On Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:38:07 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:

Its not exactly the same, but clearly it makes no useful difference
if you are using to set fire to a house.

The 3 high-octane authors used sophistry to falsely make the reader feel a
greater danger than actually existed:
a. The authors realized their audience wouldn't parse properly;
b. Therefore, the authors artificially inserted the false modifier;
c. Their intent was to intensify the danger perceived by the reader;
d. Where the non-parsing reader would fail to identify the sophism;
e. Therefore perceiving greater danger than truthfully existed.

My point is that we must be on guard for both the "intensification" and the
"sophistry" in similar cellphone scares, just as we should have been on
guard during the McCarthy Era and the Salem Witch Trials.

Mass hysteria is powerful, and my argument is that this is why people
"perceive" such a huge danger from cellphones, when, in fact, the danger is
non existent (as proven by the very real and valid overall accident record).