagascar. That’s a distance of 6,000 miles, nearly double any documented migration by a humpback.

The discovery led to her co-authoring a paper published earlier this month in Biology Letters, and earning her the esteemed title of citizen scientist. In the process, she changed our understanding of the humpback whale.

readers might be misled into thinking that the scientific community or bodies such as the American Cancer Society are raising concerns about wireless devices. They aren’t.

the story made much of the fact that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IRIC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), classified RF radiation as a “class 2B”, or possible carcinogens. What the story doesn’t say is that same category includes pickled vegetables (some epidemiological studies link them to stomach cancer), Styrofoam cups, and coffee.

It’s not just that we don’t know exactly how RF waves would cause cancer. It’s that there’s no plausible way for it to happen without rewriting the laws of physics and biology. It’s by the same reasoning that most scientists dismiss homeopathic medicine – at least the genuine kind that’s so dilute there’s nothing in it.