The Quackometer

The news (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) has been full of reports about how our food in Britain is becoming less nutritious and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain a full set of minerals and vitamins through the food we buy in supermarkets. I have been told by several people that this is the reason why it is so important to take supplements. Can this be true? If so then it is truly shocking! We can no longer feed ourselves! What is going on here?

I've always thought that the best way to get your minerals and vitamins was to eat a varied and balanced diet, rather than take dietary supplements. I further believe that the major source of information about the need to take supplements comes only from the big business interests behind the 'health fraud' industry.

So I did some digging. The common source behind these allegations of Mineral Depleted Food appears to be a report issued by the Food Commission. Let's take a look at this.

First, the Food Commission is a consumer lobby group involved in doing consumer surveys and publishing 'thought leadership'. It does not in itself publish peer-reviewed research. Like all such groups, it has an agenda, and one that I probably broadly agree with. Nonetheless, given this, one should always be cautious in examining its claims.

The report in itself suggests that several foods (meat and dairy) have lower levels of minerals than the same foods had in the 1920s. There are several problems with this analysis:

• If this is indeed true, there is nothing in this report to suggest that the levels have fallen to dangerous levels. Is it still likely that a varied and balanced diet will supply most peoples' needs? The report declines to comment.
• There have been several criticisms of the methodology of this research (comparing government tables, the best part of a century apart). Analytical methods have changes enormously over this time and there is no correction for biases that will have been introduced as a result. (Remember the famous iron-in-spinach myth?)
• The report goes on to show that 8% of women might be mineral deficient but (this is the important bit) the report does not say that this is a result of the (alleged) lower mineral levels in food. This could be down to these women just having very poor diets. This is to be expected, as we know some people do not eat well and there is no attempt to correct for this. This is either a little disingenuous or just plain not rigorous enough. The report allows the connection to be made in the readers mind - but does not state the connection itself.

So, not very convincing then. So what else does the Food Commission say on this subject then? Interestingly, it also publishes a report on vitamin and mineral fortification in diets (as promoted by many major brands, e.g. Nestle) and goes on to widely condemn the practice. One of the key findings in this report is that such practices are a subject of concern since it "promote[es] the concept of added nutrients as improving health, versus promotion of an overall healthy diet." In other words, the Food Commission says that you should eat a healthy diet; don't rely on added supplements.

It would appear to be case closed, but the story gets a lot better.

Why did the Food Commission publish this report? Who did the original research?

It is stated that the research was done by a Dr David Thomas. Now Dr Thomas was originally a geologist (alarm bells) and has "retrained as a chiropractor and nutritionist" (very loud sirens). Dr Thomas does not work at any academic institution doing research, as you might have thought given the seriousness of this report, but rather has been running a company that sells (drum roll) mineral supplements.

http://www.mineralresourcesint.co.uk/about.html (have a look what the quackometer has to say about this site.)

So, could it be that this report was originally just a piece of puff marketing released by a company that would directly profit from people believing it? I don't know. If it is just marketing then it is a scandal. Obviously many people are worried about their health enough to invest lots of money in unnecessary supplements.

Personally, I think the next time you are tempted to blow twenty quid in a health food shop on unnecessary supplements, you should keep on walking down the high street until you find an Oxfam or Save the Children collector and pop that twenty quid in their collection tin. The added nutritional value that the money will provide to struggling farmers in truly undernourished parts of the world will greatly outweigh any marginal benefit those pills will bring you – IF you eat a varied, balanced diet.

Labels: diets, minerals, nutritionist, vitamins

 

Let's recap - 'Cellular Memory' - the alleged ability for every cell to retain some sort of energy memory about us that can get passed on through organ transplants to the recipients. We saw how Dr Gary Schwartz was showing off his latest art prodigy who had acquired the ability to crayon-in after a heart transplant from an artist.

Then we saw that these theories were being backed-up by the forgetful Hawaiian, polymath Dr Paul Pearsall. After being prompted to look into Dr Paul Pearsall a little more, I came to understand that his theories of 'cellular memory' in transplant patients have indeed been published.

Two places appear to have the privilege of his thoughts, Nexus magazine and the Journal of Near Death Experiences.

A peer reviewed journal? Maybe this theory has been peer-reviewed after all? Maybe it is me who is bonkers? So, I Iook this journal up.

Picking a random paper published in the journal, I go for: "Cheating the Ferryman: A New Paradigm of Existence? " by Anthony A. Peake.

Let's run this paper through the quackometer. We get:

QUACKERY LEVEL 4.

Lots of postmodern and pseudoscientific jargon, apparently.

Forgive me for quoting the whole Abstract, but it is worth it...

Survival after death of the body is arguably the most fundamental question facing sentient beings. I present a rationalistic argument for what occurs subjectively at the moment of death, using insights from quantum physics, neurology, perceptual science, psychiatry, and Gnosticism. At the point of death, three events are brought about by neurotransmitters flooding the temporal lobes. First, the dying person "falls out of time" as the speed by which stimuli are processed by the brain is altered. Second, the person's consciousness splits into two independent entities, the Eidolon ("I") and the Daemon ("higher self"). Third, the brain starts a "real time" recreation of the subject's life projected into consciousness of the Eidolon as a reality indistinguishable from the real thing. The Eidolon lives its life again as if it was the first time, but now with a higher self (Daemon) taking the role of a guide. This second life runs in an alternative universe within the consciousness of the perceiver and takes place in the microsecond before the perceiver is seen to die in the universe of any observers. In the observers' universe, the perceiver dies; but for the dying person, time expands to make that last microsecond last a lifetime. At the end of the second "lifetime," the same process occurs again in an even smaller segment of time, a literal version of the "Eternal Return."

I'm not quite sure what this is, but it ain't science.

So who is this Anthony A. Peake, the author of this insight into a 'quantum theory of death'?

It turns out that Mr Peake is a "Divisional Human Resources Manager for North of England and Scotland for Nuffield Hospitals in the United Kingdom". He has a degree in history and sociology.
It would look like the Journal of Near Death Experiences is happy to print the ramblings of bored Hospital HR managers. Now I understand what my private health insurance is paying for.
I wonder if I can get a spoof article published in that Journal? That would be wonderfully funny.

Labels: gary schwartz, paul pearsall, pseudoscience

 

After having an argument on a message board about whether Cellular Memory could really exist (see last post), I was offered that the following expert would back up these strange theories of Dr Gary Schwartz. His name is Dr Paul Pearsall and you can see his impressive home page here.

Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychoneuroimmunologist. Try saying that drunk.

Now, the quackometer gives this result to Dr Paul's Home Page: QUACKERY LEVEL 2 and says that faint quacks can be heard.

Now the quackometer is not always right. And with Paul's CV looking so impressive, maybe I need to see if the quackometer is working right. He is after all Clinical Professor at the Department of Nursing, University of Hawaii at Manoa. And also, "Designated as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century by Oxford University Biographical Society" according to his web site.

The thing is, Dr Paul does appear to fully endorse the rather strange "cellular memory" theories of Dr Gary Schwartz and he co-authored an article on the subject, "Organ Transplants and Cellular Memories" in Nexus magazine. Well, that is enough to warrant a bit of digging.

As always, anyone who so prominantly has to display so many qualifications, positions held and other credentials might be making an 'appeal to authority' and using this to hide rather shaky ideas. I really must find a way to get he quackometer to spot such stuf. For example, anyone who quotes their name as Dr XXXX YYYY PhD is asking to be checked out. One or t'other usually suffices.

My first two googlings presented a couple of problems. His web site states he has won the "Rush Gold Medal Award from the International Psychiatric Association". So I google "Rush Gold Medal" and Paul Pearsall appears first in the list (after a bit of guff). Is he the only person to have won this medal? Why no International Psychiatric Association endorsement. Obviously, something for me to follow up.

Next, I looked at: "Designated as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century by Oxford University Biographical Society". Nothing. So I google "Oxford University Biographical Society". Just our new friend again??? Do the Oxford University Biographical Society not have a web site? Are they so stuck in their mediaeval academic ways that they have no internet presence? Is the only award ever made to our new friend? What about the other "influential scientists of the 20th century". Do they not want to shout about their award too?

Mr. Earl Bakken also claims the Scripps Clinic Trail Blazer Award for Contributions to Integrative Medicine in the same year as Dr Pearsall. Shall we see a fist fight between them perhaps?

Dr Pearsall claims that he is "Fully licensed and board certified clinical neuropsychologist, License Number 000773" Even better, the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology lists all its members and guess what, under 'P' for Pearsall, no-one of that name exists. A pattern is beginning to emerge.

Here is the lists of academics in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa where he apparently holds a professorship. Looks like another oversight.

I got bored there. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to check up on everything else.

So is Dr Pearsall right about the theories of 'cellular memory'?

Well one thing is sure, as "one of the most requested speakers in the world" is that he is very, very busy. I'm not quite sure how he finds the time to do the basic research on cellular memory. He charges $20,000-30,000 for a lecture, and having done 5000 of them, he must be very busy and very, very wealthy by now. That's over $100,000,000 wealthy just from after-dinner speaking.

All I can say is that there appears to be some memory problems somewhere, either with Universities from Oxford to Arizona, or with Dr Pearsall. Before more speculation on cellular memory, maybe there ought to be more investigations into Dr Pearsall's cerebral memory.

Nice Hawaiian shirts though.

 

Once again, the bonkers story of how organ transplant patients aquire the behavioural characteristics of their donors has cropped up in the more gullible papers. So, i thought I would bump up this post.

Here's a story from the Daily Mail. A man gains a miraculous ability to paint after receiving a heart transplant from an artist! Let's see what the quackometer makes of it...

0 quack points

Not too good then. Could this be real? Maybe some manual debunking is required after all.

What is being claimed here is that every cell in the body has some sort of 'soul' that can take 'memories' with it between donor and recipient - a sort of 21st Century Lamarkism.

So let's look at Mr Sheridan's new amazing ability to draw, before and after...

Well, looking at the pictures above, it appears that our patient has mastered the artistic skill of 'colouring in'. If you were particularly generous, you could say he even has got to the level where he stays within the lines. Hardly, the next Turner, Constable or even Damien Hurst. I was half expecting the report to say that after he left his hospital bed in a dishevelled state, it was derivative of the work of Tracy Emin.

Imagine the news story...

Art critics have been quick to dismiss heart-transplant patient, William Sheridan’s, naïve art sketches of birds and boats, but after he has recently moved into installation pieces, the art-world has suddenly looked up. Said Dr Schwarz, “After Mr Sheridan left hospital, a Resident Consultant noticed he had left behind his greatest masterpiece yet.”

Although highly derivative of the work of English artist, Tracy Emin, there is no way that Mr Sheridan could have produced such work before his heart transplant. Entitled “My Bed”, the work is an installation consisting of rumpled sheets, lucozade bottles, discarded grape stalks, latex gloves and blood stained hospital gowns.

Jeannette Winterson said “This is the detritus of a life quintessentially his own; it was, above all, confessional.”

Dr Schwarz commented that “this mise en scène was proof of every cells interconnectedness and that ‘cellular memory’ has been contextualised within an aesthetic of dirt and disgust.” He added, ‘We are just hoping that his next effort is not derivative of Emin’s work “Every Part of Me’s Bleeding”.’

Charles Saatchi has denied rumours that he has expressed an
interest in buying the work.

Mmmm. A heart transplant patient. Extra time on his hands. Maybe a desire to try new things. I think that is all the explanation we require to explain our new art talent. So where did this story come from and why did the Mail publish it?

A little more digging reveals that Dr Schwartz is well known to quackbusters. Dr Gary Schwartz heads up the Veritas programme at the University of Arizona. Veritas "was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death". Ahh! real life Ghostbusters.

I guess if you can 'prove' that your 'identity' can survive a heart transplant, then you are half-way to 'proving' that it could survive death. Well, in their minds perhaps. If this is the case, I am a little disappointed that the best-evidence so far for life after death is a hastily crayoned drawing of a seagull. (At least, I think it is a seagull.) I was hoping for better.

You can nominate Mr Sheridan for the Turner prize here.

Labels: daily mail, gary schwartz, paul pearsall, pseudoscience

 

leave your comments here...

 

Definitions are hard. You could argue that one person's quack is another's health professional. I do not want to limit the definition to just those people who practice Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Your local GP may, on occaisions, resort to quackery. Also, a CAM practitioner may be very diligent in how they present themselves. I shall take a working definition from the excellent Quackwatch web site. This definition appears to be quite neutral as to what sort of person is the source of the quackery...

Quackery, in the broadest terms, is "anything involving overpromotion in the field of health."

A quack is "a pretender to medical skill; a charlatan"
and "one who talks pretentiously without sound knowledge of the subject discussed."
(This is is essential to the Quackometer Project as spotting quackery depends on spotting this pretentious, out-of-context vocabulary.)

Quackery is often, but not always, linked to health fraud where there is "the promotion, for profit, of a medical remedy known to be false or unproven."

How can you spot Quack? - they nearly always do the following:-

• Flaunted qualifications and credentials - this is just an 'appeal to authority'. Quacks often award themselves impressive qualifications or buy them from non-accredited 'colleges' usually in he USA.
• Exagerated and inflated claims - diets, cures or remedies appear to solve a whole host of illnesses and problems, not just one problem - they are non-specific. Foods are not just foods, but 'superfoods' etc.
• More often seen on TV, newspapers, magazines with their 'latest findings' than in scientific journals, conferences, text books.
• Works alone - a sole genius in a world that won't listen.
• Use of out-of-context language, e.g. energy, frequencies, vibrations, biomagnetic, quantum, detoxification, organic, holistic... These words are often stolen from other disciplines (usually physics) with the quack having no idea what they mean. Their use in health matters is pseudoscience and meant to sound impressive and to bamboozle the gullible.
• Lots of impressive testimonials - little or no independent peer-reviewed research, no ballance in reviews of research, i.e. no mention of negative results, untracable privately published 'research', lots of 'happy customers'. Testimonials count for nothing - anyone can get them for anything. People fool themselves over the effectiveness of treatments.
• Claims to be standing up for ordinary people against the conspiracy of 'big pharma', doctors, scientist, the government, multinationals and other great evils (who might disagree with them).
• Say there is always a need for a personalised questionaire, consultation, membership (with them, not your GP) - just a way to flog more rubbish.

...and much more, Maybe I can add to this list in my blog as time goes by.

Find out more about quackery here...

• Wikipedia entry on Quackery
• Quackwatch definitions

Labels: quackometer

 

So, how does the Quackometer work?

The quackometer counts words in web pages that quacks tend to use. The more quack words, the more quackery is suspected. That is Quackometrics.

The basic problem is that spotting the suspect words that many sites use, such as ‘vibrations’ or ‘energy’ is just not good enough as ‘good science’ sites are quite at liberty to use them. Even spotting these words in close conjunction with health terms, such as ‘healing’ or ‘nutrients’, is not quite good enough. My own background was research within in nuclear medicine group and the researchers had lots of legitimate reasons to mention ‘magnets’ and ‘health’ in (almost) the same breath.

So – the site uses an algorithm roughly like this:

1. Keep a number of different dictionaries for use in tallying words in a web site
2. Load the suspect web page and strip as much out as possible, HTML tags, scripts, punctuation etc.
3. Count the number of words in each of the following dictionaries:
   a) altmed terms: such as ‘homeopathic’, ‘herbal’, ‘naturopath’
   b) pseudoscientific: clearly suspect terms that scientists rarely use such as ‘toxins’, ‘superfoods’.
   c) domain specific words from biomed, physics or chemistry such as ‘energy’, ‘vibration’, ‘organic’.
   d) skeptical words: words that no sincere homeopath would ever use, such as ‘placebo’, ‘flawed’, ‘crank’ or ‘prosecution’.
   e) commerce terms that would indicate that something is for sale, such as ‘products’, ‘shipping’, or ‘p&p’.
   f) Run a few other checks on pomo terms and religious terms, although not much is done with these.
4. Compare the ratio of frequency usage of these various types of terms and compare them to preset thresholds. If a threshold is exceeded then append the test’s associate sentence to the response. The tweaking I have been doing to the site has been adding words to dictionaries and varying the thresholds for matches.

This does not always work, Some quacks are very clever and avoid the obvious quack words. Nonetheless they still have completely hatstand ideas.

So, if anyone else has suggestions, then I would be very greatful. Just need to give up my real job to concentrate on this now.

Labels: quackometer

 

The quackometer is an experiment to see if it is easy to spot quack web sites just from the language they use. The idea for this site came about after various discussions on Guardian writer Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog.

Several people have noted how quack web-sites use similar language and vocabulary and once you can spot the patterns, spotting quackery is easy. Quack words include "energy", "holistic", "vibrations", "magnetic healing", "quantum" . These words are usually borrowed from physics and used to promote dubious health claims. As such, their use is pseudoscientific and just meant to impress and bamboozle the gullible.

So, is it possible to spot a quack web site just from its use of language? Is is possible to automate the process? The Quackometer intends to find out...

If this works, then all the public need do when faced with suspicious claims, is put the suspect URL into this web site and my little friend, the black duck, will analyse the page and give a verdict.

Labels: quackometer, tools