The Quackometer

Chiropractors have an air of respectability about them. They style themselves, 'Doctor'. They wear white coats and have brass plaques outside their offices with lots of letters after their name. My friends look at be puzzled when I say they are quacks. But that is what the evidence says. Their practice is founded on strange ideas about mysterious things called 'subluxions' and pseudoscientific beliefs in 'inate intelligence' running through our nerves and bones. We think of chiropractors as being for bad backs, but their founding beliefs state that cracking bones can be a panacea. You will still find chiropractors claiming treatments for all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

The evidence for the effectiveness of chiropractic is not good. What evidence does exist suggests it is just another placebo treatment. It might work for lower back pain - but probably no more than a couple of paracetamol. And the risks of bone cracking can be quite severe with deaths reported by stroke. More minor adverse reactions appear to be quite common.

In the UK, chiropractors can thank their regulated status for much of their standing and freedom from ridicule that other quackery attracts - like homeopathy. Chiropractors are statutorily regulated. You need to be registered to call yourself one. You can even call yourself Doctor as long as you do not imply that you are medically trained - but that is hard. Brass plaques. White coats. X-ray machines. My best guess is that most people think of chiropractic as a branch of medicine. It is not. It is quackery and a business.

Some times though we see them for their true colours. The New Zealand Medical Journal has just been threatened by a law suite for publishing research into how chiropractors (mis)represent themselves to the public by using the title 'Dr'. Professor David Colquhoun wrote an editorial that put chiropractic deception into a wider context of their education and business practices. The response of the New Zealand Chiropractic Association was to get their lawyer to threaten to sue. The Medical Association has responded admirably by calling their bluff and asking for their evidence that what was being said is not true. "Let’s hear your evidence not your legal muscle."

That is how it should be. As Ben Goldacre has responded, the real medical world is full of self-criticism - often very harsh. The way to respond is with science and argument - not with lawyers. Legal threats are a business technique, not the actions of medical practitioners. They expose their true self by calling their lawyers.

As Professor Colquhoun notes, since the invention of chiropractic, their business acumen has been sharper than their scientific and medical expertise. Consultancies on how to grow your bone crunching businesses are rife in the US. As Rose Shapiro notes, its all about building "high-volume, subluxation-based, cash-driven, lifetime family wellness practices."

In the UK, we have similar chiropractors-turned-business gurus too. 'Dr' Terry Chimes, ex drummer with the Clash, is perhaps the highest profile. This year he has launched his 'Chiropractic Heaven' consultancy. Chimes promises to tell you the 'The Secrets of the World's Most Successful Chiropractors'. He does this over 120 weekly modules - all brimming with 'golden nuggets of wisdom '. And he claims to be able to 'Quadruple Your Practice in a Matter of Months. . . Ethically'.

Not all chiropractic business skills could claim to be ethical. Occasionally, the General Chiropractic Council of the UK is embarrassed enough to step in. In one case, a chiropractor was found to have "abused the trust of his patients, and coercing them, through alarmist scare tactics, into excessively protracted and unjustified treatment plans". Chiropractic lends itself to such approaches: it deals with long term chronic conditions, such as back ache, uses mysterious and unverifiable X-ray diagnostic techniques to alarm customers, and recommends long courses of treatments. The chiropractor in question was accused of using unjustified courses of X-rays and misrepresented the gravity of the customer's condition. The chiropractor was removed from the chiropractic register, but simply re-invented himself as a 'osteomyologist' - a sort of renegade and unregulated chiropractor in all but name.

It is amazing that all chiropractors cannot be charged with using unjustified X-rays. Since, their bone crunching cannot be showed to be medically effective, X-rays cannot be medically justified, and so applications of X-rays are in direct contravention of IR(ME)R regulations which demands medical justification for all exposures. One has to wonder how chiropractors get away with X-raying patients. One factor must be is that statutory regulation of chiropractors directly lead to their inclusion in the list of health workers who were allowed to refer for X-ray. Not that means that their referral is likely to be justified.

Such are the perils of regulating nonsense.

Labels: BPSDB, chiropractors

 

Bafflegab - the multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation - is word that ought to be familiar to Lionel Milgrom.

Milgrom is a champion apologist for homeopathic 'science'. As a former director of the Society of Homeopaths, he delights the homeopathic community with his musings on quantum theory, entanglement and its hypothesised role in 'patient-practitioner interactions'. Since quantum theory is highly specialised and requires advanced mathematical understanding to appreciate, one can be pretty sure there is not a member of the Society of Homeopaths who has the slightest clue what he is on about, or the knowledge to judge if he is speaking sense. But that does not matter. They wallow in his his quantum words like a medieval peasant listening to a Latin sermon. Or if I was being particularly cruel, like a dog, head cocked, listening to its owner describe her day at work. It is comforting, beguiling, but meaningless. But more on quantum homeopathy later.

Milgrom is now accusing critics of homeopathy as being the 'New Fundamentalists'. Somehow, the likes of Edzard Ernst, Richard Dawkins, David Colquhoun and Ben Goldacre are stuck in some naive philosophical view of science that cannot comprehend the 'new paradigm' of homeopathy. I want to show how his arguments are a distraction and just plain wrong; rhetorical devices designed to deflect from the substantive criticisms being made. They are at essence a classic ad hominem attack using the old devices of straw men and misrepresentation. For homeopaths, his arguments are just impenetrable but comforting words that allow them to ignore the serious concerns being expressed about the activities and beliefs of homeopaths.

Milgrom's accusations that critics of homeopathy are the 'New Fundamentalists' have appeared in a number of places. Most prominently, a series of seminars were held recently by Jayney Goddard. The accusations made it (shamefully) onto the pages of the Times Higher Education Supplement. The presentation that Milgrom gave is available from the vitamin pill industry lobby group, the Alliance for Natural Health. But importantly, Milgrom has set forth his ideas in a paper published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, entitled Homeopathy and the New Fundamentalism: A Critique of the Critics.

So what are the accusations that Milgrom makes against Homeopathy's critics and why are we 'fundamentalist' in our outlook? His arguments can be summarised as:

1. We are 'economical with the truth' and we 'propagate porkies'. Straight up, we are liars.
2. Modern medicine is 'deadly' and we are ignoring this fact.
3. We lie when we say there is no good evidence for homeopathy. We cling to 'discredited' meta-analyses, such as Shang at al.
4. We ignore 'developments' in material science that shows water has a memory.
5. We are philosophically naive in our demands of 'proof' for homeopathy and that we are challenged by 'Popperian and Kuhnian' views of science. Hence, we are 'unscientific'.

In Milgrom's own words,

New Fundamentalism’s hallmarks include the denial of evidence for the efficacy of any therapeutic modality that cannot be consistently “proven” using double-blind, randomized controlled trials. It excludes explanations of homeopathy’s efficacy; ignores, excoriates, or considers current research data supporting those explanations incomprehensible, particularly from outside biomedicine: it is also not averse to using experimental bias, hearsay, and innuendo in order to discredit homeopathy. Thus, New Fundamentalism is itself unscientific.

Let's examine these charges.

Liars?

It is not clear what untruths Milgrom is accusing the critics of uttering. He uses the example of Nick Cohen's article in the Observer where he said that "To its fans, homeopathy is the ultimate cure-all. In fact, its effects can be positively deadly". Milgrom does not make clear what is a lie here. Cohen's article argues that if homeopaths pretend they can cure AIDS and other dangerous diseases with magic water then there beliefs are undoubtedly deadly. As with all homeopaths, Milgrom is ignoring the charge and instead labeling those that point out the obvious as just liars. Homeopaths like to pretend that this criticism is a lie. It is easier than policing their own trade.

It is an odd accusation to make since we are now accustomed to high profile homeopaths being 'economical with the truth'. We have seen Neal's Yard Remedies misrepresent themselves after being caught out selling illegal homeopathic products and the Society of Homeopaths have never been straightforward over their role in pushing sugar pills for malaria.

Modern medicine is 'deadly'

This is a common homeopathic trick: to point out how many people are harmed by medical treatments, often using highly suspect figures. The argument is meaningless because homeopaths never put any of their charges in context - that medicine is often about taking risks and that the benefits need to be weighed against the risks.

The emptiness of this argument was recently demonstrated by Harriet Hall in a article called 'Death by Medicine' where she takes this common homeopathic whine and substitutes 'medicine' for 'food'. It is worth quoting her at length:

Overweight is known to cause hypertension, heart disease and early death, as well as a huge number of other health problems. It is a major factor contributing to diabetes. Attempting to control weight (treating the symptoms instead of the cause) has led to a proliferation of dangerous diets and drugs such as the recent Fen/Phen scandal and the ephedra catastrophe. Unnecessary surgical procedures (again, treating the symptoms instead of the cause) mutilate the gastrointestinal tract of these unfortunate victims of food. Concerns about food lead to anorexia nervosa and bulimia. More money is spent on food than on any other class of products; just think how much more good that money could have done if it were spent instead on valuable research into things like homeopathy, acupuncture, and therapeutic touch! Frequent automobile trips to grocery stores and restaurants cause accidents, depletion of fossil fuels, and contamination of the atmosphere. Thousands suffer from indigestion, constipation, and diarrhea. Certain foods are deadly for those with allergies. Wheat is poison for those with celiac disease. Phenylalanine in foods causes mental retardation in children with undiagnosed PKU. Food may not contain all the vitamins and minerals and trace nutrients required for good health; people who depend on diet and refuse to take supplements can be seriously harmed. If you add up all the years of life lost due to overeating, obesity, allergic reactions, contaminants and toxic chemicals in food, deficiency syndromes, botulism, food-transmitted diseases like hepatitis, salmonella and E. coli, etc. etc. you will quickly come to the conclusion that food is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. In fact, it is the ONLY cause: no illness has ever developed without previous food ingestion.

Of course, the ultimate parody of this form of thinking was achieved at DHMO.org, the campaign body that has shown that water is a deadly chemical that needs to be banned NOW! Yes, water, food and medicine all carry risks: intrinsic, political, technical and commercial. By only examining risks without balancing benefits, you can condemn any activity in life. And in all cases, delusional alternatives are never the answer.

We lie when we say there is no good evidence for homeopathy.

Over the past two decades there has been a steady increase in the number of trials of homeopathy. In turn, various authors have looked at the accumulation of evidence and performed 'meta-analyses' where all the evidence is drawn together to try to come to an overall conclusion. The early meta-analyses tended to show a small but positive effect for homeopathy but acknowledged the poor quality of evidence available. Later and better analyses have shown smaller effects until the latest and most definitive, Shang et al, was able to conclude that homeopathy is just a placebo therapy.

Homeopaths have a number of strategies to cope with this hammer blow:

1. Only cite the earlier, cruder and more positive studies.
2. Attack the Shang study as discredited and unscientific.
3. Make up ad hoc meta-analyses and hope no-one notices what you are doing.

The third trick is interesting and common. You will find homeopaths saying things like, "81% (insert high number here) of clinical trials into homeopathy show a positive effect. Critics ignore these trials.' Homeopaths are performing their own on-the-hoof metaanalysis - assessing lots of disperate data to come to an overall conclusion.

Now, this is not true that these positive trials are ignored. Science is not a democracy where the majority result wins. What researchers like Shang do is look at all the trials and then weight them by quality. Poor quality trials are either discounted or given low weight. When this is done it is seen that high quality trials show little or no effect. This is truly taking into account all the evidence, including the evidence of quality. What homeopaths are doing is pre-selecting trials on their result (positive) and then drawing conclusions from only those trials regardless of the quality of those trials - cherry picking. It is at best poor meta-analytical technique; at worst, entirely dishonest.

Milgrom chooses to use technique 2 - discredit Shang et al. Now, as with all scientific papers, Shang has flaws. It is publicly published so that other researchers can pick over those flaws and hence give the original researchers and others chances to address the flaws or do more work. If after this criticism, sufficient corrections can be made without the whole work collapsing then we can be sure that the work is solid. Homeopaths pick out the original flaws in the Shang paper, but then completely ignore how those flaws have been dealt with. They then call the paper 'discredited'. AP Gaylard discusses this in an article - Shang’s secret - the hydra of homoeomythology. In short, the weaknesses of the Shang paper do not invalidate or distract from its conclusion - homeopathy is an inert therapy.

We ignore 'developments' in material science that shows water has a memory.

Milgrom believes that critics are unduly dismissive of research in material science that shows water has a 'memory' and hence there are plausible mechanism for homeopathy. Milgrom highlights several papers that claim such a thing. However, as of yet, there are no repeatable experiments that have been done that can show a consistent difference between two ultramolecular homeopathic remedies. Rao et al, published in Homeopathy (July 2007), is the study that come closest and is often brought up by homeopaths such as Milgrom.

This paper is excoriatingly bad. In the next issue of the journal, a response was published that tore it apart. The major concerns are:

1. Despite being used as good evidence for the memory of water, all experiments were done on ethanol.
2. There were no controls to ensure that different samples came from the same stock bottle of ethanol. Hence, different contamination levels could account fo differences seen.
3. There were no data to show that the differences were consistent.
4. Graphs presented in the paper were clearly not what they said they were.

They concluded,

It is clear that the data presented are wholly inadequate to support the authors’ assertion that UV spectroscopy can differentiate between the two remedies, and between different potencies of the remedies. If the authors wish to test their assertion so that it can be substantiated it will be necessary to repeat the work from the beginning, ensuring that all samples used in the study are sourced from the same bottle of stock solvent, that all duplicate preparations for precision assessment are separately prepared de novo from the mother tinctures, and that sufficient data are generated to allow robust and valid statistical analysis of the results.

That Milgrom and others have completely ignored this devastating critique speaks for itself. It is noteworthy that it is critics of homeopathy who published this analysis in Homeopathy. Rather than critics ignoring the work in material science, they have fully engaged with it and show how it is lacking. It is the homeopaths who then fail to engage and ignore these arguments. Homeopaths have not published critical appraisals of Rao - instead it used as a tool of propoganda.

The 'memory of water' is a holy grail for homeopaths that will be forever out of their grasp. Water does cluster in memory-like ways, but only over picoseconds. Not a good shelf-life. And, has been pointed out numerous times, even if water did have a memory, it is only one of the difficulties amongst many that make homeopathy so implausible.

Milgrom also likes his own work on the 'quantum theory of homeopathy' to show that critics are 'stuck in an old paradigm of science'. Now it is true that Milgrom's work has almost entirely been ignored by other quantum physicists and that is because it is utter meaningless bafflegab. If Milgrom had wanted to be taken seriously then he would have published in a physics journal. Instead he chooses to play to the gallery and publish in Homeopathy again. It is a thoroughly confused paper that cannot decide whether his ideas are real or just a metaphor. It is just a metaphor then it fails on two levels: firstly, it is not clear what it is a metaphor for; secondly, metaphors are supposed to enable insight into difficult ideas by comparing them with familiar ideas. Does he believe that quantum mechanics is a familiar idea for homeopaths? Pure bafflegab.

It is true that such musing are largely ignored by physicist because they are obvious nonsense. At least one has taken time out to show us why.

We are philosophically naive in our demands of 'proof' for homeopathy

Here Milgrom descends into more bafflegab, this time of a philosophical nature. His intention is to show that critics of homeopaths are simplistic in their views of science (people like Richard Dawkins no less) and that our demands for 'proof' are naive.

I will not fully deconstruct Milgrom's views on paradigms and the philosophy of science: the work is done much better by AP Gaylard here.) What I will say is that Milgrom is essentially setting up a straw-man.

To illustrate this, we can see how he treats the recent challenge by Ernst and Singh to homeopaths to show some good evidence for homeopathy. Milgrom uses his sophistry to suggest that Ernst, Singh and indeed Randi will never pay out their prize money because they know full well that science can never provide 'proof' of anything. What Milgrom fails to tell his audience is that Ernst and Singh do not use the word 'proof' in their challenge. Has Milgrom even read their challenge? It does not look like it. What they ask for is evidence. And they state exactly what sort of evidence they require. I do the same in my own simple challenge. I do not ask for proof. What I am looking for is strong evidence that would be clear and unambiguous to anyone. No sophisticated philosophy required. Ernst and Singh are not naive in their views of science - what they ask for is simple - good evidence, that we can all debate and assess.

Milgrom says that there is evidence, but that it is rejected because people like Ernst are somehow stuck in an 'old paradigm' of science and that such evidence does not fit in with their 'currently held theory'. This is nonsense.

Image that your partner rushes into the room and says there is a tiger in the garden. Do you believe them? Probably not - despite them being normally truthful. If your partner had said nothing, the chances of there being a tiger in the garden are near zero. What does this new information add to the probability of their being a large carnivorous cat there? The chances are still near zero as it is far more likely that your partner is mistaken, playing a joke or had one too many margaritas. If however, you partner rushed in with pictures on the digital camera and half the street were running down the road screaming, you may wish to re-assess you beliefs about garden-feline interactions. There is a mathematical formulation for assessing the importance of new evidence like this - Bayesean analysis of prior probabilities. It can be summed up as 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.

Such is the same for homeopathy. Weak evidence will not change the 'scientific paradigm' when the new theory is so highly implausible. There is nothing 'unscientific' about this and nothing 'subjective' in the rejection of such evidence that does exist for homeopathy.

Will the real fundamentalists please stand up

So, has Milgrom convinced anyone apart from the cock-headed homeopaths that critics are the 'new fundamentalists'? No. What Milgrom is doing is best summed up by Steven Poole in his book, Unspeak. Poole tells us that 'words are weapons'. The idea is to stop thought and make dissent impossible - to shut down debate before it happens. Anti-abortionists are 'pro-life'. How can you be against them? Are you 'against life'? Friends of the Earth - how can you criticize them? Are you an enemy of the Earth? Bush has been a master of using upspeak. The War on Terror - are you with us or not? His administration describes the beating to death of Iraqi prisoners as ' the repeated administration of legitimate force'. Bafflegab. Milgrom is using upspeak to allow homeopaths to ignore the serious criticisms being made of them by allowing them to dismiss their critics as just simple minded fundamentalists who are not open to new ideas.

Milgrom has failed to prove his point, not least because he fails to consider what a fundamentalist is. Usually, fundamentalism is used in a religious context and means,

a deep and totalistic commitment to a belief in the infallibility and inerrancy of holy scriptures, absolute religious authority, and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (fundamentals), away from doctrinal compromises with modern social and political life.

And of course, you only have to look to homeopathy for similar views. Another prominent homeopath George Vithoulkas confronts a similar question to Milgrom in the journal Homeopathy again, and comes to a thoroughly fundamentalist conclusion.

Vithoulkas asks "British media attacks on homeopathy: Are they justified?". His response is to blame 'progressive' homeopaths from straying from the teachings of Hahnemmann in his 'bible' the Organon. He condemns new homeopaths for having new 'dangerous ideas' on vaccination and provings.

He attacks the heretical homeopaths and blames them for the critical onslaught. He says,

With all these irrational and arbitrary ‘‘new ideas’’ the ‘‘modern teachers’’ are defaming homeopathy and demolishing the corner stones that constitute its scientific edifice. So it is not without reason that scientists reacted badly, that the media launched a war against homeopathy and the opponents of homeopathy are at this moment celebrating.

His call is for homeopaths to fall back to the 'rational' teachings of Hahnemann. He concludes,

There are today enough sane homeopaths who can turn the [homeopathic] craziness, disorder and confusion into order and sanity, but they must speak out. This journal should be part of such a proactive movement defending the essence and substance of the theories and principles bequeathed to us by Samuel Hahnemann.

The parallels with religious fundamentalists are obvious. Substitute Jesus or Mohammad for Hahnemann and you see a call to a strict interpretation of the scriptures and a rejection of progressive thought. The reasons for Homeopathic fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism may be similar: the feeling of being under attack from a powerful degenerate hegemony and a strong belief in holding the keys to the truth of the universe.

So, Lionel Milgrom. Who are the new fundamentalists? Those that seek evidence and insight? Or those that want to hide in their beliefs and sacred texts and are too afraid to allow them to be subject to criticism and enquiry?

*******************************************************************************

An analysis of another presentation made at Jayney Goddard's fun day by Dr Alex Tournier has now been taken to bits by gimpy.

Labels: BPSDB, homeopathy, Lionel Milgrom

 

Professor Jayney Goddard is the president of the Complementary Medical Association (CMA), "the world's largest professional membership body for complementary medicine" and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. She studied homeopathy at Imperial College for five years and has won numerous awards. According to various sites, she is "considered to be among the world’s leading experts in complementary and integrated medicine."

Impressive stuff. No wonder she was invited onto today's The Wright Stuff to debate with Simon Singh on the subject "Homeopathy: A Waste of Money". Indeed, Jayney Goddard is a regular guest on the show and boasts an impressive appearance list in other shows, including being resident 'Expert' on Discovery TV. But Jayney appeared to state a number of surprising factual errors and have some over optimistic interpretations of the research literature (and I will come onto these). How could such a eminent expert make such mistakes? I thought a little background research might be in order.

So, President of the CMA, "the world's largest professional membership body for complementary medicine". What is the CMA? Well, the CMA web site does not appear to be what I expected. It offers some articles, sells a few books and food supplements and offers marketing services for members. Looking at Company House records, the CMA is registered address is Chase Bureau Services, a supplier of 'off the shelf companies' and other company secretarial services. So, no 'head office' for the CMA then. The web site for the CMA is registered to a private individual with an address given in a residential block of flats in Wandsworth. I'm disappointed. The CMA is not sounding so grand as I first thought. However, the CMA does usefully offer viewers of the Wright Stuff options to buy products that Jayney mentions on air. It looks to me like Jayney Goddard is president of a shop.

So, what about being Professor Jayney Goddard? We are told that Jayney was "recently awarded a Professorship from Mahendra Sanskrit University in Kathmandu, Kingdom of Nepal". The university was set up to promote the Sanskrit language in Nepal. However, when I tried to contact the University to find out more about Jayney's Professorship, I found their website is permanently down. Unfortunately, it would appear that in 2002, a hoard of women Nepalese Maoist rebels reduced the University 'to cinder' and destroyed all the ancient Sanskrit texts, University buildings, furniture, and all university records. The rebels had previously planted a 'crude but powerful bomb' there too. It is not clear if Jayney Goddard makes frequent visits to fulfil her Professorial duties.

And what of these claims to have studied homeopathy at Imperial College? The University is one of Britain's most prestigious degree level teaching and research institutions. It does not offer a degree in homeopathy. Elsewhere we are told that her qualifications are "diploma in hypnotherapy and is a Licentiate of the London College of Classical Homeopathy". No qualifications from IC then? This is a puzzling one.

And finally, Jayney says she has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. What does it take to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine? The answer looks to be about £356 for a London resident. You can join online. I filled in the form and elected myself to become a Regional Fellow for £287. Bargain! Le Canard Noir, Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Magnificent! My mum will be so proud. It looks like Jayney could become a Fellow as her 'presidency' of the CMA is obviously a 'senior management' role in healthcare.

There is so much more on Jayney's CV that we could explore. But enough for now.

So, what of these errors she made on the Wright Stuff? Simon Singh was arguing that the totality of scientific evidence for homeopathy showed that it was ineffective and a placebo based therapy - unsurprising given that it is just plain sugar pills. Jayney tells us though that 'outcome trials' are the way to measure homeopathy. These trials almost always give you positive results for homeopathy - they are just not very good as they do not compare homeopathy against any control group. It is impossible to know if the effect was caused by homeopathy or it was just people getting better on their own. Simon argues this, so Jayney went into animal experiments and this is where she lost the plot.

There is just some research printed recently, I think it was actually in Immunology which is one of the worlds leading scientific journals and it showed that mice exposed to something causes Chagas disease (guffaws) ... these mice were treated homeopathically, prior to being infected. It was a properly run double blind placebo controlled trial - the gold standard that Simon is actually talking about - and what actually happened was the untreated mice died, the mice that were treated did not get the disease.

Wow. But is it true? Well, no.

The research was done, but not published in Immunology. It was published in the in-house comic of the Faculty of Homeopaths, Homeopathy - a rag with as much scientific integrity as the Beano. The paper, "Effects of homeopathy in mice experimentally infected with Trypanosoma cruzi ", did not say that the untreated mice died or that the treated mice did not get the disease. It reported that more mice died in the control group but that this was not statistically significant. But the main criticism would be that the statistical certainty of effects were low (only p<0.05) and that multiple measurements were being made in five groups that would undoubtedly result in many false positives. If Professor Jayney Goddard thinks this is the best evidence for homeopathy, then we can be pretty sure it does not work. What is certain, is that this TV show was not the right forum for discussing p-values.

But Jayney went on to discuss homeopathy for childhood diarrhoea. She talks of trials 'all over the world, in developing countries' where children with diarrhoea have been treated with homeopathic medicines and also placebos and Jayney claims that the children who have been treated homeopathically had shorter periods of diarrhoea. Jayney tugs the heartstrings and tells us that the poor children of Burma, after the recent cyclone, could benefit enormously from such treatment. Undoubtedly, it is the sceptic scientists like Singh who get in the way of saving the children. Again. Is this true? Again, no. Diarrhoea and homeopathy is really just one researcher's passion - Jacobs. She has been involved in a number of trials in places such as Nepal and Nicaragua. Individually, these trials did not show a strong significant effect for homeopathy. But when Jacobs did her own meta analysis on three trials, she claims to be able to show a statistically significant effect. Jacobs suggests that "larger sample sizes be used in future homeopathic research to ensure adequate statistical power".

As meta analyses go, doing your own analysis on just three papers that you have been involved with is not really showing multiple independent confirmation of your result and is unlikely to be sufficiently self-critical of the work and take adequate precautions usually found in competent meta-analyses. Tellingly, Jacobs did go on to do another larger trial in Honduras in 2006. The conclusion was,

The homeopathic combination therapy tested in this study did not significantly reduce the duration or severity of acute diarrhea in Honduran children.

Showing his own biases, the paper did not discuss the possibility that homeopathy could not work, but rather that the homeopathic pills had been stored incorrectly and so on.

In discussing the Chagas and diarrhoea trials, Jayney Goddard misled her TV audience. It would have taken half an hour for Singh to untangle that lot, even if he had the relevant papers to hand. Given the the show host was acting like a moron pretending him and his friends did not need protection in malarial areas, Simon Singh did not have a chance of getting clear science across.

The most telling moment came when one of the other guests asked,

Simon, you've got trials that prove your case, Jayney, you've got trials that prove your case, which makes it very difficult for us to know where the truth lies.

Well, if Simon's colleague, a real professor of complementary medicine from Exeter University, Edzard Ernst, had come on, then perhaps there could have been a rational and fruitful discussion about the role of homeopathy in the NHS. But instead of Professor Ernst, we had to have a Professor from a long-since burnt down Nepalese Sanskrit University who runs a web site selling homeopathic books and pills. That, in my opinion, creates the obvious confusion shown on this show.

Labels: BPSDB, homeopathy, Jayney Goddard

 

Part of the wonderful new world of regulated alternative medicine is the insistence that all registered practitioners undergo Continuous Professional Development. Just like in real professions, quacks will be expected to attend a certain number of hours per year in keeping their skills up to date and learning about the latest developments in their field.

The Prince of Wales and his new Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council are right behind this initiative and, with the government, there are going to be lots of shiny new 'training standards' for their members. Existing non compulsory 'regulators', such as the Society of Homeopaths also insist in Continuous Professional Development.

So, what do we expect homeopaths to learn? The latest meta analyses and why scientific results do not support homeopathy? Basic chemistry lessons and why no atoms means no effect? No.

Let me show you an example. This evening, homeopaths can earn on of their CPD certificates by going to a talk in St Albans given by Myriam Shivadikar. The talk is entitled, MEDICAL ASTROLOGY FOR HOMEOPATHS.

Every ancient civilisation used astrology for forecasting events, promoting health and in the prevention of disease. The alchemists used astrology and based prescriptions on the patient’s planetary constitution. As a physician, we need to understand patients in order to treat them. The best physician can predict a disease before it occurs- Why wait for a person to get sick?

This simple yet effective system of astrology is based on ancient wisdom using Planetary Cycles and popularised by Robin Murphy. You do not need to have prior knowledge of ‘Western Astrology’ to use this system.

Western Astrology? I thought 'Western' was bad and allopathic? Fortunately, you do not need prior knowledge of anything before attending this course. Trainees need not have prior knowledge of the differences between their arse and their elbow.

What new skills will homeopaths pick up?

• Your constitutional 3 main planets based on your date and time of birth

• The 7 sacred planets

• 7 year cycles – How to predict and prevent diseases.

• Diseases and remedies associated with each planet

Marvelous. This is for real. Adults appear to believe this stuff.

The event is being put on by Gala Homeopathy (slow load). Gala appears to specialise in charging homeopaths to attend events in exchange for their CPD certificates. In a few weeks, you can hear a talk by Lionel Milgrom who believes quantum mechanics explains homeopathy. It's utter nonsense of course, but the homeopaths lap it up. You can also learn about Live Blood Analysis, a technique that I have discussed recently and has been described as 'High-Tech Hokum' and a 'money making scheme'.

This event simply demonstrates that the whole approach of regulation by 'box ticking' is deeply flawed. The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack) appears to believe that simply ensuring that homeopaths and other quacks are properly trained will protect the public. The important question is; what are they being trained in? No one wants to address this question. All Ofquack will be doing is endorsing nonsense. Once you have accepted that it is quite alright to accredit training in the nonsense foundations of most alternative medicine you loose the ability to sensibly decide what is good training and bad training. Offering training in delusion can only make quacks more efficient at fleecing their customers and engaging in meaningless or even dangerous practices.

I now think that the only way to tackle regulation of alternative medicine is by using prosecution under trading standards legislation. Everything else appears to legitimise the nonsensical, deluded and even fraudulent. Fortunately, despite the best efforts of Prince Charles and the many bodies representing alternative medicine, this is going to be the regime we will get. Time will tell if it is effective.

Labels: BPSDB, Natural Healthcare Council, ofquack, pseudoscience, regulation

 

A bit of a ding dong has started up over at HolfordWatch after they questioned some of the activities of a charity called Life’s 4 Living. There is now a huge red banner on their homepage that proclaims the following:

There has recently been a vicious, sustained and unprovoked attack on this charity.
Over the next few days life's 4 living will refute each and every allegation in this spurious attack.

I have a nasty feeling that Life's 4 Living do not know what they are getting into. What did Holfordwatch do that was so wrong?

On the face of it, Life's 4 Living look like a rather marvelous idea. As the Barefoot Doctor says on their homepage,

We agree that life's worth living...

This is especially so if you are the mother of as child suffering from a condition which is beyond current medical help or results in a seriously debilitating lifestyle. For the parents of these children, dealing with all aspects of everyday life poses a major challenge.

If life's worth living, its worth living for everyone, especially families
facing such a challenge.

Laudable sentiments.

However, it was not these simple aims of the charity that attracted HolfordWatch's attention. Two issues were commented on. The first was their worry that the Barefoot Doctor, Stephen Russell, had admitted to having sex with his patients in the past. Was the charity aware of this and what was its attitude to such ethical matters? Particularly pressing was the charities aim of taking Russell off to China on a 'healing expedition' with children and young adults.

The second concern was to do with bizarre associations with various forms of mystical healing practices. Holfordwatch documented their connections with a health spa/alternative medicine outfit called Energy Bank that had in the past made strong claims to cure AIDS by waving arms around, giving up sex and 'energy channelling' - all for about 30,000 pounds. People involved in these enterprises appear to be involved in all sort of deep quackery where the rejection of conventional medicine is routine. Deaths have been reported. The charity at the moment is offering strange energy cures for MS. All this is enough to warrant critical appraisal of the charity and what they are doing with young people.

The reaction of the charity looks hyperbolic. We are lead to believe there will be much more from them. What is most alarming is that the author of the response, sixties rocker Lynton Guest, resorts to attacking HolfordWatch and Ben Goldacre rather than address the concerns. We expect such behaviour from quack circles. Guest cannot get over the fact that HolfordWatch wish to remain anonymous and sees this as reason not to have to respond - just get angry and shouty.

For my part, the charity look as if they are enamoured with the idea that there is an alternative to 'Western Medicine' and that where it has 'given up' on the children with incurable conditions, then Chinese Medicine can come to the rescue. They say,

Western medicine approaches disease from a mechanical point of view, separating the body into a series of parts that are treated individually. This makes it difficult to approach systemic diseases such as MS, which affect many different parts of the body at the same time. The Chinese model of health is based on a view of the human being as an integrated system and treats the whole person rather than the physical body alone. By boosting the body’s natural systems for resisting and healing disease Health Rejuvenation avoids the negative side effects of medicines and promotes long-term health as well as tackling the specific disease.

Now, I do not doubt that having supportive charities is great for parents of very ill children. But to tell them untruths about quack treatments and give them false hope is just wrong. As an example of how far divorced from reality this charity is, there is a section on their site that uses children's testimonies to tout some highly dubious treatments. (I will not link to the childrens' pages).

One testimony is about an autistic girl who is given Lightwave Stimulation using as device called a Lumatron. I will let them explain,

The light is set to flicker, different people and different coloured lights need different rates of flicker. The theory behind LWS is that the brain needs a balanced spectrum of light to help it function properly. The most effective way of getting light into the brain is through the eyes (optic nerve). The flicker helps the brain to assimilate the light. This treatment is used for a wide range of problems/disorders but the most obvious benefit for [Child's Name] is the way it balances her otherwise unbalanced internal mechanisms.

Pseudoscience at some of its best. Getting light into the brain through the eyes and optic nerve?
I find this highly exploitative. The same child is subjected to another treatment,

Auditory Integration Training (AIT) is a method of expanding the range of sounds a person hears and training the brain to process sound properly. We all process sound much more effectively in our brains if our hearing is dominant on the right.

For AIT treatments you sit comfortably and listen through headphones to a variety of music. The music can be Bob Marley, Abba, Bob Dylan, jazz, or sometimes a classical piece but it’s played through a machine called an Audiokinetron. The Audiokinetron filters out aspects of the music in a random fashion so that someone like [Child's Name], who has trained herself to filter out sounds she finds uncomfortable, cannot predict how the sound will change. This sounds like an unpleasant thing to put someone who is sound sensitive through but she actually enjoys it and understands its value. At first the sound is channelled into both ears at the same volume but halfway through the course of treatment the volume is set to play louder in the right ear than the left. This re-trains the brain into right dominance; the most effective and accurate type of hearing.

It would be easy to make a joke about subjecting a child to weird Abba/Marley/Dylan remixes, but I find this far too disturbing. The National Autistic Society has this to say about AIT,

Mudford and Cullen (2005), Romanczyk et al (2004), and Sinha et al (2004) raise concerns regarding limitations of research findings including flaws that they argue limit interpretation of the data, questions regarding clinical significance, lack of replicability, and small sample size. Romanczyk et al (2004) also cite reports of negative side effects which they argue raise ethical questions concerning the use of this procedure with people with autism. AIT is one of the more expensive treatment options for people with autism (Simpson et al, 2005). Furthermore as Simpson et al (2005) point out AIT uses equipment capable of producing sounds at decibels that may be harmful to a persons auditory system, and therefore it is important that the intervention only occur under the direction of a trained AIT specialist.

Romanczyk et al (2004) conclude that the nonstandardised and unregulated manner in which AIT is practised may place those seeking this treatment at risk.

I have a feeling that life's 4 living are going to bring a lot of scrutiny upon themselves. And that looks like it is not a moment too soon.

Labels: BPSDB, life's 4 living

 

So, the Quackometer has been up and running for 24 hours now and most systems have been restored. A bit more to go though. For the technically inclined, this has involved a move from cuddly cotton wool children's Microsoft servers to grown up, open source, Apache/Unix servers where a missed semi-colon can kill faster than a homeopath dishing out malaria pills.

It's been a bit of a bother, but I have time in the evenings now after becoming a Wiidower. Mrs Canard Noir bought me a Wii for Christmas and I have barely used it. She is next to me hogging it at the moment, trying to get Laura Croft to shoot wolves. You should see her on Wii Boxing. It scares me.

So, I might as well blog.

Backstory: Professor Dr Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi FRCAM(Dublin) did not like some stuff I wrote that highlighted his bizarre behaviour and strange quackery. After a year or so, when the Google search results were displaying my site highly despite his best efforts to write so many third person articles about himself, he gets a professional letter writer, Ms Tanja Suessenbach, to threaten my web hosts, Netcetera, with legal action if they do not pull my site.

One would have thought they would have laughed it off. As was so beautifully put on Gimpy's Blog,

This isn’t the case of a credible individual holding a gun to the head of Netcetera in the form of a grievous and legitimate complaint it is a man in a chicken suit successfully robbing a bank while holding a giant inflatable banana and farting loudly.

But no, they asked me to remove the offending pages and 'seek agreement' with Obi. I did to avoid immediate suspension, but felt that Netcetera had put me in an impossible position of being completely unable to reach any sort of reasonable agreement with Obi. How could I? He had got what he wanted.

All I could do was dig up more info on Obi in an attempt to show Netcetera just how ridiculous he was. It was soon clear that his 'College' he set up in Dublin (Royal College of Alternative Medicine, RCAM) was a complete facade with some strange anomalies in its registration.

I wrote to Netcetera on the 30th of January,

David,

Thanks for getting back to me. I fully understand this is a difficult position for you. Netcetera want to get on with the business of web hosting rather than deal with rubbish like this. However, I feel that an important point is being missed. Obi made his claim of defamation without a shred of evidence to substantiate that. On your request, I asked for that evidence and you still asked me to take down the pages.

I hope that as a service provider you do not feel that it is acceptable for third parties to demand the removal of your customers’ content without having to back up their demand with good reasons. We will not get the evidence required to substantiate Obi’s claims.

You can see the level of Obi’s response here… http://www.professorjosephchikelueobi.com/

We have now waited long enough for either Obi or his ‘legal advisor’ to respond in a meaningful and constructive manner. That has not happened, not will it happen because his case is utterly groundless and he has achieved what he wanted to do - take down those pages. I therefore believe that it is entirely justified to re-instate
those pages and I intend to do so. I hope it will be with your consent.

Regards,

I heard nothing.

Then, last Monday, I got this email,

Thanks for your comments.

We do not wish to be in a position where we could be taken to court, and incur the loss of time and expense that would involve. Consequently Netcetera have decided to suspend the Quackometer website, with reference to our Acceptable Usage Policy, the first part of which is quoted below.

The full policy can be found on our website www.netcetera.im/SiteInfo/AUP/ “Acceptable Usage Policy This policy is subject to change, without alternate notice, so please check regularly for updates. This policy is in addition, and considered part of Netcetera’s Terms and Conditions. Netcetera will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. 1) Web Hosting 1.1) Netcetera reserves the right to suspend or cancel a customer’s access to any or all services provided by Netcetera, where Netcetera decides that the account has been inappropriately used. Netcetera reserves the right to refuse service and /or access to its servers to anyone.”

We will prevent public access to the site as of noon today 18th February 2008. You will be able to access the content to be able to transfer it to another host if you so wish. We will hold the content available to you for 30 days, and then we will remove it from our servers.

Regards

So, that gave me 20 minutes to prepare for the collapse of the Quackometer.

On the face of it, it looks like Netcetera were unhappy about being taken to court over something that was not their argument. I think it is worse than that. If anyone there had slightly looked at the complaint (and remember, Obi and Suessenbach refused to respond to request to make clear their grievance), it would appear obvious that the complaint was groundless. Worse than that, the complaint was a blatant attempt to remove legitimate criticism from the web. Netcetera would have won and reclaimed any costs. They just did not want the bother - far easier to lose a customer than to defend their customers.

Positive Internet offered me free hosting after the Magic Watergate scandal. I had been dragging heals over this because of the large amount of work involved when I could have been harassing quacks. Positive are marvelous; you can read about them here. For me it is enough to say that they are the only Internet hosting provider with an entry on the Pilkipedia. Right now, I am aware that I have lost half my audience as they are now exploring the Pilkipedia. Damn, there goes another 50%.

So, for those of you left, I shall finish the story.

The consequences have been inevitable. Such a story spreads quickly and within hours the blogs start appearing. What is more, it starts hitting the mainstream IT sites such as ZDNet, where Rupert Goodwins starts his article by saying,

If you fancy running a controversial website, you might like to think twice before signing up with Netcetera for hosting purposes. The Duck's crime was to collate newspaper reports concerning one Joseph Chikelue Obi.
...
If you fancy doing some waterfowling of your own, do check whether your hosting contract says, as Netcetera's does, that you can be terminated without recourse and without reason. You might like to take your punt gun elsewhere.

The blogs started coming thick and fast too. No Nonsense! was one of the first of the block and described the lilly livered apology for a Web Hosting company, Netcetera. Twonilblankblank asked, "Would your webhost fuck you over?" JDC325 said, "and for all those web hosts out there, please remember: there’s a difference between defamation and criticism." Hawk/Handsaw said "Netcetera fold like a cheap suit"

The story hits the IT mainstream when a full feature makes one of the main stories of the day at El Reg. The Register reporter, Chris Williams, does some digging and phones both Netetera and Suessenbach. Netcetera do not want to play. Suessenbach tells El Reg that "We cannot speak as litigations are imminent." Scary.

Forums are now buzzing with Bad Science, UK Skeptics and the James Randi JREF covering it.

There are now way too many blogs and web pages covering this for me to mention them all (and I want to have a go on the Wii at some point). You can see a comprehensive list here. But some of my favourites are:

• Apathy Sketchpad - "Spineless Morons"
• GagWatch - "Netcetera promptly wet themselves"
• Thinking Is Dangerous - "Netcetera condemn themselves as pathetic caitiffs"
• PalMD on WhiteCoatUndergound - "What a bunch of bloody wankers!”
• Chemo Brain - "we’ll take your site off the internet if a total schmuck frightens us"
• Orac on Respectful Insolence - "outcry from the medical and skeptical blogosphere"
• MediaWatchWatch - Just check out the fantastic picture!

Other sites, such as The Bronze Blog and Paul Hutchinson’s Blog call for a boycott of Netcetera.

What does this mean? Were Netcetera right? At one level, I can sympathize with them. This is a fight they did not choose and could not gain anything from (although Positive will do well). The really big enemy is English Law that is just muddle, unfair and confused - firstly, with its heavy handed libel laws, and secondly, its inability to accommodate electronic media. A more sensible approach needs to be adopted here so that people with genuine grievances can have them heard and addresses whilst the flippant and mischievous can be harried away without fear.

But we should not let Netcetera off the hook. The fact that another host were prepeared to take me on and at their expense at least shows that it is not clear cut. For me, I had a contract with Netcetera and they broke it without giving good reason and relying on an unfair and unequal clause in their lobsided contract. Its all a bit fucked up.

And so, the last word ought to go to Mr Obi himself. What has he got to say? Well, "alighting from the back seat of an Extended Black Daimler Limousine at the start of a Whirlwind Alternative Medicine Tour", he says,

Alternative Medicine Strongman and Royal College of Alternative Medicine (RCAM) Boss, Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi , has today sent out his very best wishes to the Quackometer Blog Owner Andy Lewis, who is currently transferring his Internet Service Provider (ISP) Ports from Netcetera Ltd to Positive Internet Ltd.

That's sweet.

My fundamentally humble message to all Skeptic Internet Service Providers (out there) today is therefore extremely loud and exceedingly clear : Stop condoning the ruthless harassment of Alternative Medicine Practitioners - or be fully prepared to face the dire financial consequences of your actions !

Obi is truly a spokesperson for the whole alternative medicine movement.

Joseph, perhaps you would like to apply for this job?

Chief Executive Officer and Registrar,
COMPLEMENTARY AND NATURAL HEALTHCARE COUNCIL

£60,000 p.a. pro rata.
The new Complementary and Natural Healthcare
Council (CNHC) has been established to put in place a regulatory body for those complementary therapies which are not statutorily regulated, nor seeking statutory regulation. The main function of the new body will be to enhance public protection and confidence in the use of complementary therapists. The Council now wishes to appoint to the role of CEO/Registrar, as soon as possible.

You would certainly get my full support.

******************************************************************

Update 23rd Feb

From The Wardman Wire and Humaniform I learn that the presitigous Bear-Faced Usmanov Award has been made to Mr Obi for "extreme efforts in closing down websites which are criticising you by threat without evidence". Also, The Double Headed Schilling is awarded to webhosts who roll over before such threats, has naturally been given to "internet hosting (sometimes) company Netcetera."

Check out the graphics depicting these awards to Netcetera.

(Usmanov, for the uninitiated, is a Russian oligarch, and part owner of Arsenal football club, who tried to suppress ex ambassador Craig Murray from writing alegations of Usmanov's 'colourful' past by threatening ISPs with legal action. Naturally, attempts at this sort of suppression, massively amplified the exposure of the allegations. One would have thought people would learn a lesson.)

*******************************************************************************

Dr Aust sums up the mess very well on Respectful Insolence.

I hope he does not mind me reproducing it here...

Yes, the British law on this is a hopeless mess compared to the UK and Canada. The need for some sensible new legislation is clear, but British Govts are historically reluctant to do anything legislative that curtails lawyers' ability to trouser huge fees (such as in defamation lawsuits). Perhaps this is because so many British politicians are lawyers.

In the UK situation, if the plaintiff says to the ISP "this libellous thing about me is posted on your servers, take it down", then an ISP that doesn't take the stuff down becomes directly liable for the libel (Godfrey vs Demon internet). Furthermore, the longer the stuff remains up, the greater the potential libel damages "for accumulated damage to reputation" in a defamation suit - the longer the offending passage is up, the greater the potential harm to reputation, goes the reasoning. The ISPs almost certainly take the view that they are a more "attractive" libel suit target, as they are companies and hence clearly have assets, while the blog poster is likely to have no money to speak of. So the ISP has a large vested interest in caving in. This is why the "legal chill by threat to sue" types in the UK go for the ISP rather than the blogger.
All American bloggers should be duly grateful, methinks, for the judgement in Zeran vs. America Online, which effectively says "ISPs are not publishers".

In the UK, where the law conversely does see the ISP a a publisher, it comes down to whether the ISP is prepared to tolerate any potential liability, or even inconvenience, for the sake of some kind of principle.

When UCL was trying to boot David Colquhoun ff their servers following complaints and spurious libel threats, many of the people writing to the UCL Provost (including me) argued that as a University UCL had an overriding duty to protect free comment, and scientific accuracy, as part of its core purpose. But it is a bit harder to make that argument with a business or corporation, whose overriding obligation is presumably to maximize "shareholder value".

An interesting and unresolved question, with wide Internet implications, is to what extent a judgement under the silly UK law can be enforced in any other jurisdiction. In print libel cases there are suggestions that under some circumstances it can,
hence the phenomenon of "libel tourism" I referred to earlier.

You can read more Dr Aust here.

More updates (27th Feb)

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Rebecca Watson - The Skepchick - and Steven Novella, MD - Neurologica - discuss the Quackometer/Obi/Netcetera affair on the weekly Podcast
I hosted u a website, but I eated it
LOLquacks in an easy to understand synopsys of the Obi/Necetera Affair. A Must Read.
Quackometer vs Obi - Abusing Lawsuits to Silence Critics
Steven Novella discussed the implications of net censorship in light of the netcetera/obi affair.

Labels: BPSDB, Netcetera, Professor Joseph Obi, regulation

 

The Homeopathy Research Institute (HRI) has been set up by homeopaths Alex Tournier (who apparently works for Cancer Research UK) and Clare Relton (who is based at the University of Sheffield). The Alliance of Registered Homeopaths in one of their rare press statements have made much of it. They say,

The aim of the Homeopathy Research Institute is to promote and facilitate high-quality scientific research in the field of homeopathy. The HRI will be the first central resource dedicated solely to research about homeopathy as it is practised today. A key task of the Institute will be to communicate about the science relating to homeopathy to the medical and scientific communities, the media, the general public, and to homeopaths themselves. The Institute will form a bridge between the scientific and homeopathic communities backed up by a strong PR and communications team.

The HRI itself says that its aims are to:

To perform and promote innovative research of the highest scientific standard in the field of homeopathy .

To enable and encourage communication between the scientific community, the medical profession, professional homeopaths, the media and the public at large.

This could be good news. A team of dedicated professionals who are prepared to tackle the problems of the paucity of evidence for homeopathy. Can this be true? Let's look at their first newsletter.


The first article in their newsletter says that 'It's not 'just' water'. Clearly a response to the criticisms made by sceptics like myself. So, do they demolish the obvious criticisms? Do patients get anything other than plain old water? It's not pretty...


The thrust of their argument is that 'It is hard to realise just how complex a substance water really is.' They start off by saying,

Water is everywhere; it covers 2/3 of the earth’s surface and makes up 60-70% of the human body. In our daily life, we only know water as either a liquid, ice or vapour. However upon closer inspection, scientists have catalogued 15 different types of ice, which can be admired in the intricate designs of snow flakes and the amazing pictures of water crystals taken by Dr Imoto. This complexity is due to the precise structure of the water molecule, making water one of the most complex substances known to science.

Now the fifteen types of ice have nothing to do with homeopathy. They are crystalline phases produced under enormously different conditions. They say these have been photographed by 'Dr Imoto' and so betray their first failure to stick to 'high quality'. Dr Emoto has photographed various standard ice crystals, but claims that human thought can make the pictures pretty or ugly depending on what thoughts you 'direct' at the water. This is odd given that Alex Tournier says he has a PhD in physics. Does he really believe this? Thought directed crystal growth?

Next they say,

In the field of toxicology there is a known and documented phenomenon known as ‘hormesis’. A substance showing hormesis has the property that it has the opposite effect in small doses, than in large doses. This supports the use of tautopathy, where homeopathic doses of a toxin are given to accelerate the detoxification of that same toxin.

Now, hormesis has nothing to do with water memory. Hormesis requires small doses. Homeopathy most commonly uses no doses. Central to the hormesis idea is that the same substance has beneficial effects at small doses and bad effects at large doses. Water memory requires a different agent - water structures - to play some sort of role if they existed. It has nothing to do with the doses of the substance, since there is no dose in homeopathy. Why hormesis is included to support water memory is just not clear.

Next, epitaxy:

in the field of material sciences, there is a phenomenon known as ‘epitaxis’. This phenomenon is used in the industrial manufacture of semiconductors for microprocessors. Epitaxy refers to the transfer of structural information from one substance to another, which can happen at the interface between the two substances. This transfer of structural information can remain after the original substance has disappeared from the system. This is very similar to the theory of homeopathic dilutions, the only difference being that epitaxy is known to happen in crystalline materials but not in liquids such as water.

They refute their own argument here in that epitaxy is a solid-state surface process. It cannot take place in a liquid medium. Epitaxy has nothing to do with homeopathy. I have discussed the paper quoted in support of hormesis and epitaxy at great length. Mastrangelo has to start by redefining science in order for his arguments to even start to appear to be credible.

Now, the biggest boo-boo so far,

More recently, experiments using the light emission spectrum (Raman and Ultra-Violet-Visible spectroscopy) of homeopathic water vs normal water have shown that homeopathically prepared water has a different molecular structure than normal water. Although these are preliminary results they do indicate that homeopathic remedies are not ‘just water’, something has remained of the originally diluted substance.

It is quite remarkable that for Dr Tournier, who has a PhD in physics, to think that the 'molecular structure' of water has changed. This is pseudoscience at its worst. At best, it is a bad summary of the Rao paper. But reading the Rao paper is like reading a parody of itself. It starts of by discussing the structure of water and then present its experimental evidence on ethanol.

Yes, ethanol.

As you might guess, the paper has been torn to shreds. A subsequent issue of Homeopathy published a damning critique that was not properly addressed by the authors. I fail to see how a respectful journal would not have withdrawn the paper. The letter in Homeopathy ends

It is clear that the data presented are wholly inadequate to support the authors’ assertion that UV spectroscopy can differentiate between the two remedies, and between different potencies of the remedies. If the authors wish to test their assertion it will be necessary to repeat the work from the beginning, ensuring that all samples used in the study are sourced from the same bottle of stock solvent, that all duplicate preparations for precision assessment are separately prepared de novo from the mother tinctures, and that sufficient data are generated to allow robust and valid statistical analysis of the results.

The conclusion to this review ends,

Finally, I want to return to the work of the late Dr Benveniste (1935-2004). Benveniste’s original publication in 1988 in Nature7 – science’s most prestigious journal – created outrage in the scientific community all over the world.

Why would they bring up this discredited work? The review states that "It is reassuring that his results have since then been reproduced and confirmed, showing that indeed highly (homeopathically) diluted substances retain a biological activity akin to that of the substance in its crude form". We are given two references to papers by someone by the name of Belon.

To remind us, Benveniste and the team failed to reproduce his work when a team of Nature investigators were present. Most authors retracted their names from the paper. Unfortunately, Benveniste died. Belon, one of the original authors, republished the work elsewhere. By the way, Belon is a director at Boiron, the half a billion dollar French homeopathic pharmaceutical company.

I am afraid I have to conclude that this newsletter has not been produced with the 'high quality' aims of the Homeopathy Research Institute. That is a shame. There was an opportunity for these people to assimilate and communicate the various problems with the state of research into homeopathy to their largely scientifically illiterate audience. What this newsletter looks like is little more than propaganda. I would contend that we are being offered little more than the highest pseudoscientific standards.

Labels: BPSDB, homeopathy, Homeopathy Research Institute