So, the Quackometer has been up and running for 24 hours now and most systems have been restored. A bit more to go though. For the technically inclined, this has involved a move from cuddly cotton wool children’s Microsoft servers to grown up, open source, Apache/Unix servers where a missed semi-colon can kill faster than a homeopath dishing out malaria pills. It’s been a bit of a bother, but I [read more…]
Double Blind Randomised Controlled Trials (DBRCTs) are not the preserve of medical science. Increasingly, corporations are using them to enter into a new world of Evidence Based Marketing where massive, continuous and automated trials are being run on us in order find out how to sell more stuff and become more profitable. What does this mean for medicine and our lives? Our beliefs are our internal models of the outside [read more…]
You know, I do not believe that most of the people that feature on this site are fraudsters. No, the truth is far worse than that – most homeopaths, reiki practitioners and herbalists actually believe what they say and that makes then particularly dangerous. But there are people whose motives are particularly hard to believe are just plain deluded. I fear 2008 is going to feature quite a number of [read more…]
So, another vague and preposterous legal threat and my web hosts have caved like bullied ginger children. Pages have been taken down and then immediately duplicated to over 30 (at last count) web sites all over the world. The web tends to react like that. This situation will not last. The Society of Homeopaths did not get away with it and nor will more minor bullies. To be told to [read more…]
Professor Joan Higgins, Chair of the Federal Working Group on Complementary Therapies, is in charge of setting up the Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack). From April, this will be a voluntary self-regulated body that will be tasked with protecting the public from the dangers of alternative medicine. The Professor wrote to the Guardian today to complain about Polly Toynbee’s straight talking article, I am sorry that Polly Toynbee feels that the [read more…]
Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health and its new regulatory quango, the Natural Healthcare Council (or Ofquack, as it is bound to become known), is due to launch in April. Ofquack is designed to be an ‘independent self-regulatory body for complementary therapists. In 2000, the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee looked into the regulation of non-medically trained health workers. It asked the Prince of Wales Foundation to [read more…]
I do find the Bible disappointing in one or two areas. For a work supposedly divinely inspired, it is remarkably lacking in handy life enhancing tips like how to cure nasty diseases and relieve common aches and pains. There really is little in the way of pharmacology and medicine in the Bible. Not even basic lifestyle, exercise and nutrition tips. “Do not smoke” should have made it into the commandments, [read more…]
Homeopaths claim that their pills can induce predictable and distinct sets of symptoms in healthy people. That is how they prove their powerful medicine. This is basic stuff for homeopaths and my simple test asks them to prove it because I do not believe it for a minute. If this claim is not true then everything else they say falls apart. So, far no-one has the courage to come forward. [read more…]
In his Guardian article, Ben Goldacre wrote about how homeopaths respond to criticism: With alternative therapists, when you point out a problem with the evidence, people don’t engage with you about it, or read and reference your work. They get into a huff. They refuse to answer calls or email queries. They wave their hands and mutter sciencey words such as “quantum” and “nano”. They accuse you of being a [read more…]
Jerry Addler has published his New Year’s resolution in Newsweek, I will not report on any amazing new treatments for anything, unless they were tested in large, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials published in high-quality peer-reviewed medical journals. If that means not telling NEWSWEEK’s readers about, say, a new magnetized-water cure for osteoporosis, cancer and autism—well, there are infomercials to fill that gap. The risk that I might overlook the [read more…]
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