Phone mast allergy 'in the mind'

Well, "The study was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications
and Health Research programme, a body which is itself funded by
industry and government."  doesn't indicate to me a direct involvement of the telecommunications industry, but it is difficult to know exactly who funds this programme and in what proportions.

The mthr website (http://www.mthr.org.uk/index.htm) provides some information, and their members, at least at first glance, don't appear to have any particular telecommunications affiliations (I didn't check them all), being largely the academic crowd you would expect - professors of physics, psychology and so on.

You make a good point though, I haven't been able to find any details on their website of how much of their funding may come from organisations that would have an interest in seeing this research produce a particular result, but I am dubious as to how much influence they could have in any case, given that the funding is managed by a board of apparently industry-independant academics, and that the research teams themselves are not associated with the MTHR, they bid for funding on a per-study basis, and are subject to peer-review which would ususally pick up on any possibility of bias in a given study.

The website also provides a summary of the experiment (made before it was conducted) http://www.mthr.org.uk/research_projects/hypersensitivitysymptoms.htm which indicates, as one would expect, that the experiment would be conducted double-blind, thereby minimising the risk that any member of the research team could have any influence on the subjects.

There is almost no doubt in my mind that this study produced the result that represents the situation: There is no question that these people have symptoms, but those symptoms are not caused by mobile phone masts. There is also a strong precendent for similar symptoms arising from an individual's belief:

"Belief is a very powerful thing," said Professor Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, who led the three-year study.

"If you really believe something is going to do you some harm, it will."