Don't sign over your common sense

My mother, whose birthday is tomorrow (please in your charity say a prayer for the repose of her soul!), remembered going into shoe stores in the '50s and being able to get your feet x-rayed. It was a big sales come-on -- see a picture of your bones! It's fun! It's neat-o! The machines were used widely for decades, even after concerns about radiation were raised, even after regulations were put in place.

She would often bring this phenomenon up as an example of not jumping onto every bandwagon that rolls through town. She had an inkling that radiation wasn't good for you, but more than that, it just somehow seemed off to her. It seemed to her that being able to see your own bones wasn't natural and normal (obviously), and her gut feeling was that you probably paid a price somewhere down the road to do it.

She was right. You can read about the serious effects (all "correlative" at the time!) here: Shoe Fitting Xray Machines Were The Latest Science, Too

I learned from my mom that you have a right to your intuitions. You can evaluate claims, even if you are not an expert, because every claim, no matter how technical, nevertheless has to relate to reality, and everyone has a basic level of ability to test things against reality. At a minimum, we can know whether a source is trustworthy, and we have a right to decide for ourselves how far to trust any earthly authority.

Experience shows that no one can hold up something new and shiny and claim for it that no harm will result. Only time will tell. It's wise to be cautious.