The Quackometer

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, 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