How should the results be interpreted?
We need to distinguish between ‘association’ and ‘causation’. In this case, the authors found an association between prenatal and post-natal exposure to mobile phones based on 7 year retrospective recall of mothers and behavioural problems in children. An association means that the exposure and the outcome go together, but doesn’t mean that one necessarily causes the other. For example, it is possible that both mobile phone exposure and behavioural problems in children were due to a common cause, such as overworked parents. Although this was a cohort study, there was still potential for recall bias and associated exposure misclassification. As the authors note in the paper, results should be interpreted with caution.
