Won't somebody, please, think of the children? Three weeks ago, I received my favourite email of all time, from a science teacher. "I've just had to ask a BBC Panorama film crew not to film in my class because of the bad science they were trying to carry out," it began, describing in detail the Panorama which aired this week. This show was on suppressed dangers of radiation from Wi-Fi networks, and how they harm children.

There was no science in it, just some "experiments" they did for themselves, and some conflicting experts. Panorama disagreed with the WHO expert, so he was smeared for not being "independent" enough, and working for a phone company in the past. I don't do smear. But Panorama started it. How independent were the "experiments" they did?

They had 28 minutes, I have about 550 words. In the show, you can see them walking around Norwich with a "radiation monitor". Radiation, incidentally, is a word used 30 times in half an hour, although Wi-Fi is "radiation" in the same sense light is. "Ooh, it's well into the red there," says reporter Paul Kenyon, holding a detector. Well into the red on what? It's tricky to calibrate measurements, and to decide what to measure, and what the cut-off point is for "red".

Panorama's readings were "well into the red" on "the COM monitor", a piece of detecting equipment designed by Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch, the man who leads the campaign against Wi-Fi. His device is manufactured for Powerwatch, and he will sell one to you for just £175. So not very independent, then.

Panorama did not disclose where this detector came from. And they know Alasdair Philips is no ordinary "engineer doing the readings", because they told us in the show, but didn't tell the school. "They wanted to take measurements in my classroom, compare them to radiation from a phone mast and film kids using wireless laptops. They introduced 'the engineer here to do the readings'."

The teacher found it was the same man who runs Powerwatch, the pressure group campaigning against mobile phones, Wi-Fi, and "electrosmog". In Alasdair's Powerwatch shop you can buy shielded netting for your windows at £70.50 per metre, and special shielding paint at £50.99 per litre.

When the children saw Alasdair's Powerwatch website, they were outraged. Panorama were calmly expelled from the school. So what about Panorama's classroom experiment? Not very independent, not very well designed.

Panorama planned to have the man from Powerwatch talk for about 10 minutes about how Wi-Fi worked, and what effects it had on the human body. Then they were going to reveal the readings he got from the mast, compare them to what Powerwatch measured in the classroom, and film the kids' reaction. So not very independent then.

There should be more research into Wi-Fi. If Panorama had made a show about the scientific evidence, we would be discussing that. Instead, they produced scares, and smears about whether people are "independent".

The BBC said: "Alasdair Phillips is one of a handful of people with the right equipment to do this test. He was only used in this capacity and was not given the opportunity to interpret the readings let alone campaign on them in the film."

Please send your bad science to: bad.science@theguardian.com