The Quackometer

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

The late physicist Richard Feynman called such stuff cargo cult science. He mocked activities that took on the appearance of science but missed "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty". The phrase 'cargo cult' was taken from pacific islanders, who after the Second World War, adopted the practices of the American airmen based on the island and built runways, control towers and lit fires as landing lights in the hope of attracting the planes carrying wondrous goods. It looked like an airport with many people doing the same sort of things as you see in an airport - but of course was a pantomime.

This weekend, in Copenhagen, you could have visited the European Quantum Energy Medicine Conference 2008. It is worth browsing their web site. It look so real, so professionally put together and very inviting. One can imagine what was going on there over the past few days. Coffees, chats, chances to meet up with old colleagues and collaborators, chances to spy on old rivals, interesting talks, dull talks, gossip about the next big result, swapping tales of funding crises, bemoaning paper work, overstepping the mark in the bar in the evening, regretted passes, and so on. Just like a real academic conference. But this is nothing but a cargo cult.

How can we tell? On the surface it is not easy - but there are massive tell-tale giveaways - and we will come on to these. But first, let's explore a little deeper at what went on this weekend in Denmark.

The first big giveaway is of course the use of the language of quantum mechanics in a medical context. It's a sure sign of quackery. We really need not go any further to come to this conclusion. Of course, the delegates here will tell us that we are stuck in some 'Newtonian paradigm' of medicine and the 'energy medicine' is the future. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

The list of speakers and their subjects are fascinating. We are treated to Dr. Mae-Wan Ho who describes herself as a 'radical biophysicist.' Those of you who may frequent Borders in London may be aware of her rag, Science in Society, that delights in publishing any fringe scientific musings. We have people talking about biophotons, living matrices and neutrino power. We have people asking questions such as "can we integrate the Chinese meridian system with quantum wave theory", "Can we change the past using only our intention?" and "Can we make the human biofield visible?".

So many words that sound like science and so little meaning behind them.

But it is all not fun and frolics. I note that Jane Lloyd of Edutherapy is speaking about how children with 'learning needs' can 'meet their full potential' with the edutherapy programme. This involves a "remote, interactive bioresonance programme". Looking at their web site we find that Edutherapists will post you a metal cylinder called an e-capsule. This then allows them to 'deliver the programme' to you and collect your money without the worrisome bother of actually having to visit you. Magnificent.

The homeopaths show up too. 'Dr' Jeremy Sherr is here to talk about how magic 'energy' sugar pills can treat AIDS in a talk entitled, "Homoeopathy for AIDS in Africa: An Energy-Information Treatment.". This is pretty low. People in Africa already have to suffer the theories of Matthias Rath . One might want to complain to the Society of Homeopaths as they explicitly forbid their members from making claims like these. Unfortunately, Sherr is a Fellow of the Society of Homeopaths and we know how the Society like to deal with such complaints.

But if you are still wondering about this and thinking they might have a point about quantum energy being the future of medicine, what is the big giveaway that this is a cargo cult?

The answer can be summed up in one word: data.

There is no data at this conference. There are no results of carefully conducted and controlled experiments where we can assess the validity of the claims being made. All the talks appeared to be hypothesising or promoting particular variations of their quackery. Without data there can be no critical appraisal. No advancement or validation of ideas. There is no way to refute or accept any healing claim. And this is the cardinal sign of quackery - the complete lack of critical appraisal and the willingness to test and examine claims. There will be a hundred anecdotes and assertions of facts - but nothing other delegates could take away and replicate and test. And that makes it pathological science.

I will end with the words of Feynman on cargo cult science. I doubt I could ever hope to better what he has to say on the subject.

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

George Monbiot writes in today's Guardian about the shame of our libel laws in the UK.

The Rath case highlights the basic injustice of such laws,

Rath, a German doctor, appears to have encouraged South Africans with HIV to stop using anti-retroviral drugs, and take his vitamin pills instead. Several of them died. It's an important story, which shows journalists are of some use after all. But the Guardian stood to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds for having the impudence to publish it.

Simon Singh, one of Britain's best science writers is being sued for daring to mention that chiropractors have little or no evidence that their mumbo jumbo works.

I too have had my fair share of threats from people like the Society of Homeopaths who cannot stand their deluded practices being criticised.

It requires a simple fix to get this right. The burden of proof needs to lie with the claimant. If you want to sue for libel you should have to show that the words were indeed libelous and are malicious and untrue.

Ask your MP where they stand on this issue. The government did promise to sort this mess out. Ask why this is not happening? As Monbiot concludes,

This autumn the English branch of PEN, which defends the freedom to write, will launch a campaign against our libel law. But where are the rest of you? Where are the petitions, the public protests, the lobbies of parliament? Why is this 13th-century law still permitted to stifle legitimate dissent? Wake up, Britain: your freedoms are disappearing into the pockets of barristers and billionaires.

You can find out details of your MP here: TheyWorkForYou.com. It only takes a quick email.

The highlight of this week has been the news that Matthias Rath has folded in his attempt to sue Ben Goldacre and the Guardian. Rath will end up paying about half a million pounds for his attempt to silence and harass his critics. It couldn't happen to a more deserving man.

Matthias Rath is a modern day Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Russian peasant who worked his way up through the Soviet hierarchy, twisting science to suit the ears of Stalin. He rejected Mendelian genetics and denounced it as a capitalist plot. Any scientist who criticised this nonsense met with severe treatment, imprisonment and death. Soviet science was held back for decades under his influence. Chairman Mao adopted his agricultural theories in the cultural revolution resulting in the starvation of millions.

Today, we have the South African government rejecting science when it comes to the biggest crisis they face. AIDS is causing havoc in Southern Africa - killing hundreds of thousands, and needlessly. We now know how to manage the illness so that is essentially, no longer becomes life-threatening. But it has been a struggle for South Africans to get hold of the drugs they need to survive.

The heroes here are the Treatment Action Campaign, a charity set up by Zachie Achmat to raise awareness of HIV in South Africa and to make treatment available to all. Achmat said he would not take ARV drugs until they were available to all. One of the first acts of TAC was to assist the government in clearing the way for the distribution of generic drugs despite opposition from the pharmaceutical industry. The government quickly turned its back on TAC though and refused to distribute the medication, instead adopting fringe AIDS -denialist theories, and supporting quack 'cures' for he disease. In echoes of Stalin's support for Lysenko, Mbeki, the president, and his government promoted the view that AIDS was a conspiracy of 'Western' interests and racism. Throughout Africa, similar themes were adopted where being an AIDS-denialist was part of the package you took for opposing 'colonialism' as represented by 'western science' and drug companies.

In this climate, in walks Matthias Rath, a German vitamin salesman. Rath proclaimed that,

Never before in the history of mankind was a greater crime committed than the genocide organized by the pharmaceutical drug cartel in the interest of the multibillion-dollar investment business with disease. Hundreds of millions of people have died unnecessarily from AIDS, cancer, heart disease and other preventable diseases and the only reason that these epidemics are still haunting mankind is that they are the multibillion-dollar marketplace for the pharmaceutical drug cartel.

Rath treads a well worn quack path. He plays to the inherent distrust we have of pharmaceutical companies and then makes the leap that their drugs are dangerous and ineffective and that his own 'cures' are the answer. He plays to the nationalistic views that there is a colonial conspiracy to kill Africans and then promotes his own vitamin pills as the answer. He ran newspaper adverts in South Africa telling people that ARVs were 'poison' and to urge people with HIV to take his 'natural' vitamin pills. His venom spewed at the Treatment Action Campaign is appalling.

Rath has been conducting 'trials' in South Africa illegally. The government at best, turned a blind eye and at worst encouraged him. The South African Medicines Control Council (MCC) and the Treatment Action Campaign had to take their own government to court to prevent the Rath Foundation from promoting its quackery and to force the government to uphold its own laws. TAC quite rightly call Rath the 'definitive charlatan'.

Ben Goldacre had been documenting the horrors in South Africa in the Guardian. Rath decided to sue. The result has been that the Guardian has been unable to discuss the calamities in South Africa for about a year now. Rath had managed to effectively silence one of his chief critics. One can speculate that Rath thought that the Guardian would not defend one of their non-staff minor columnists, but to their credit, they did. Rath has failed and he now faces a mammoth legal bill. The Guardian's bill was £500,000. His own must have been similar.

Using the law to silence critics is a typical cowardly quacks trick. I have been at the end of legal threats myself when I pointed out that the Society of Homeopaths were failing to uphold their own regulations by not condemning their own members who were peddling AIDS quackery in South Africa. The British Chiropractic Association is currently suing science writer Simon Singh for daring to suggest that their evidence base for their bone crunching is shockingly poor. One can hope that this case will be a warning shot for other quacks who wish to use the law to silence people. I have had my fair share. Fighting in the courts is not easy for all. But there are ways of dealing with it, but it is not pretty. There is one quack who has threatened me who is in for a nasty shock soon. People in glass houses...

South Africa has become the playground of every quack wanting to make their mark. It is causing enormous problems for activists on the ground. There are many dedicated people in South Africa struggling to pump sense into their own government. Our western soft headed approach to alternative medicine is at the root of this insanity. It provides the 'intellectual' back drop for nonsense views to take hold. This is not fun and games - people are dying because of it. The University of Cape Town estimates that 340,000 deaths could have been prevented if the government had not been enthralled by quack alternatives. In reporting Jeanette Winterson's misrepresentation of AIDS activist and South African Supreme Court of Appeal Justice, Edwin Cameron's views on homeopathy, I quoted Yusef Azad, Director of Policy and Campaigns for the National AIDS Trust. His words are worth repeating.

The tragedy is that there are still far too many governments not funding the treatment properly, and too many people with HIV who have not been informed of its benefits. Quack cures abound of course, all unproven, all cruelly deceiving, all a massive distraction from what we know genuinely works.

Every supporter of alternative medicine in the UK has a little guilty role to play in this tragedy. By using the same arguments as Rath, such as the evils of drugs and the naturalness of vitamins, you are responsible for the deaths of real live people. Alternative medicine is not just the idle plaything of the middle classes from Islington. It matters. And when our Universities teach it as if it was science, and our hospitals offer it as if it was medicine, then charlatans are able to use this as justification for their own self-interest.

Rose Shapiro in her recent book Suckers described how alternative medicine makes fools of us all. It is worse than that, it makes us all genocidal.

Labels: triamazon

One of the themes of Ben Goldacre's new book, Bad Science, is the 'medicalisation of everyday life'. (read and except here). Everyday experiences are turned into illnesses that need medical solutions. The pharmaceutical companies do it and so do the quacks. The quacks have a great ability though of also turning food and drink into medical products.

We learn that Waitrose is to launch a new drink soon. Mile High Drinks ('the original flight juice drink') promises to combat the 'negative effects' experienced when flying. Its a juice drink that is 'specially formulated' by naturopath and nutritionist Stuart Roberts. Mile High Drinks claim they are,

scientifically proven to have qualities that can help combat jet lag, dehydration, nausea, digestive upsets and infections. The unique way that Mile High blended the ingredients makes the combination much more effective than each individual ingredient alone.

That will be fluids, sugars and salts then? Obviously, Waitrose (a high end supermarket chain in the UK) have literally bought this. Mile High Drinks' web site is a laugh a minute. In typical quack fashion, we are given a list of 'health issues'. Whilst the site never explicitly says that any their drink can help with any of them, the implication is there. We are invited to be scared of Deep Vein Thrombosis, Viruses and Bacteria, Hypobaric Hypoxia and, even more ridiculously, Cosmic Radiation.

It is true that the radiation dose we receive on flights is relatively high. Indeed, Concorde crew were the group of workers in the UK with the highest radiation exposures - beating X-ray hospital staff and nuclear power workers easily. But should your typical Waitrose consumer flying a few times a year to their cottage near Bergerac worry? Would an 'aviation juice' drink of any sort make any difference? Of course not.

But if we think we are bonkers in the UK, we only have to look to the US for even more utter daftness. There, sips of drinks can do even more miraculous things than stave of viruses and form a protective invisible lead soup radiation shield around you.

Are you an Estate Agent finding new business hard during the credit crunch? Are you a homeowner desperate to sell your house, but canno`ing about a quick sale."

A worried real estate professional can sip the water and let the drink "enhance your powers as a sales person, and assist you in achieving positive results."

While you are using your Energized Water, keep a clear mind, stay focused and quietly say a mantra such as "I am thankful for what I am, for what I have, and will accept what is to come with grace. I am worthy and deserving, I am blessed with good fortune and I will treat success with great respect." Repeat three times.

Remember that your intentions play a large part and you must believe in yourself. Success and luck will follow.

$6.99 for 8 oz.

Whilst the Mile High Drinks company are not forthcoming about saying how their magic fruit juice works, Energised Water freely offer is their secret:

The Energized Water offered through the Water Pharmacy undergoes an intense turbulent treatment in order to prepare it for the absorption of specific desired energy levels. Thanks in part to a parallel transmission of precise vibrations, the water is programmed by the frequency belt of the natural magnetic field of the earth. Under these influences, the structure of harmful molecular clusters collapses resulting in a complete deletion of the memory of negative matter.

Obviously vital stuff for all of suffering with mortgage worries, debt and the constant health battle against negative matter.

Labels: energy healing, nutritionist

(as seen here.)

Congratulations Ben on finally getting the book out. I will review it as soon as your publisher sees fit to send me the promised free copy and stuffed brown envelope.

Update

this could get boring...

Dirty electricity’ is a phenomenon few of us have heard about but it could be affecting the lives of millions of people around the world, according to new research. Basically, dirty electricity is a power quality problem generated primarily by modern electrical appliances and lighting systems.

Until recently, dirty electricity was thought to be a problem only for the utility companies, but it is now emerging as a serious public-health issue – possibly responsible for a host of common illnesses including asthma, diabetes, depression and cancer.

Labels: fun