[samhclark]

In my opinion, this was a great debunking of Benn Jordan's infrasound videos.

When I first saw his videos, they didn't quite sit right with me. I was reminded of the arguments people made about WiFi and 5G. But I couldn't put my finger on the flaws in the logic, or the specifics of it. I also didn't feel like I had the time to dig in and research all his claims myself, so I just kinda left them feeling skeptical.

Reading this article felt great. Admittedly, it confirmed my biases so I tried spot checking it here and there. What little I did check seemed right and I trust Andy Masley's previous reporting.

I only have two criticisms of the article. First, the few cheap digs he took at Jordan (e.g. the CO2 emissions from his long drive) which I agree with but are unrelated to the overall argument. Second, some of the paragraphs had a strong "written by AI" tone. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but that made me trust those specific paragraphs slightly less.

[oofbey]

The thing Benn totally avoids is ever putting decibel levels on anything he measures. Yes NASA showed clearly that infrasound is dangerous at 140 dB (omg of course) and at 100dB it’s annoying and has psychological effects. But all the research says that below about 70dB there’s nothing harmful. Of course there must be some decibel level below which it’s completely innocuous. But Benn never goes there - infrasound bad.

I would guess a chunk of this is because Benn’s home grown microphone simply hasn’t be calibrated to any reference standard - because that would require access to expensive lab-quality equipment he doesn’t have or hasn’t bothered to find. Why do the really hard work to make things rigorous when it would make the YouTube story less compelling?