The Quackometer

Just a few days after Psychic Cancer Healer, Adrian Pengelly, appeared on the BBC consumer affairs programme, Watchdog, he was the subject of a particularly glowing report in the Daily Mail.

Pengelly had been accused of giving dangerous suggestions to people with cancer. Not only did he say on film that he had a 60-65% success rate with his healing hands, he also said that the chances were better if you were not on chemotherapy. Clearly, this is a deeply disturbing situation where some people may be vulnerable to believing in supernatural cancer claims and giving up on their few options for a cure.

The Mail ran with the headline, “Can this man cure cancer with his bare hands?”

The BBC's Watchdog says he's a menace. But when one of our most cynical writers met Britain's most controversial healer, her scepticism began to waver.

What followed was not a cynical look at this man, and not even a sceptical look, but a pretty credulous puff story for Mr Pengelly. Lots of space was given to repeat Pengelly’s claims. He said, “For me the proof of the pudding is people recover when they come and see me. I don't care about scientific evidence.” After measuring the reporters ‘energy’, he tells Rebecca Hardy, “I feel with your energy, whatever you do - you could probably drink and smoke 40-a-day - you're likely to live to be old. That's how your energy feels.'

Rather good advice.

Then after telling Ms Hardy that she had “emotional trauma, a shock, an energy you've held on to”, he offers her an ‘energy blast’. Despite Rebecca Hardy’s ‘cynicism’, she equates this ‘blockage’ to the death of her son’s father and says, “Ever since he gave that 'blast' to my liver, I have felt an overwhelming sense of release.“

How did this well timed story come about so soon after this very critical BBC exposé?

Well, as I discussed last week, Adrian Pengelly likes to consult his lawyers. This time his lawyers appeared to have advised him to "call in the services of a PR agency and recommended crisis and reputation management specialists”. Adrian may not have magic hands, but a little PR wizardry may be very beneficial.

In comes such a specialist, PHA Media. They set to work. Apparently, they have “intuitive knowledge of the media with [a] second to none contacts book to provide the very best strategic and proactive assistance for any individual or company facing a crisis.”

PHA Media quickly arranged for Pengelly to be interviewed by freelancer Rebecca Hardy for the Daily Mail and she,

had a one-to-one session with Adrian and spoke to several happy patients who categorically refuted the claims made by Matt Allwright, the Watchdog presenter who described Adrian as ‘dangerous’.

Adrian Pengelly has been delighted,

PHA Media then arranged for me to be interviewed by the Daily Mail, who carried a fantastic and hugely supportive page lead on me. Since then I have received a staggering 5,000 emails in support of me, attacking the BBC programme and all urging me to carry on my good work.

Now I have been bombarded with interview requests – even from Spain’s biggest radio station, and the editor of a major UK magazine has asked me if I could help heal her.

Now, call me cynical, but would PHA media be describing this as “a joy to work with Adrian and to turn this crisis situation in to wonderfully positive PR" if someone had actually died because of his style of ‘healing’?

There are serious concerns about Adrian’s chosen work. He clearly wishes to work with seriously ill people and looks like he offers advice which is not in their best medical interest. As I have described, Adrian does appear to be sincere in what he is doing, but he also appears to be very badly mistaken.

The media love this sort of story. And for the Mail it also offers a chance to bash their enemy, the BBC.

But the media is a deeply cynical business that often does not show any regard for the consequences of their actions. The reporter here, Rebecca Hardy, appears to be no stranger to cynicism as she was involved in a libel case against the Daily Mail where she was accused of writing a story to pursue her own ‘personal vendetta’ against the subject of the story.

According to the Guardian,

Hardy "used and shamelessly abused" DJ Harriet Scott during an interview so she could write up the article as an attack on Mr Hollingsworth, a jury in a high court libel trial heard.

The Mail lost the case and had to pay damages to Hollingsworth.

Newspapers are a mucky business. Perhaps the cynicism is best displayed in the last paragraph of Hardy’s article on Pengelly,

Perhaps he really does have magic hands. Or maybe it's just the relief of another deadline met.

It must be good to get the copy in.

Labels: Adrian Pengelly, newspapers, PHA Media

It cannot be a good week for Adrian Pengelly. He has been subject to quite a damning BBC Watchdog investigation about his business activities. Adrian claims to be a “Visionary Healer, Energy Worker, Teacher and Psychic” and declares that he is well known for his “work with terminal illnesses and cancer”.

If a so called ‘Psychic Healer’ is giving some sort of emotional or spiritual support to ill people then we might leave people to get on with their lives. However, Watchdog showed Adrian Pengelly claiming to be able to diagnose and treat horses, cure cancers and even deal with haunted houses. I understand that at least the former two are illegal. When filmed secretly, Pengelly claimed to be able to cure sixty five per cent of terminal cancers. When an actor* woman secretly filming asked him about his success rate he not only made such claims but also, shockingly, said that his success rate would be higher if the person was not taking chemotherapy.

Giving people false hope is bad enough, suggested they decline what might be their only hope is truly terrible. Adrian charges £30 and claims to see up to 120 customers per week.

When confronted by an interviewer, Pengelly appeared to change course and claim that he never promised to cure people. He made excuses about his failure to diagnose a horse despite claiming a 99/100 success rate. He also managed to assemble quite a crowd of people claiming to support his activities.

It would be very easy to dismiss Pengelly as a charlatan and fraudster. Indeed, the usual ‘stars’ on BBC Watchdog can be described as nothing other, being cowboy builders, rogue holiday companies and identity thieves. Indeed, the BBC list Pengelly under their list of scams. However, in my opinion, this simplistic description of Pengelly’s actions is almost certainly wrong.

Adrian Pengelly would appear to believe passionately in what he does. Merely being shocked by what he does and exposing it on television will not change his beliefs. Of course, it would look as if he does make himself vulnerable to a few pieces of legislation if someone wanted to prosecute. But again, he may well continue whilst ensuring what he says does not fall foul of the law.

Of course, if there were critical articles on the web then people could evaluate his claims with a bit more balance, but the web appears to be rather devoid of mentions. One clue is in a rather credulous Daily Mail interview that suggests Adrian will be taking legal action against the BBC. I can understand this action. If Pengelly really does believe he is a Psychic Cancer Healer then he may very well feel aggrieved and want to take any action possible to remedy the perceived wrong.

I also understand that it would not be the first time that Pengelly has resorted to legal action against criticism. The web site Bad Psychics have written a number of articles about Pengelly. One of their writers let me know about one of their article last April. It is no longer available on the site. In total four articles were on the site. All gone. I am told that Pengelly’s lawyers have been on to the site and I have been warned that if I write about him, they may well be on to me too.

This is dreadful. Adrian, if you are reading I would like to say a few things to you,

Adrian,

From what I can see you genuinely believe that you can help people with cancer. The people that meet you may well gain the impression that you can help where their doctors cannot. They may well even go away believing that their rather unpleasant chemotherapy will interfere with your ‘gifts’.

This is serious stuff. People’s lives are on the line here. As you might gather, other people seriously doubt you can have any effect on the course of cancerous illnesses. If you are wrong then you will be doing a great harm – a very big harm. Relying on your own personal experience without engaging with other opinions is a recipe for delusional disaster in any walk of life.

This potential for harm applies to all medical beliefs. In attempting to do good, you may well end up doing harm. Medicine is full of terrible mistakes, false promises and dashed hopes. The way we can tell good medicine from bad is by open discussion of the available evidence and science behind what you do. This applies as much to you as it does to any surgeon or doctor. Using libel laws to remove criticism about you does your customers no good. It puts them at risk. You might well be wrong.

Your critics may be wrong too. I do not believe so. But they should have the right to be able to voice their concerns about your work and you should be obliged to answer them as best you can. People can then judge what you say in that light. You may feel that people are lying about you or spreading misinformation. The answer is to correct them with your version of what is going on, not to threaten them with England’s terribly unjust libel laws. The lives of your customers are far more important than your reputation. By using libel laws, you protect the latter and put at risk the former.

By using the libel laws you look as if you are not willing to discuss what you are doing. If your success rate is as high as you claimed on camera, it should be fairly simple to demonstrate your powers.

There is of course another danger of using libel laws – that of unintended consequences. The British Chiropractic Association are currently suing writer Simon Singh following an article in the Guardian. There followed, what the legal blogger Jack of Kent described as a ‘Quacklash’. The claims of the BCA have come under massive scrutiny across the web and now hundreds of their members are under investigation by the General Chiropractic Council as a result of people’s outrage at the use of libel laws to silence debate.

There is a now a very large campaign to reform English libel laws. I would hope that it was something that all reasonable people could support. Perhaps you, Adrian, could do your bit by withdrawing from any legal actions you may be engaged in, allowing people to publish their criticism and you responding to it without legal threats, and allowing people to engage in a proper discussion about what it is you do.

Could you use your powers to do that? It would be a sensible place to start.

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Correction

*The woman in the film was not an actor but genuinely had cancer.

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Labels: Adrian Pengelly, the law