Fact Check

Thanks to some really terrible reporting from the likes of Britain's Independent and other news outlets, a story is making the rounds on the Internet that cell phones are or may be responsible for the mysterious disappearance of honey bees from their keepers' hives -- an alarming syndrome that has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The research cited in the reports however, makes no such claim. Moreover, a quote being credited to Albert Einstein and positing that, "if bees disappeared, man would have only four years of life left" appears to be apocryphal. I say appears to be, because as Mark Turner is careful to note in his blog, absence of proof is not proof. All of which is to say: Be concerned and aware, but remember to read skeptically.