the quackometer

Skeptics in the Field

Friday, July 03, 2009

So, a few days back from the Glastonbury festival, showered and variously recovered from vicious sun, torrential thunderstorms, lack of sleep and the magical outpourings of the cider bus.

I had planned to twitter loads from the festival - I think I managed one - the festival is now many things, but a 'connected festival' it is not. Five days without any significant bandwidth was pretty tough on me. Even my text messages took up to two days to get through - not much good for meeting friends 'by the tree, at the top of the pyramid stage' when they are 'next to the bongos in the stone circle'.

But then, iPhones and Twitter would have been indistinguishable from magic when I first went to Glastonbury in the (coughs) mid eighties. Many things are different now: fewer blackboards with today's chalked up drug prices, but much more multichannel live BBC coverage of the hundreds of acts performing. But this connected festival is in the hands of a few - the ordinary festival goer is cut off both from the outside world and their wife when she decides to get lost at 2am and cannot find the tent and her mobile battery has finally given up the ghost - and a thunderstorm is starting. Luckily, we all saw the funny side.

A connected festival would a new experience - where a virtualisation can take place - a joining up of experiences and ideas. Glastonbury is about much more than the music - it is also a festival of ideas with much of the profit going to 'worthy' causes from Worthy Farm. Now one of the many uncomfortable things about Glastonbury, leaving aside the deep mud, long drop toilets, slop for food, beer in paper cups and thousands-of-seaguls-circling-the-site-like-it-is-one-huge-municipal-tip, is that these 'worthy' causes tend to focus on Greenpeace – a charity I have a few problems with.

Now an environmentalist agenda in politics is very important for me. But what pervades much of the ‘Green Futures’ area of the festival is dogma – not debate. Before Mark Thomas started his talk in the speakers’ tent, a ‘warm up’ act was getting the assembled throng to echo the chant of ‘no nuclear power’, ‘no GM’. Now, when Glastonbury started, the nuclear discussion revolved around nuclear non-proliferation – but this rather sensible green policy has now become dogma. The festival now exists in a different world with different concerns. I see little attempt to re-appraise the nuclear question in light of current climate changing concerns. Nuclear Debate? Nein Danke.

But there were sceptical green shoots in this area – although easily missed. Ben Goldacre showed up for an away match in the healing fields. Or at least, that is how the angry homeopaths at the back saw it. Ben talked about the evils of pharmaceutical company manipulation and their medicalisation of every day life. It confused the hell out of them. Naturally, he got a very impassioned dig into them about their refusal to condemn the worst of the alternative medicine world – like Matthias Rath - but their responses were rather befuddled by the fact that the thrust of his talk was critical of the very organisations they conspiratorially assume him to be a part of. The best effort was from one homeopath who told us that homeopathy works because it can cure dogs of skin disease.

The effects of the sceptical community were felt in other rather more subtle ways. In the healing field, there were no sign of any chiropractors. A few tents (one picture above) offered ‘spinal therapy’ (was that for the effects of being at the front of the Spinal Tap gig after the volume was turned to 11?). I asked them if they were chiropractors and I got a shrill “don’t mention the ‘C’ word” which was surprising as I had not called them anything yet. I was told “it would be unethical to practice in a field” and that “we did not want to be sued”. All rather funny.

So, next year we need a new stage – a new tent - “Skeptics in the Field”. Given the huge success of the Skeptics in the Pub movement, this looks like it could a sure fire winner. We would want to introduce a wider appreciation of evidence, critical thought and scepticism into the green movement. The green movement has been successful in highlighting the need to do something about human induced climate change – but this has been done because it was backed by scientists creating an evidence base and consensus that is almost unassailable. If the green movement wants to repeat that success in other areas, it needs to abandon dogma, nutty associated beliefs (like alternative medicine) and engage in meaningful and full debate about the many important issues facing us.

I’m up this new tent and I intend to pursue it. Any one want to sell tea and biscuits in the Skeptics’ tent next year?

6 Comments Links to this post View blog reactions

Government bails out Ofquack as it rewrites old press release

Friday, June 19, 2009

Last March I asked, “Will the government bail out Ofquack?” when it was becoming very clear that the new government backed ‘regulator’ for pseudo-medical trades people (quacks) were running out of money fast. It looks like at about the time I was asking this, the CNHC were running cap in hand to the Department of Health.

In documents I have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, it would appear that the Department of Health has agreed to give the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council a further £409,300 for the year 2009/2010 and is looking at an additional £127,750 for the following year. This money would appear to be conditional on Ofquack “making good progress against their Business Plan.”

Quite what the CNHC are telling the Department of Health is not clear. I am failing so far to get any reports from the DoH regarding their progress. The problem with FOI requests is that you have to know what documents and data are available. It is taking some time to tease that information out. So far, it looks as if there are no reports – which is worrying in itself.

What is even more bizarre is how Ofquack appear now to be rewriting old press releases that mentioned what their Business Plan might be. I have been reporting now for several years how most of the pseudo-medical trades that come under the umbrella of the CNHC have been very reluctant to participate. The homeopaths have flatly refused to take part. The Nutritional Therapists looked as if they might but then have backed out. Only the Massage Therapists have joined in any numbers. And after six months of operation, they have managed to sign up 423 quacks against a target of 10,000 for the year. Back of the envelope calculations would suggest that this number of registrants would keep the CNHC in business for a few weeks. Hence, the need for the government to chip in again if they are not to sink as fast as a lead duck.

But this new money does appear to dependent on them meeting ‘Business Objectives’. It would take an enormous stretch of the imagination to think that 423 registrants is anything like an acceptable achievment. When they started signing people up I said they would be lucky to reach 1,000 by the end of the year. I might have been over optimistic.

So it comes as little surprise to see that in the last few days, Ofquack have been busy in an Orwelian attempt to rewrite history so that it makes things look a little rosier for them. They say they now have “seven overarching priorities” and then go on to list all eight of them. The press release dated 10th December 2008 now begins with two “overarching priorities”:

To register 4,000 complementary practitioners
To achieve a self-sustaining financial position by the end of the financial year 2010/2011 (ie second year or operation

This is not the first time they have re-written their history. Originally, we were told that Ofquack would be supplying a ‘Kitemark’ to registrants. The British Standards Institute objected to them using their trademark and were told to stop. So, the press releases, and the rest of the site, were changed.

Further insight comes from an email I have seen between Ofquack officials and someone enquiring about their progress suggest they are confident they will sign up 2,000 pseudo-medical practitioners by the Autumn and 4000 by the Spring and will achieve their ‘self-funding’ target of 10,000 by Spring 2011.

Now, I think it pretty naughty to go back and rewrite old press releases. It does not look to me like a particularly honest thing to do. Ofquack is showing a complete failure to be open and transparent in its business. Despite pledging to post their minutes online, they quickly withdrew their first attempts and then failed to post others. They recently posted some minutes but they were so sanitised that they contained no information beyond a bunch of people met up and discussed some stuff.

The lack of accountability is quite worrying and I have discussed this before. At the moment, I see no evidence that they have had to report to anyone. I see no evidence that anyone is keeping an eye on their progress. They claim to be a regulator to help the protect the public against dangerous quacks but they refuse to discuss that tricky problem that none of those they seek to regulate have any good evidence that what they do works. It is the nonsensical regulation of charlatanism and delusion.

The UK is currently facing grave funding decisions for our health service. Cuts are going to be made quite deep by the look of things. Ofquack is a small part of that, but a commitment to cutting out such nonsense would signal a greater commitment to ensuring our Health Service spends money on treatments that are effective and embraces systems that respect evidence. Ofquack just does not fit. It is a toothless regulator that cannot do what it sets out to do – protect the public. It refuses to consider the effectiveness of the treatments that it seeks to regulate. It is happy to give a ‘quality mark’ to pseudo-medical trades people as long as they have a certificate hanging on their toilet wall to show they have been ‘properly trained’. It does not matter a jot if that training is in nonsense, discredited techniques, mumbo jumbo or disproven theories. Ofquack was set up under the watchful eye of Prince Charles and his toad eaters at the Foundation for Integrated Health. All it will do is aggrandize them – which is what Mr Windsor no doubt wants to further his bizarre ‘integrative’ agenda.

The hundreds of thousands being thrown away here may not be large in the grand scheme of things. But it is money wasted and it could be used in a much more efficient way. The first thing that should be done if the government is serious about protecting the public from charlatans and the deluded is to divert the money into training Trading Standards officers in enforcing the current laws that prevent false medical claims being made by businesses. The law is new. It is unfamiliar to TS in practice, but it would only take a few successful prosecutions to really send a message through to the full zoology of quackery out there.

22 Comments Links to this post View blog reactions

Basic Alternative Medicine "Baffles Britons"

Friday, June 12, 2009

Many people in the UK are unable to identify the location of their major chakras, a study warns.

A team at the Institute of Magical Thinking found public understanding of basic alternative medicine has not improved since a similar survey was conducted 40 years ago.

Less than 50% of the more than 700 people surveyed could correctly place the anahata chakra, Moonbat’s Holistic Drop-in Centre says.

Under one-third could place their gall bladder meridian in the correct location, but more than 85% got their kidney meridian points right. 37% did not know what 37% meant.

There are concerns that the British public's poor grasp of pseudoscience could potentially compromise the struggling alternative health industry.

WHERE ARE YOUR RENAL REFLOXOLOGY PRESSURE POINTS?

The researchers asked more than 700 people to look at outlines of both a male and female ear and identify which of several shaded areas corresponded to particular organs.

Those asked included apparently healthy members of the public and then people undergoing CAM treatment for blocked chi within specific organs.

Even those for whom the organ was particularly relevant often performed poorly - more than half of those with renal problems did not correctly identify the kidney’s auricular acupuncture points.

"We thought that the improvements in Sunday Supplement health bollocks seen since then, coupled with an increased media focus on quackery and growing access to the internet as a source of daft medical information, might have led to an increase in patients' pseudo-anatomical knowledge," said lead researcher John Warlock.

"As it turns out, there has been no significant improvement in the intervening years."

There was little difference between men and women, although women did perform better in knowledge of made up chemical names for skin and hair products.

Unsurprisingly, given the raft of pseudoscience degrees in Universities, the better educated identified more nutritional supplements correctly.

Communication concerns

Don Dumb, head of policy at the Pixey Institute Europe, a pretend research group, agreed.

"There is a real problem with alternative health literacy - people's ability to unquestioningly accept and process bullshit health information - which this study is indicative of.

"It really does matter, particularly as we look ahead to an NHS where NICE are starting to promote nonsense back pain treatments, like chiropractic and acupuncture.

"If people are going to use the NHS Royal London Homeopathic Hospital in an effective way they need to be able to understand just how important it is to keep their vital force in balance.”

Ellen Fluffhead, from the British Mountebank Foundation, said: "Ideally the public would have a better knowledge of the location of their crystal meditation balancing points than this study suggests.”

"This would hopefully produce a more meaningful dialogue with their high street charlatan when they start to feel vaguely in need of some self-centred, indulgent, nonsensical affirmation of their illusory sense of control in their otherwise completely vacuous lives.”

"However, it is ultimately more important to for us to know how to take money out of their wallets than for them to know any of this made-up rubbish."

(With thanks to the BBC - Basic anatomy 'baffles Britons' )

Labels: fun