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WiFi fries your brain, doesn't it?

I so wanted to avoid writing about this in case my brain exploded but the ripples have spread so far that it now seems unavoidable. If you recall, the end of last week's analysis suggested that we don't learn much, if anything from history. Hardly a revolutionary statement.

And this week -- as if it were needed -- comes further proof.

A week or so ago, what used to be a flagship TV documentary series on the BBC blew its weekly budget on the subject of whether or not WiFi causes damage to the brains of children.

Among those with an ounce -- sorry, gramme -- of knowledge about the scientific method, which has stood the world in such good stead for so long, there will have been a sucking of teeth. There will also have been a sense of foreboding, well-founded given the brainless way that even supposedly prestigious media outlets such as the BBC are now following the Daily Mail-style scare story agenda.

And that's before you saw the programme.

Afterwards, you'll have done well if your brain didn't explode. The premise of the story was to discover the impact of WiFi radiation -- the scary-sounding word 'radiation' was used throughout.

So in the best scientific tradition, Panorama took itself off to one school and asked them.

A pseudo-scientific test took place involving a man with a meter, measuring radiation. Well, wasn't it surprising when this individual, who leads a lobby against radiation found that an obviously huge but totally uncalibrated amount of radiation was flying about?

So despite the lack of a double-blind test, of comparable evidence, of any proof of causal links, the issue of WiFi damage has shot to the top of the agenda.

Like the campaign over phone masts, this one is destined to run. Could children be damaged by radio waves -- such as the stuff that the life-giving sun distributes every day in huge quantities? Well maybe, but there's no evidence one way or another, and there's no way to prove a negative. Nothing can be proven to be absolutely safe.

The question, as with all risk assessment, is whether or not any potential damage outweighs the potential benefits. In an age when children regularly sleep with active mobile phones on their pillows, worrying about WiFi, whose radios have a minuscule distance to cover by comparison and whose radiation emissions are therefore smaller, is close to pointless.

Given that there are billions of phones out there and countless lives have been saved by them, but no ill-effects reported -- apart maybe from hot ears after a super-long chat -- isn't it time to start worrying about really risky behaviour?

Let's start with crossing the road.