The Quackometer

There is a claim by many sceptical writers that we live in a new age of endarkenment. Our public lives, whether in politics, universities, businesses and health, face an onslaught of irrational thought. However I have uncovered some remarkable evidence to suggest that interest in homeopathy is declining rather aggressively. I am not sure I believe it, and I want to encourage comments and interpretations to see if this might be real.

All this came about because Google have unveiled the latest part of their rather splendid toolset that allows researchers to look at search trends and see how this might be used to monitor and predict all sorts of behaviour. As a showcase for their techniques, they have developed flutrends that shows how people are searching about flu across the United States. They believe this correlates very closely with incidence of the disease and thus can be used as a near real time monitor of the severity of outbreaks. Standard reporting techniques mean that reporting lags two weeks behind and so this technique may be a much more timely and accurate measurement. Fascinating stuff. And very useful if you want to deploy resources effectively.

So, I decided to play around myself and naturally wanted to see if people were looking for stuff about homeopathy on the web. The graph below shows the relative incidence of the search term in the United Kingdom over the past few years. (The lower part of the graph shows results for news items.)

 

 

This is remarkable. Interest in homeopathy is only about 40% now of what it was at the beginning of 2004. if this is true it shows a devastating collapse in interest that surely must be reflected in the businesses of homeopaths.

(as a side note the letters above the graph refer to the following events:

B) The Lancet meta analysis published

C) The letter to PCTs asking them to reconsider funding NHS homeopathy

D) Degrees in homeopathy criticised as being unscientific)

Can we trust this curve?  Is this just an artifact of Google? Are people getting more sophisticated in how they use Google rather than relying on blunt and simple searches? Let is compare with France. Is a similar trend seen? Lets see the curve for homeopathie searches in France.

Much flatter. In France, homeopathy has a very different cultural dynamic. There are no lay homeopaths. Medical doctors prescribe pills or people self-'medicate' in large numbers from their local pharmacie. The largest homeopathy company in the world, Boiron, is French with a turnover of half a billion euros. There is no significant sceptical community as far as I can tell.

Does this result correlate with any other evidence we have about interest in homeopathy? We know GPs are prescribing fewer homeopathic prescriptions. Is this because interest is waning or do fewer prescriptions mean fewer web searches as patients find out what the hell their doctor has given them. The Society of Homeopaths has occasionally published memberhip figures. The last graph was in 2005 and shows a peak membership in 2004 and that it was then in decline. They have not published similar figures since. Are they embarrassed? Their membership income has increased but they say this is due to their better efforts at moving members up the grade scheme with higher fees due. I have reason to believe, albeit anecdotally, that few lay homeopaths are able to make a full time living and most do it as part of a portfolio, part time or as a paid hobby. Will members be renewing through the coming recession? We also know that NHS funding for homeopathy is decreasing as PCTs refuse to fund referrals and hospitals. There are definitely threats to homeopathy, but this severe?

If the trend continues, there will be no Google searches for homeopathy sometime around 2011-2012. Does homeopathy have two to three years left? Even if the trend is true, surely it must bottom out as we are left with a rump of True Believers.  I am quite sure that homeopathy's greatest threat is that people will find out what it is - magical witchcraft. Is the Internet allowing people to see through the homeopathic propaganda? All very tantalising.

So, how reliable is the Google trends programme? They say is a 'beta' and so not to write PhD theses on it. An hour of fun has produced the following trends that suggest it is at least getting something right...

Can you tell there was no Glastonbury festival during 2006?

Led Zeppelin has been very steady (bar their reunion show last year).

Barbeques show predictable trends. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to correlate barbeque searches with daily temperatures/hours of sunshine. (You can download data into a spreadsheet.)

Searching for Majorca and the Maldives shows the results you might expect with an upsurge of interest for both over Christmas as people open their Radio Times and think about their holidays. Majorca shows a highly seasonal trend whereas the Maldives reflects its more all year appeal. (My guess is I do not need to spell out what the spike for the Maldives at the end of 2004 was all about).

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have thoroughly predictable profiles.

Interest in sex appears to be pretty steady (with some surprising uplift at Christmas again)

And so back to topic. What about other quackery? We can compare searches for homeopathy (blue), osteopathy (red) and chiropractic. (orange)

The decline of homeopathy is much more marked than the spinal techniques. Maybe something is real here.

The Google tool has a number of other excellent facilities. We can find out where the most homeopathic searches are coming from. The result is...

India. It shows the highest infliction of homeopathy where the nationalist governments actively encourage 'Traditional' medicines as part of the Hinduisation of politics - even though homeopathy is German. I have written about the World Health Organisation's disgraceful role in this hoax on the vulnerable.

So, what do we make of this? The trend is not easy to explain away and yet appears to remarkable to be true. Will we see homeopathic companies going out of business soon? Will membership of the pretend regulatory bodies drop precipitously? Is this the end of the last few decade's resurgence in this quackery?

I welcome your thoughts.

Labels: Google, homeopathy

 

After yesterday's raids by the MHRA on suspect dodgy pill sellers and their 'Internet Day of Action', perhaps one of the largest profiteers from such schemes will get away with it.

Google has been quite happy to take money from triamazon.com to show adverts for the site and the hugely overpriced food supplement pretending to be a miracle cancer cure.

This is despite the fact that Google has a clear policy that it will not do such things. As part of its advertising terms it says that it will not take adverts for:

Miracle Cures
Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of miracle cures, such as 'Cure cancer overnight!'

Furthermore, by taking money for such adverts, Google will be in contravention of the Cancer Act of 1939 which says,

No person shall take any part in the publication of any advertisement—

containing an offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof

People do get prosecuted under the terms of this Act. Trading Standards have a duty to enforce it. However, as Trading Standards tend to be highly fragmented across local councils, none of them appear to want to take on the Google giant. I believe Westminster Trading Standards as their UK address is given as,

Google UK Ltd
Belgrave House
76 Buckingham Palace Road
London
SW1W 9TQ
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)20-7031-3000
Fax: +44 (0)20-7031-3001

However, Westminster undoubtedly have many higher priorities making sure dodgy plumbers do not rip off senile old ladies who live on Buckingham Palace Road.

I have complained to Google before about similar issues and also to Trading Standards. Ignored, so far. Google should be policing their own noble 'do no evil' terms, and if they cannot they should be prosecuted where they flout the law. Perhaps the MHRA, as part of their Internet day of action, could tackle one of the largest advertisers on the web. Google has the power to make or break such companies. The MHRA ought to be concerned.

Labels: Google, regulation, triamazon

 

Once upon a time, back in the olden days, that is, before 1996 or thereabouts, your typical quack was faced with a big problem. Just as with producing software, the manufacturing stage of the quack business is straightforward. The software firm used to 'record' software onto 'floppy disks' and the quack could press 'nutrient pills' in huge numbers, or fill bottles or make pills with 'homeopathic water' straight from the tap. All at low cost and only requiring a few people.

Then came the hard part - getting your message out and distributing your product. The pre-1996 quack was forced to travel the length and breadth of the country, with their wares in a wagon, stand on a soapbox and yell at any crowd that would listen. Either that, or set up shops like 'Holland and Barret'. The problem here is that the business does not scale easily. If you want to sell more and make more money, then you have to set up your soapbox in more places but there are only so many hours in a day, or find other sellers just as charismatic as you, but with no desire to rip you off. If you want to build shops then you need someone to lend you money - and you are a quack, after all. Software and quackery in the times of yesteryear had the same problem: production easy - marketing and sales hard.

The Intraweb changed all of that. Suddenly, even the tiniest software house, such as the nascent Google, could get its message out cheaply and distribute its product for nothing. Rapidly scaling a business was possible in ways never before conceived. Google went from nothing to a multi-billion dollar business in the blink of an eye.

Now, Google has done more than promote its own business on the web - it has promoted everyone else's business too, indiscriminately. And so the quack has a new channel to market other than a tee-pee in Glastonbury's Healing Fields or a bit of shabby shelf space next to the cardboard-flavoured vegan scotch eggs in the Health Food Shop. Suddenly, quackery can become a multi-million pound business - and all run from your purple-wallpapered bedroom.

And before I criticise Google, I just want to say that the Quackometer would not be possible without their wonderful technologies. To be able to search vast stores of knowledge, aggregate disparate data-sources and allow millions access to the most obscure writing, and all in under a second, is truly a miracle. The Quackmeter uses Google to see if someone might be a quack, allow filtered searches of the web to be done, and provide quick access from any web page to the quackometer.

And nor am I going to criticise Google for allowing anyone to find out about homeopathy, blood letting and leaches if that is what they want. Free speech and access to information are the protection of our liberties. However, the keen-eyed among you will notice that my feeble attempts to earn money from this site, from clicks on the Google adds that appear, is a total failure. The only adverts that appear are for quacks selling stuff. My gentle blog readers and kind quackometer users are far too intelligent to fall for the scams of pill pushers and Reiki healers. So the adverts must go, under the forthcoming site revamp. To keep them here would only allow opportunities for click-fraud.

But, on further delving, I wonder if those ads should ever have appeared at all? Google is quite clear on this matter in its terms and conditions for advertising. As part of its 'Do No Evil' mantra, as well as not allowing adverts for racist organisations, guns and ammunition, prostitution and hacking tips, Google makes it quite clear that Miracle Cures are banned.

Miracle Cures
Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of miracle cures, such as 'Cure cancer overnight!'

Now, call me cynical, but healing anything by channeling 'cosmic Reiki energy' would be miraculous if it worked, treating any disease with plain water, as the homeopathist would have it, would be a marvel and a wonderment. But all these things appear on my pages as adverts. So, naturally, I email Google and ask them how they police this and what can be done about it.

The response I got back was as follows:

We've received your feedback and will make sure to share your observations with the appropriate people here at Google. In order to maintain a high quality of service for our advertisers, we are always interested in making improvements to the program. We appreciate hearing feedback from our advertisers and encourage you to continue letting us know how we can improve the Google AdWords experience.

Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results. At the same time, Google may refuse any ads or terminate any ad campaign at any time, for any reason, as noted in our program Terms and Conditions.

Google AdWords reserves the right to refuse to run certain ads or categories of ads on a case-by-case basis. Please note that the decisions we make concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver.

...which isn't too helpful. That was a month ago. Whoever the email was passed onto was more concerned with hunting for nudist beaches on Google Earth, or scanning in books in order to violate copyright, than answering my problem. This is obviously a cut-and-paste job and looks like is part of the normal fend-off when people complain about search results they get offended by. But all I am asking them is how they uphold, if they do, their own code of practice.

I wasn't expecting much. But somehow searching for 'ammo for sale' manages to produce no adverts. Why is it so difficult to do the same for 'homeopathic cancer cure'? That search produces all sorts of quacky fraudulent miracle peddlers in blatant contravention of Google's own policy.

Maybe the difference is, that despite what some would have us believe, guns really do kill people and often quickly, efficiently and in large, localised numbers, as we have been so horribly reminded by today's news from Virginia Tech. Quackery kills in slower, less noticable and more distributed ways. Giving false hopes, distorted views of medicine, and fraudulent cures can kill, prolongs unneccesary suffering and removes money from those who may need it. It isn't going to make the headlines and there is tacit acceptance amongst many of much of this 'personal choice'.

Somehow, I will just have to keep pressing away at this. I have no figures, but I would bet that Google has allowed a massive rise in small quackery businesses and contributed to their success. AdWords cost less than soapboxes and reaches more people. Surely, that is an evil that Google need not do?

Labels: Google