The recent rain has ensured the last sniffles of hayfever have subsided. It has been a bad few days and the antihistamines may have made things a little more comfortable – but it is the natural cure of a downpour that has really done the trick.

I know that many people have been suffering over the past week. The pollen levels must have been particularly high. And, helpful as ever, the Daily Mail offered its readers, “30 ways to relieve hayfever: From pills to nasal prongs, our guide to beating pollen”.

The article is a pretty good example of everything that is wrong with health journalism. Whilst, no doubt, amongst these thirty tips there is some good and reliable advice, it is also so full of unchecked quackery, nonsense and falsehood that it renders the whole article as unreliable and useless. It serves only as an advertisement for the suppliers of the products, pills and potions mentioned.

One product caught my attention, and it faced some stiff competition from the qu chi bands and ear candles. Magnetic Therapy Ltd, a Manchester based company, is selling something called the ‘Magnetic Water Wand’. The Mail explains,

The manufacturer claims that magnets are a powerful healing force and by placing the stainless steel wand with magnetic ball into a glass of water or any cold drink the ionising of the liquid can be healing, reducing the sufferer’s reaction to pollen.

A magnetic ball that ionizes water! The idea is simply preposterous. To ionize water would require extremely high energies. That a fridge magnetic could achieve ionisation in a glass of water is just not conceivable. If this were possible then patients in an NMR scanner face Star Trek like vaporization. For the water to become and remain ionised, through the effects of a cheap magnet, and then help your hayfever somehow, is just plain wishful thinking.

The web site of Magnetic Therapy Ltd offers little extra insight.

The unique innovation is that the magnetic WATER WAND is placed directly in the water or cold drink which means that it only then takes about 10 minutes to activate (ionize) the water.

So, basically, it is a magnet on a stick that you put in a glass of water. One can only marvel at the design engineering involved,

This newly designed Water Wand is manufactured in Stainless Steel and has a superb finish to it. With care this will last for many years. The Water Wand  is Bi-Polar in effect. LOW COST MAGNETIC WATER FOR YEARS

As one wag on twitter put it, “I wasn’t going to buy one, then I saw it was made from ‘luxurious stainless steel’.”

The company offers no evidence for its claims beyond a few testimonials. Your magnet on a stick can be yours for the discounted price of only £14.95.

We are given some more insight by Dublin based chakra balancer, Rosemary Skinner SRN,

Most people now believe that the correct use of magnets can help eliminate symptoms and assist recovery from both sickness and injury.

You know. She may just be right.

Skinner goes on,

What of Magnetised water [?] Magnetised water has been used successfully since ancient times. However with the advent of modern magnets such as the neodymium magnets there has been renewed interest. Before we venture in to the area of manufacturing and using the water we have to ask one question. Does it work ?

That is a question that people have tried to answer since the first charlatans started to appear with their magnets and claims of cures. Whilst magnetic sticks have no scientific integrity, or even dare I say, ethical integrity, magnets as cures have a long historical integrity.

The Magnetisers and their tricks were documented by Charles Mackay in his 1852 book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. What is quite remarkable about this book is just how modern it is. As well as highlighting the folly of believers in magnetic healing trinkets, Mackay also looks at other similarly familiar delusions and modern obsessions such as stock market bubbles, witch hunts, serial killers and horoscopes. As the modern introduction states, “human folly changes only in detail and not in scale.” (You can buy the book here.)

Mackay explores the origins of magnetic healing fantasies. The first prominent proponent was the Swiss physician, Paracelsus, who promoted mixing magnetic stone with ground up mummy. The mixture should be sowed with some seeds of a plant associated with the disease (by the law of similars) and the growing plant will draw the disease out.

One fantastic proponent was Sir Kenelm Digby, son of an executed gunpowder plotter and inventor of the modern wine bottle. (I am not making this stuff up.) Digby was a big believer in the Powder of Sympathy – a ‘weaponsalve’ that could cure injury by being applied to the sword that caused the wound. Yes, rub the magic potion on the weapon and the wound would heal. In one extreme, magnetising the sword by simply rubbing it away from you could have the same effect. Rubbing the opposite way, and inducing the opposite magnetism would do harm and make you scream. So confident was Digby in this sympathetic magic that he allegedly proposed in 1687 that it could be used to solve the longitude problem. By taking a wounded dog aboard a ship and removing its bandages before setting sail, a timekeeper at the port would dip the bandage in the powder and cause the dog to yelp. Thus, sailors could know when midday was occurring at their home port and so be able to work out their local time and, hence, their longitude.

The most famous early proponent of magnetic healing was Anton Mesmer who believed disease was caused by a “maldistribution” of magnetic fluids about the body. Mesmer would magnetise water by immersing magnets and iron filings in jars of water and then spraying patients with the mixture. He used magnetic wands to touch people and they were convinced they were cured and sometimes even became hysterical over the experience. Mesmer invented the term ‘animal magnetism’ to describe the vital fluids surrounding living things that he was influencing with his wands and water.

Mesmer created something of a devoted following in France, not least Marie Antoinette, moving her husband Louis XVI to set up several Royal commissions into looking at the evidence for magnetic healing. The commissions consisted of some of the greatest men of their time: the chemist Antoine Lavoisier and the United States Ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, were among the team chosen to test the claims magnetic healing. A certain Dr Joseph Guillotin also joined in the fun – a man more famous for his invention that would end the life of several prominent members of this commission.

The final report was written by the Astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly who became the first mayor of Paris after the revolution and restored French citizenship to Jews and gave them full rights and removed special taxes on them. The commission set up various tests to examine if the results of mesmerism were indeed due to strange magnetic influences, or whether the participants were just imagining it all.

One of Mesmer’s main disciples, Charles Delson was asked to magnetise a tree to see if it could influence a patient. Given a choice of five trees, an enraptured patient chose to faint at the foot of one of the non-magnetised.Using several such tests, consisting of sham treatments and deliberate subject blinding, Franklin, Guillotin, Lavoisier, Bailly et al. set the foundations of the modern clinical trial and concluded that the effects of magnetism were due to the natural course of illness or the patients’ imagination. Magnetic Healing was an inert treatment – a placebo.

Bailly concluded that “imagination without magnetism produces convulsions … magnetism without imagination produces nothing … The experiments are consistent and are also decisive, they allow to conclude that imagination is the real cause of effects attributed to magnetism”.

Franklin added “on things we cannot see or feel it is important to guard against the extravagances of imagination”.

And yet, over two hundred years later, we still have hundreds of people like Magnetic Healing ltd making a living from delusional beliefs about magnets.

There is one interesting postscript to this story. One of the commissioners refused to sign the report. Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu complained that ‘the physical influence of man on man must be admitted’. Jussieu was saying that it did not matter if it was just imagination, if an influence was taking place that induced a cure then we should not cast aside the therapy. The mesmerist Delson also wrote, “if the medicine of imagination is the best, why would we not use the medicine of imagination?”

We see here again a very common and modern response to enthusiasts being told that their favourite superstitious medicine is a mere placebo. Confusions about the nature of placebos are ubiquitous. Supporters cannot let go of the idea that the treatment actually works and so are (often) happy to embrace that the effects are due to some amazing mind-body interaction. However, the Franklin Commission was clear here. The reported benefits are the consequence of the beliefs of the participants and the natural course of illness, and not the result of the actions of the treatment. There is nothing to suggest that the course of illness has actually been diverted by the placebo. People may report improvements, but, as the commission might say, it is ‘hysterical’ and illusory.

Yesterday, in the Guardian, we saw Ed Halliwell, a “journalist and author who writes about health, psychology and Buddhism”, make exactly the same mistake as Jussieu and Delson. His article, “Let’s be honest about the placebo”, states that the placebo is the “healing ability of our own minds” and that “we might do better to more actively harness placebo”. The mistake is to assume that placebo treatments can trigger some “healing ability” within us rather than, more likely, to alter our beliefs, for good or bad, about our state of health, the treatment and our illnesses. To “actively harness placebo” is not to enhance some incredible healing power, but to deliberately misrepresent treatments and lie to patients in the hope for the best.

The ethical dilemmas of ‘harnessing placebos’ were thoroughly explored in the recent House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Evidence Check into Homeopathy. As it is beyond doubt that homeopathic treatments are inert and have no specific effects, then prescribing them risks “damaging the trust that exists between [doctors] and their patients.” Treating with placebos makes ‘patient choice meaningless’ as it involves an act of deception.

My prediction is that the Government in their reply to this report will invoke a Jussieu and Delson response by saying that despite the evidence, that if people say they are being made better by homeopathy, then the government should not get in the way of keeping homeopathy as a ‘choice’. If placebos ‘work’, why not? This is despite the report making it quite clear why this is a nonsensical and unethical stance,

We would expect the Government to have a proper understanding of the power and complexities of the placebo effect and the ethical issues surrounding its use in a clinical setting; otherwise it cannot hope to make good decisions relating to patients and public
health.

Indeed, the chief parliamentary promoter of pseudo-medicine in the NHS, David Tredinnick,  has recently urged the government to ignore the report by saying, “Whatever the science says-whether it is proven or not-those people believe that homeopathy works, and that is important”

Two hundred years after Louis XV1 and his Commissions into Magnetic Cures, as a society, we still do not understand the nature of superstitious medicine and its capacity to mislead. I would guess that in another hundred years time, we will still be seeing magnetic healing quackery being sold profitably to enthusiastic customers. And governments unable to grasp the issues.

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Over the past twelve months, the People’s Medical Journal, the Daily Mail, has given us the following stories about coffee:

So, on balance, it looks as if his year coffee will have been doing us good as long as we are not trying for a baby, wanting to avoid wrecking our brain, reducing damage our baby’s DNA or not wanting to hallucinate wildly.

My nearest big town, Oxford, boasts a little coffee shop that dates back to 1650. It was one of the first places to brew coffee in the UK and is still going strong. Before long, Oxford saw coffee houses as centres of public scientific discussion and debate, with Robert Boyle taking part in the Oxford Chemical Club, which met in a coffee house, and would later become the Royal Society. (We now hold our Skeptics in the Pub, a little further up the High Street.)

It would look like concerns from coffee drinking did not first come from the problems of direct consumption but from the threat caused by radical thought and discussion taking place in the newly emerging coffee houses. The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford soon had to ban the perusal of pamphlets in the coffee houses that were critical of the University and the State. King Charles II tried to shut down the Oxford coffee shops for fear of fermenting rebellion – but the outcry was so huge, the order was soon rescinded.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, coffee was a ubiquitous drink. And health fears were sure to follow.

Enter Samuel Hahnemann, founder of the doctrines of homeopathy. Before Hahnemann had fully formed his ideas about shaken and diluted water as a panacea, he had quite different and conflicting views about what caused illness and what could cure it.

In 1803, he published an essay entitled, On the Effects of Coffee. This essay gives fascinating insights into the beliefs of the inventor of homeopathy and how they must have changed. He starts out by explaining that

In order to enjoy a healthy and long life, man requires foods which contain nutritious, but no irritating, medicinal parts.

Hahnemann sees a clear distinction between medicine and food. However, he worries that many foods are more medicinal in their nature than nutritious,

Medicinal things are substances that do not nourish, but alter the healthy condition of the body.

Coffee is a purely medicinal substance.

We are told that the only foods that are are free from all medicinal properties are spring water and milk. All foods appear to have some degree of medicinal quality and so should be eaten with caution. If we want to flavour our food “the only substances that have been found to be harmless and suitable for the human body are kitchen salt, sugar and vinegar.”

All other accessaries, which we term spices, and all spirituous and fermented liquors, bear a greater or less resemblance to medicines in their nature. The nearer they resemble medicines, the more frequently and the more copiously they are taken into our bodies, the more objectionable are they, the more prejudicial to health and long life.

Hahnemann, in choosing his diet, is then left with a bit of a quandary, as he believes that medicines should only be used on the sick,

Used by themselves, and when no disease is present, they are absolutely hurtful tilings for health and normal life. Their frequent use as articles of diet deranges the harmonious concordance of our organs, undermines health and shortens life. A wholesome medicine for a healthy individual is a contradiction of terms.

Interestingly, Hahnemann tells us,

All medicines have, in strong doses, a noxious action on the sensations of the healthy individual.

At this point in time, it would appear that Hahnemann believed that a medicine’s effect is positively associated with its dose. His later homeopathic ideas would, illogically, reverse this point – a matter that has subjected homeopathy to continuous derision since its inception.

Hahnemann’s dislike of coffee appears to stem from what he believes is its unnatural bitter taste,

No one ever smoked tobacco for the first time in his life without disgust; no healthy person ever drank unsugared black coffee for the first time in his life with gusto—a hint given by nature to shun the first occasion for transgressing the laws of health, and not to trample so frivolously under our feet the warning instinct implanted in us for the preservation of our life.

However, Hahnemann did understand the benefits of coffee. Indeed, it is almost as if he knew me personally, and my general demeanour in the morning,

In the first moments or quarters of an hour after awaking, particularly when this takes place earlier than usual, every one who is not living completely in a state of rude nature, has a disagreeable feeling of not thoroughly awakened consciousness, of confusion, of laziness, and want of pliancy in the limbs ; it is difficult to move quickly, reflection is a labour.

But, see, coffee removes this natural disagreeable sensation, this discomfort of the mind and body, almost instantaneously; we suddenly become completely alive.

He also recognised the benefits of a post-prandial coffee. If you have overindulged during a meal, a coffee can put things right.

Coffee puts a sudden stop to this lassitude of mind and body, and removes the disagreeable sensation in the abdomen after a meal. The more refined gourmands drink it immediately after dinner—and they obtain this unnatural effect in a high degree. They become gay, and feel as light as though they had taken little or nothing into their stomach.

And, as an aphrodisiac,

Even the sexual desire, which in our age has been exalted into the chief of all pleasures, is excited by the primary action of coffee more than by any other artificial means. As quick as lightning there arise voluptuous images in the mind from very moderate exciting cause, and the excitation of the genitals to complete ecstacy become the work of a few seconds; the ejaculation of the semen is almost irrestrainable.

I wonder where Samuel Hahnemann got his coffee from? Maybe Mr Gold Blend turned out to be a bit of a disappointment after all.

Anyway.

So what is the problem, you might think? Well all of this Muslim roasted bean infusion imbibing is rather unnatural. And if you obtained some benefits from the coffee, then the payback was going to be worse than the gains,

When the first transient effect of coffee has departed after a few hours, there follows gradually the opposite state, the secondary action. The more striking the former was, so much the more observable and disagreeable is the latter.

The comedown from your caffeinated high caused all sorts of problems. Peter Morrell lists all the Hahnemannian problems associated with coffee drinking,

constipation, impotence, dental caries, abscesses in children, pulmonary mucus, blue rings around the eyes, leucorrhea, ulcers, general megrim, nervous affections, chronic diseases, insomnia, stammering of speech, lack of appetite for food, ophthalmias, rattling in the chest, etc.

Indeed, Morrell suggests that “Hahnemann was tempted in 1803 to ascribe to Coffee a grand theory of chronic disease remarkably similar to that which he later, in 1827, ascribed to the Itch animal of Scabies”

In developing his theories of illness and homeopathy, Hahnemann came to realise that it was a mistake to ascribe all these bad effects to coffee. In his essay, Chronic Diseases, he says,

That the drinking of warm coffee and Chinese tea…has further augmented the tendency of this period to a multitude of chronic diseases and thus aided psora, I least of all can doubt, as I have made prominent, perhaps too prominent, the part which coffee takes with respect to the bodily and mental sufferings of humanity, in my little work on the ‘Effects of Coffee’. This perhaps undue prominence given was owing to the fact that I had not then as yet discovered the chief source of chronic disease in Psora.

The strange sounding psora became the new Cause of All Illness for his homeopathic theories. And no doubt, the comments section of an early 19th Century online edition of the Daily Mail would have been full of curses to ‘scientists’ not being able to make their mind up about anything.

Morrell, the historian of homeopathy, criticises Hahnemann for using selective evidence to come up with his coffee theories and jumping too quickly to extrapolated conclusions about his observations.

Being convinced in his mind of the certainty of the theory apparently impelled him to then find ‘evidence’ for it, no matter how ridiculous. That was my main point. Further, one might say, he showed a peculiar and recurrent tendency to create ‘grand theories’ upon what is arguably scant evidence.

It was a tendency and a mistake that Hahnemann was destined to repeat when he observed that the bark of Peruvian tree could cure malaria – from which he developed his new ‘grand theory’ of homeopathy,  like-cures-like. His life was then a continual search for any evidence, no matter how slight, to back up his over-reaching scheme. This being a grand tradition that homeopaths continue to this day.

And, I guess, this is what we see in these contradictory Daily Mail stories too. We feel guilty about the obvious pleasures of a coffee and intuitively believe that this must be doing us harm, but we also easily latch onto any evidence that suggests that we are right to continue with our habit. The newspaper columnists provide us with over interpreted views of small studies that have been extrapolated into possible dramatic interventions we can make in our lives to ensure we are free from disease. The stories miss all the subtleties, uncertainties and nuances that make definite recommendations impossible and so the reader is left with a confused impression of contradictory ideas about an every day, and almost certainly relatively harmless, little pleasure.

And it is, of course, the scientists who are blamed for this fog of nutritional confusion.

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But first, the paper reports that Orange have removed a mobile phone mast from a tower block in Staple Hill, Bristol, after pressure has been put on by local residents. Apparently, over ten years seven people in the block have had cancer. Three have died. The block is now called the ‘Tower of Doom’. It just has to be the mast. The rate of cancer is 10 times the average, whatever that means.

It is of course impossible that the cause has anything to do with the fact that, by the look of things, the tower is occupied by a fairly elderly and not too wealthy population. The tower block could also just be unlucky. The elderly residents also complain of headaches and ‘other ailments’. Most unusual for old folk. Out with the pitchforks! Burn the mobile masts now!

What ever happened to the ‘mustn’t grumble’ mentality that we expect of good old British grannies and granddads?

Next up, Israeli firm Brainsway are promoting their new magnetic hair dryer that can cure depression.

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The £189 mail-order kit works by testing a single drop of a pregnant woman’s blood.

The home kit – being offered for sale online by DNA Worldwide – will give women the chance of finding out the sex of their baby regardless of their genetic history.

Mothers-to-be need only prick a finger to give a small blood sample. They then place this on a special filter paper and send it off to a lab for testing.

The Daily Mail is of course most worried that this will lead to a rise in abortions. What they ought to worried about is if the test works at all. Scams based on sex prediction have been around for a while. The thing to look for that might indicate that the test is a fake is to look and see if the company offers a money back guarantee if they get it the prediction wrong.

Why should that be? Surely this should give peace of mind? Exactly. This is how the scam works:

As the scammer, you do not need to do any test at all, or you can do any sort of unreliable test you like. Send back your result to the customer – boy or girl. This could be random or as a result of your dodgy test. If the test is right, you keep your fee. If the test is wrong, and the customer complains, send the money back. Even with a completely random prediction, you will get to keep at least half your money. At nearly £200 per test you will make over £100 per test, even if you are rubbish! The money-back scheme, far from providing peace of mind, lures you into the scam.

So, is DNA Worldwide one of these scammers or have they made a breakthrough?

Looking at their web site reveals they offer a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE!!!

They provide a reference to a published article in Science Journal no less. But on inspection, this is not a paper on this laboratory’s results, but comment on this sort of test. Now, I do not have a subscription to the article, (and nor will most customers of DNA Worldwide) but the article has been cited by other scientists and the title of a paper by Bianchi is At-Home Fetal DNA Gender Testing: Caveat Emptor. This really says it all. Why would they provide evidence that their customers cannot access?

One article that we can get hold of, from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, discusses this test in some detail. It notes that this sort of testing promises the scientific credibility of a DNA test, but without the published evidence to give us reassurance. The legal position of such testing may be in a grey area as the company claims this is not a ‘medical test’. They may be right, being a boy or a girl is not a ‘medical condition.’

Until such time that companies like these publish their success rates in independently reviewed journals, we should be very wary. Buyer Beware indeed.

UPDATE 5th May

Thanks to the kind reader who has allowed me to look at the Science article used as proof of the results for this lab. And as suspected, the article is not a paper but a discussion of the lack of good data to show how accurate home testing is and what a dodgy ethical minefield the whole thing is.

Now DNA Worldwide. I do not know if you are just one more quack laboratory or not. I was going to ask you to publish your data to show that you really are better than 99% accurate. But there is a much easier way for all of us to feel reassured that at least your tests are good.

Instead of offering a money back guarantee, like all the scammers in the past, offer ten times your fee back if you get the result wrong. It should not cost you much if you are as accurate as you claim you are. You will only loose money if you are less than 90% accurate. Resonable? A small price for real confidence in your result. But if you are not as good as you say you are, you will be out of business in 9 months.

What do you say?

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I have been quite critical of those that support electrosensitivity suffers for being so hostile to the idea that people who believe that their ill health is due to Wi-Fi and mobiles may be suffering from psychological problems, or just be plain wrong in their self-diagnosis. Roderick, who runs Eletrosensitivity UK, is particularly shrill at those who put forward psychological explanations of some of the symptoms. He appears to believe that such possibilities somehow diminish his supporters even though their illness would be just as real, no matter what the cause.

Even if some people were found to really be affected by electromagnetic radiation (the possibility is there) does that mean that all people reporting symptoms are suffering because of this? It is a good bet that some, if not all, may well be suffering from some sort of neurosis. Does Roderick want to write these people off? Compassion alone, requires a more open minded approach.

Powerwatch, the other main site dealing with this issue, has a similar, if not quite so hysterical, approach. There is a characteristic clinging to any evidence, no matter how circumstantial, to support the idea that electromagnetic radiation is very bad for us. Little balance or careful analysis appears to take place. A hundred pieces of research with flawed conclusions, unrepeatable results, or out-of-context data, does not add up to a strong case.

Let’s look at just one example from a screaming headline in the Daily Mail: Mobile phone masts blamed over the vanishing sparrows. It reports a Belgian study that shows a correlation between the number of sparrows in an area and the proximity to mobile phone masts. The closer to mast the lower the number of sparrows. And of course, there is instant blame from all quarters that mobile masts are killing our lovely garden sparrows.

But there is a big problem. According to the British Trust for Ornithology, sparrows have been in decline for many years. Here is a graph of their numbers…

Now, the sharp eyed amongst you will notice a few things. The decline started well before the mobile was invented and then appears to level off as mobile take-up was becoming near exponential. For completeness, here is another graph, showing growth in mobile phone usage, which undoubtedly correlates with environmental exposure to mast emissions.

Not a good correlation then. Something else is affecting the sparrows. The RSPB believe the decline is due to tidier gardens and better maintained housing which reduces nesting sites and availability of food. This is, at least, a plausible hypothesis.

But even when there is correlation we have to be cautious. Looking at the graph below, we can see that Buzzards have increased dramatically in the UK and the increase is a much closer fit to the growth of mobile phones?

Do mobile phone masts give buzzards super breeding powers? Is the correlation real? Maybe there are other factors at work, like masts providing ideal nesting places, or supplying dozens of dead sparrows for food, or maybe there is no real cause and effect at all. It could just be chance and unrelated.

So, what can explain the Belgian study? Well, one thing stands out is that the researchers do not appear to have considered other confounding factors.

A confounding factor in a study is a variable which is related to one or more of the variables defined in a study. A confounding factor may mask an actual association or falsely demonstrate an apparent association between the study variables where no real association between them exists. If confounding factors are not measured and considered, bias may result in the conclusion of the study.

So what confounding factors might there be? Maybe sites where mobile phones are put are not liked by sparrows. They may lack trees, nesting spaces, food or have higher human activity. The places carefully chosen to erect masts, may just not be good sparrow hanging-out places. Masts could be associated with problems for sparrows that have nothing to do with electric field strength. The conclusions from the research should be to look at more detail at some of these factors, not jump to conclusions about the harmful effects of electric fields from masts.

Sir Austin Bradford Hill wrote a paper 40 years ago that sets out the standards for looking at how to interpret such correlations. This must count as one of the most influential essays in medical history and is probably responsible for saving more lives than many of the drugs on the market today. Such is the power of pure reason. From the thoughts in this essay came the ability to discover real cause and effect relationships between environmental effects (such as mobile phone emissions) and health. It uncovered the dangers of smoking, the causes of many cancers and many occupational hazards.

The paper describes the tests you should apply to discover real relationships, and avoid drawing wrong conclusions from confounded or chance correlations. These tests include looking for the strength of the correlation, its consistency with other data, a clear dose-response relationship, plausibility, coherence and experimental confirmation. Ignore these tests and you will be led up the garden path.

The sparrow study does not have these things yet. More work could provide them. An experiment might help, such as setting up phone masts, with some operational and some not, and see the effect on local sparrow populations. This would be expensive, but would provide good confirming evidence. Should we be calling for more research?

It depends what your motives are. Do you want to find out why sparrows are declining? Or do you want to cling to any piece of evidence, no matter how poor and circumstantial, that might just support your convictions that mobile phones are killing us?

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Sarah is not the only person in this position. More and more people report suffering as a result of electrosmog. The comment section in the Mail article testifies to this. Support groups have been set up and campaigning groups, such a Powerwatch, are on the case. Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch is a regular commentator on the effects of EMR. The newspapers are full of alarming reports about the problem and Alistair is there to offer his views.

As you might expect, some people are eager to cash in on the problem, selling useless devices to cure the problem, such as the QLink, and alternative ‘gurus’ like Patrick Holford selling devices to detect EMR. This could all be quackery as no-one really understands the nature of the illness yet. It may be one illness really caused by EMR exposure, but it could also be a group of unrelated problems where people just believe that it is the EMR causing their symptoms.

People do get upset though if you call an illness psychosomatic. They equate the word with ‘not real’ and see it as a threat. That could not be further from the truth. No-one is doubting that the eletrosensitives are suffering and need help, it is just that we do not need take their explanation of their illness at face value. Part of the problem is that lots is known about EMR and its effects on matter and people, and it is difficult to think up plausible explanations that could account for the wide range of symptoms and types of exposure being reported. Conversely it is quite easy to see how people could falsely believe that EMR was the cause – and be quite passionate about it.

People like explanations in their life. If you are suffering from debilitating symptoms and your doctor, or even your high street quack of choice, has no explanation, then it is easy to see how you might latch onto a ready-made explanation. We are very good at deceiving ourselves, and in particular applying post hoc logic to explain events. “I felt terrible today. It was the neighbours with their Wi-Fi on”, “Big headache came on after all those mobiles around me in town”. And so on. This self-deception may well be part of the psychosomatic illness.

Now, helping these people will depend very much on understanding the nature of the problem. Are they really being hurt by mobiles? Or, is a more subtle psychological problem at the root? Is there another problem that is being masked by their insistence on being electrosenstive? These are answerable questions where we can use science, experiment and observation to help come to some conclusions.

However, for many of the campaigners and the sufferers, there is already and answer – and it is mobile phones, it is WiFi, it is kettles and computers and modern life. No debate.

Powerwatch are already convinced it is EMR that causes these symptoms and they campaign and advise in accordance with that belief. The problem is, that if they are wrong, then they will not help their supporters get better and they will expose them to the quacks that wish to exploit the situation. If the illness is psychosomatic in nature, then it is likely that some form of talking therapy may be more beneficial than calling on governments to ban mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi hotspots.

The Powerwatch position can be seen on its ‘Dispelling the Wireless Myths’ page. It tackles the supposed myth that ‘People only got affected when the scare stories started, it must be psychosomatic’. The page counters this myth by saying,

this is a quickly dispelled myth (often also referred to as a ‘nocebo’ effect — basically a negative ‘placebo’ effect). A quick look at some of the science:

and then goes on to list four papers that we are supposed to take as evidence that the psychosomatic answer is wrong. The trouble is that all four papers appear to have nothing to do with determining if electrosensitivity is caused by EMR or if it is psychosomatic. There are papers on fruit fly eggs, sperm mobility, test-tube cells and stork nesting habits. But none on looking at humans and their exposure to EMR.

This is strange because there are plenty of papers written on the subject. So why do not Alasdair Philips and his team mention them? In fact there are well over thirty published studies looking into this question. The studies typically ask electrosensitive volunteers to record their symptoms in the presence of suspect devices like mobile phones. The trick is though that the researchers and the subjects are not told if the devices are really on or not, i.e. the trial is blinded. The thirty or so studies all do things a bit differently, but around this general theme.

Now of the studies, only seven so far have shown there is a difference between on and off, that is, that the mobile phone had some sort of affect. However, five of these positive results could not be repeated by the same researchers and the other two are thought to be statistical flukes. In other words, the vast majority of the experiments have shown that electrosensitivity has not been demonstrated to be due to exposure to EMR emitting devices.

A systematic review of most of the studies that have been done concluded,

The symptoms described by “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” is unrelated to the presence of EMF, although more research into this phenomenon is required.

Why does Powerwatch not discuss this? Its a shame. If the people who care and campaign most on behalf of electrosensitive people are selective in their evidence, blind to alternatives and hold strong convictions, then people like Sarah Dacre in the Mail article may go on suffering. Rather than wearing that chain mail hood, perhaps Sarah may benefit from some other sort of therapy.

One thing I do on stories like this, is look for possible conflicting interests that may sway judgments. More often than not, it turns up interesting little facts that need a bit of thinking about.

In this case, I noted that Powerwatch recommend various products to help people like Sarah shield their house from EMR. Powerwatch provide a link to EMFields, a company that supplies all sorts of anti-EMR products. EMFields, also kindly provides a link to ‘consumer interest group Powerwatch that give good, practical advice’.

Now, doing a whois look up on both ‘consumer interest group’ Powerwatch and commercial trading business EMFields, shows that both domains are registered to an Alasdair Philips of Ely. Are they by chance related?

Related posts:

1. Powerwatch is not Scaremongering and Profiteering (anymore) A few weeks ago, I pointed out that some of the science on the Powerwatch site appeared to be significantly less than convincing about the link between mobiles, WiFi...
2. My Sparrow Dead and Cold I have recently been rather drawn into the world of electrosenstivity and found that passions run high. But loudness of voices and strength of convictions rarely match closely to soundness...
3. Step Aside, I’m a Homeopath! It is difficult to know when looking at the claims of many alternative medicine web sites, whether the people involved are a) deluded or b) fraudulent. For my part, and...

The story entitled, “Tiny magnet that soothes the misery of menopause” is a full on bit of brainless reporting of a marketing press release issued by a company that makes questionable magnet healing products.

Magnopulse has been recently criticised by the Office of Fair Trading for making baseless claims for its magnet products. It is obviously finding its routes to market a little more difficult now, but who cares if the Daily Mail will uncritically publish stories about you, complete with sales telephone numbers and web addresses.

• magnet + health = quackery
• a study like this without adequate controls will undoubtedly give a positive result to the quack
• Google is great tool for finding out about a company’s history
• products that claim to treat all sorts of symptoms are usually quack products
• unpublished trials, that are announced to the press, are usually fishing for favourable write-ups by journalists who wouldn’t know whether to stick the magnet down their pants or attach it to their elbow.
• when ‘many doctors remain sceptical’ there is probably a good reason for it. Finding out why might make your article a little more balanced.

On the other hand, the journalist could be a knowing shill.

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2. The Scent of a Quack… At last, what appears to be some reasonable criticism of high street quackery in the Daily Mail… Well, it sort of starts out OK with a report as follows:...
3. Magnetic Migraine Miracle Madness? In today’s Daily Mail, Brendan Montague brings us the sensational story that Migraine suffers need not suffer much longer thanks to a wonder device about to be launched in the...

• Arms of Love flower essence (also available from Vicky Health) has the power to soothe, relax and turn around failing businesses. (No not, VH, I think they are doing rather well. read the article)
• An Aroma Pen that can ‘lift the spirits and create feelings of love’
• Love Rose tea that can ’seduce the inner him (or her)’
• ‘Pure Alchemy Passion Body Therapy’ – with libido lifting ‘essential’ oils. (I have always wondered just how essential these oils are.)
• ‘Female Balancing’ Nourish Chocolate, £1.99 for 50g bar: Um, woudn’t a sneaky Mars bar be cheaper?
• If you are feeling flush, why not treat your loved one to a trip to the ‘Ayush Wellness Spa, the first Ayurvedic destination spa newly opened at the Hotel de France on the shores of St Helier in Jersey’. Here you can get a ‘four-handed abbyanga massage’. Fortunately, we are told this involves two ‘therapists’, and is not some freaky mutant massage nightmare.

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2. The Magnetic Therapy Water Wand: A Debunking from History The recent rain has ensured the last sniffles of hayfever have subsided. It has been a bad few days and the antihistamines may have made things a little more...
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Well, today, the paper disproves any of these slurs by printing a rather enlightening piece about Professor Edzard Ernst, entitled, “Complementary medicines are useless and dangerous, says Britain’s foremost expert“.

The Professor is a real Professor, with a chair at a real, accredited higher education institution, with real academic degrees and a long list of research publications in real peer-reviewed journals. He has, however, trained in many complementary therapies, but is now embarked on a thorough evidence-based evaluation of the techniques and their claims. His summary is basically that a bit of acupuncture may work for some pain (but not through woo meridians), massage is good and some herbal stuff may be effective. Everything else is pretty much useless and even dangerous.

Not surprisingly, his approach and conclusions do not go down too well in the woo community. Evidence is to the homeopathist, reflexologist and reiki master as kryptonite is to Superman. Reason is to the crystal therapist, chiropractor and nutritionist as water is to the the Wicked Witch of the West.

So it is no surprise that Professor Ernst is attacked, or more commonly, totally ignored by CAM practitioners. If mentioned at all, the Professor’s work is condemned as being irrelevant to the sorts of ‘holistic’ treatments that health charlatans engage in. It is a widely held belief in homeopathic circles that double blind, randomised, placebo controlled trials cannot be used to test the efficacy of their sugar pills. No substitute is offered as an alternative test measure – the homeopathist is quite happy to sit in the dark, in an anecdote rich smog and an evidence free vacuum, and use this canard to deflect away the negative results that come out of good, controlled trails. And a canard it is. As Professor Ernst is reported to say in the article, “You need to think a bit more – it’s a challenge”.

The sad thing is that not much thinking is really required. For a trial to be effective, all you need to do is blind both the practitioner and patient as to whether the ‘real’ sugar pill or a dummy pill is being taken. Let the homeopathist do whatever they like in their ‘complex intervention’ (long expensive chat), let them prescribe whatever combination of identical sugar pills is required to create the ‘individualized treatment’. Just make sure that the dispensing of the actual pills is done through some sort of randomised, coded and blind procedure. This is surely not beyond even the wit of a homeopathist. In order to believe that such a trial would be ineffective, you would have to believe that the critical part of the homeopathy magic is in the actual physical handing over, from therapist to patient, of the content-free tablets – nothing to do with tinctures, succussions, dilutions and like-cures-like.

So, anyway. Why did the Mail publish this? If I was to get all conspiratorial, I would say that the Mail publishes such stuff knowing exactly how its readers will respond. The Mail tends to dislike experts and authorities, people who can dispute their nonsense with well reasoned debate. Maybe the Mail knows that its readers will just see Prof Edzard as just another out-of-touch, ivory tower elitist idiot. The readers ‘know’ that their woo-of-choice works and so the only conclusion is that this guy must be just out to spoil their fun. It is a pity that this article is not allowing comments on it at the moment as we could test out if this near the truth. Or maybe it is much simpler in that there is no real science editorial policy and that they will just publish anything that makes a good story regardless of its origin, accuracy or reliability.

Anyway, one thing I am quite proud of is that the Quackometer News Scanner did not pick up this story, despite is being riddled with alt med terms. This is what that the quackometer has to say about the piece,

0 Canards.

This web site has more quackery than my village pond. It is full of scientific jargon that is out of place and probably doesn’t know the meaning of any of the terms. However, the black duck can spot a fellow sceptic!. The site is highly sceptical in language and is debunking. It also looks like this site is trying to sell stuff. Buyer Beware!

I am not going to argue.

Update – 13/12/06

Looks like my prediction is correct. The readers backlash has started in the comments section of the article.

Some highlights so far:

• Individuals should be free to judge for themselves the effectiveness or non-effectivenss of any therapy. We do not want or need authorities ‘protecting us’ at every turn.
• what we need is to preserve our freedom to choose what works for us.People have to become aware that our rights are eroding and refuse to accept it. Debate about the safety of natural medicine is ridiculous in light of the large number of people who die from drug side-effects.
• Often times prescription and non-prescription medicines do more harm than good.
• The popularity of homeopathy and other natural remedies is pretty strong ‘evidence’ in itself
• I’m not quite sure what this man hopes to achieve by such arrant nonsense. Indeed it is he who is irresponsible. Why, I wonder does he feel the need to make such a controversial public announcement?
• However, from my own experience, it would appear to me that there is absolutely no doubt that alternative medicine, along with the appropriate lifestyle changes, can make a major impact upon the health of those who choose to follow that path.
• Why is it that Professor Ernst et al never make any mention of thousands of allopathic (scientifically formulated) drugs that poison, kill and destroy many peoples lives every day?
• Wonder if something’s happening in the allopathic world that the heat has to be taken off them and placed onto complementary medicine?

Blah blah blah.

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1. "Once Dismissed as Hokum…" A Guide to Writing About Quackery in the Mail “Once Dismissed as Hokum” is how Dr Danny Penman begins with a less-than-half-truth in his quacktasticly exceptional article about Spiritual Healing in the Daily Mail, “Could spiritual healing actually work?“...
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