Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 October 11

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October 11

Can a smartphone battery get so old it bricks the phone?

Or could it still run when plugged in? Mine only works with the battery in so it seems you at least need the battery to complete the circuit. Is being a battery enough or does it also have to be a sufficiently young battery? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, phone batteries are a consumable. Some people mitigate poor battery life by carrying around a powerpack, but biting the bullet and getting a new battery (or new phone) is imo a better idea if you have the money. I know some phones are sealed (such as the Galaxy S6 or Kyocera Duraforce Pro 2) and it's difficult to replace the battery. With cloud storage it's simpler than ever to just get a new phone and start where you left off. Zindor (talk) 20:07, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Trick or treat

Is there any scientific basis to this [1]? (Also at [2], (do not type the dots when entering)). 2A00:23C6:2403:E900:6861:67CA:263D:20D0 (talk) 14:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

The first link failed for me. I didn't try the second one. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:33, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• It looks as though (1) the original poster didn't realize that the URLs would convert automatically to links once posted, hence the words about "typing the dots"; and (2) both links were munged for posting here, presumably because Wikipedia's software tried to block them as unreliable sources. If you want to see the page at the first URL you have to change "nett" to "net", or to use the second one, remove the dots within "tinyurl". I suggest not bothering, as the question is answered below. --174.89.48.182 (talk) 20:38, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

What has this to do with "trick or treat"? You are more likely to get a helpful answer if you ask a coherent question with a relevant heading.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

"Face-masks cause oxygen deprivation" is 100% bullshit, promoted by those who would choose to corrupt science for political ends. Charitably, some call it a "myth", such as entry #3 at [3]. DMacks (talk) 17:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

The "medical expert" who is quoted, Margareta Griesz-Brisson, seems deeply into alternative medicine (many examples on Google), including use of ionic footbaths to promote excretion of heavy-metals.[4] DMacks (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Both links seem to have identical contents. By the way, why did you feel obliged to mimetize the links? It begins with:

'German Neurologist Warns Against Wearing Facemasks: 'Oxygen Deprivation Causes Permanent Neurological Damage' The reinhalation of our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide. We know that the human brain is very sensitive to oxygen deprivation. There are nerve cells for example in the hippocampus that can't be longer than 3 minutes without oxygen - they cannot survive ...'

This is Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson based in London, otherwise known for her 'dramatic successes' with 'ionic feetbath' plus 'intake of coriander' as a most effective way of depoisoning the human body from mercury, lead, cadmium and nickel 'but specially aluminium' ([[5]] in German). To the scientific basis: all described deadly effects of total oxygen deprivation are reality, but there is no reason to believe that wearing facemasks can bring by any measurable oxygen deprivation in the brain. Here for example a test where the blood oxygen content was measured wearing up to five masks on top of each other [[6]]: after several minutes the blood oxygen and CO2 levels where still normal. By the way since over hundred years surgeons wear routinely such masks during many hours every day and if in the meantime they had all become brain dead idiots I think that word of it would have got around somehow. 2003:F5:6F11:9700:F449:F60B:781B:1503 (talk) 17:39, 11 October 2020 (UTC) Marco P

I know anecdotes aren't very scientific but i have some relevant experience. I spent years working in the oil industry and wore all kinds of masks for hours on end, from N95 to full-face sabre masks etc, doing hard labour and sometimes wearing full chem gear. The worst thing that happened was i got tension headaches from wearing the full-face mask too tight. I never had any trouble breathing, even when some lads i worked with pranked me by stuffing socks inside my filters and screwing them back onto my mask, i managed to keep working. Putting soft fabric masks on, like most people are wearing, is a walk in the park. They are very breathable. Zindor (talk) 20:52, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

OP, the second link is simply a URL shortening service which links to the same thing https://www.sott.net/article/442455-German-Neurologist-Warns-Against-Wearing-Facemasks-Oxygen-Deprivation-Causes-Permanent-Neurological-Damage (well if we take out the t you added). It's not a copy of the same material, if the original site dies, the material is also gone since all the service does is redirect you to the original site. URL shorteners are blocklisted on Wikipedia, because they serve no purpose yet allow people to bypass the blocklist by linking to a URL shortener link of blocked sites. If you had linked to an archival service like archive.org, that might be useful in case the site goes down, especially when people are viewing questions in the archives. But there's no point linking to a URL shortener even if they weren't block listed, and especially nor both a URL shortened URL and a full URL. Nil Einne (talk) 02:51, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

If a webdomain is wholesale banned on Wikipedia, that ought to tell something about trusting its contents. 93.138.1.207 (talk) 20:10, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. That has zero to do with the question at hand though...the site hosting the report about masks is not banned. DMacks (talk) 20:55, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I presumed that was the reason OP went the trouble of obfuscating links. 93.138.1.207 (talk) 21:05, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I suspect most likely what happened is the OP got confused due to being blocked from saving due to tinyURL being blocklist (although the page should say what the problem URL is I think even on mobile), and so just obfuscated both URLs. As I mentioned, this could be avoided by simply not adding tinyURL or other URL shorterners, they re pointless on Wikipedia even if not blocklisted. Nil Einne (talk) 05:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

If it was true, Doctors would be the first to know and they'd be the most at-risk group. Doctors wouldn't have spent the last hundred years perpetuating a conspiracy to cause brain damage to doctors! ApLundell (talk) 02:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Well sure, but asking someone with severe brain damage to work out what caused their brain damage or even that they have it is a bit of a stretch :-P Nil Einne (talk) 05:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Nil Einne, can you cite one single doctor who has suffered brain damage caused by wearing a surgical mask. I'll make it even easier, can you cite any person who has suffered primary pathology caused by wearing a standard surgical mask. Richard Avery (talk) 10:00, 17 October 2020 (UTC)