I need some help figuring out if this study a good one, or is it flawed?

[Scaredofradiation3]

A study has found that cell phones are detrimental to male sperm quality (Lower sperm motility and sperm concentration). It’s original goal was to determine if image content has a effect on sperm quality, but accidentally discovered that men who said they kept their phone in their pocket had worse sperm quality than those who didn’t have a phone in their pocket.

As far as I can tell, from my limited knowledge, the study isn’t very flawed. What I do know is that they used 52 men, which doesn’t seem like a lot. Another possible flaw is in regard to how they took sperm samples. Sperm parameters can vary amongst healthy individuals, the WHO recommends taking at least 2 samples to determine fertility. This study took one sample from all 52 men, then asked them if they wanted to participate the second time around and only 25 men agreed. So, they did take more than one sample but only for 25 men. I’m not sure, but this doesn’t seem like very good methodology:

“Sperm count varies all the time, meaning from hour to hour, day to day, month to month. To truly achieve a representative sample, men’s sperm quality would need to be monitored for a long time” - JAMES M. HOTALING, MD, MS, FECSM

I guess what that means is that only 25 samples where useful ones, and that seems like a very small number. The age range was 18-35 and all the subjects where from a Australian University.

I was wondering if certain lifestyle factors that tend to be associated with phone use where causing the infertility, not the phones themselves, but the study had a very extensive questionnaire and adjusted for many different factors from bathing habits to diet, so I don’t think that the study can be flawed in this are.

What do you guys think? Is this something that we should be worried about and change our habits over, or is it scientifically limited and no cause for alarm until bigger and better studies conform their findings?

Edited December 31, 2020 by Scaredofradiation3