Do electronic gadgets really threaten airline safety?

Wall Street Journal : Can passengers’ electronic devices affect an airplane’s navigation or communications? In a brief article containing no mention of radio-frequency physics or engineering, psychology professors Daniel Simons and Christopher F. Chabris report that the Federal Aviation Administration is seeking public comment on its two-decade-old prohibition against using such devices during takeoffs and landings. Having surveyed “492 American adults who have flown in the past year” and found pervasive noncompliance, the authors argue that the ban “rests on anecdotes, not on hard evidence—because there isn’t any.” They mock the fallacy of conflating correlation with causation—the belief that an absence of accidents means the ban succeeds—by invoking the cartoon character Homer Simpson, who organized an elaborate bear patrol in his town “and exulted in the absence of bear sightings that ensued.”