The mobile phone has finally been given the all-clear in a long-running health scare saga over eye cancer, Telecom TV reports this week.

 Because innocent verdicts in the ongoing 'cancerphone' debate tend not to get the media exposure that the original 'link' stories get, we're going to redress the balance. When any all-clear is sounded from now on we'll let you know.

 'Link' stories are generally the ones that trigger a health scare. These are the headlines that say something like 'Researchers find possible link between telephones and sudden death'. These are often sourced from preliminary studies or small sample research and are really the opening shots of a possible scientific investigation.

 But it's the accretive effect of these stories that lead the public at large to suspect a huge scientific cover-up - if the only stories on the subject are about 'links' constantly being established but with no subsequent government measures are being taken to remove the 'risk', the public not unnaturally starts protesting against mobile masts and to worry about children using phones.

 This latest 'all clear' then is actually a text book case of how science should work. Back in 2001 a team at the University of Essen in Germany found that regular mobile phone users appeared to be three times more likely to develop cancer of the eye. They had examined 118 sufferers ofuveal melanoma - a cancer which grows in the iris and base of the retina of the eye - and compared their mobile phone use to that of a control group of 475 people and found a much higher rate of cancer in the mobile group.

 However, the research leader was at pains to point out that the study was very small and no attention had been given to 'confounding variables' (whether there could be other factors accounting for the incidence in the mobile phone group). Further research would be needed, he said.

That didn't stop various newspapers from picking up the story and running hard. Fortunately, the original researchers set out to challenge their own research and embarked on a larger and longer-term study to see if the tendency was really there or whether the original study had produced a statistical anomaly.

 The second study, recently released, involved 459 patients and 1,194 control subjects drawn from the general population, from ophthalmology clinics, and from siblings of the patients. The investigators grouped study participants according to amount of time spent on the phone, as 'never users', sporadic users and regular users. There was no statistically significant association between mobile phone use of up to about 10 years and uveal melanoma risk.

"Uncertainty exists about the role, if any, of radio waves transmitted by radio sets or mobile phones in human carcinogenesis," the researchers said.