"Quack company litigates against its critics"

"Quack"

A South African "quack company" has decided that threatening legal action against people who expose their quackery is a good idea.

They're wrong.

"Solal Technologies is suing Kevin Charleston for R350,000 because he wrote on the Quackdown website that Solal Technologies' magazine, Health Intelligence is a "disguised marketing programme for Solal Technologies, a company that actively promotes pseudoscience and aggressively attempts to shut out valid criticism of its advertising."

Charleston will be defending himself against Solal’s charges. He will have the support of the Treatment Action Campaign. He will be represented by SECTION27. The case, when it comes to court, promises to be an important test of the right to freedom of expression, and the duty of companies to market their products honestly and accurately."

Weekend Post - Skeptical feedback

Anyone who writes or blogs about science, critical thinking and skepticism is obliged to take criticism. Its part of the job description. It’s also one of the cornerstones of the scientific method. You open your ideas to criticism from others. That criticism can be both positive and negative of course, at its best it’s constructive, opening up the ideas to correction, improvement or perhaps even rejection.

Some belief systems aren’t as logical. I once had a conversation on radio with a senior representative of the so-called Church of Scientology who defended their habit of keeping their “teachings” secret until recruits had paid enough money to climb high enough up their preposterous levels of “Operating Thetans”. They claimed that all religions had secret scriptures like theirs but this is simply hogwash. I don’t share the belief systems of my Christian and Muslim fellow columnists in the Weekend Post but I’ll admit this. Neither of them will hide any of their beliefs from you and me. In fact, like all legitimate religions they seem rather proud of their beliefs. There are no hidden scriptures in a genuine religion. The most senior adherent, whether it’s a Pope or an Imam, believes the same things as the most humble new entrant. Not so the Scientologists. Only when you’ve given them your life savings do they share with you the psychotic claptrap about alien spirits, galactic overlords and evil psychiatrists.

But science is above all of that. Science, and the people who think the scientific method is the most useful intellectual tool we have, are prepared to take criticism. Even when it’s utterly silly.

In March I wrote about the misuse of the word “quantum”. My point was simple. On almost every occasion when you hear or read the word “quantum” you can be certain that the person speaking or writing is about to talk rubbish. I said that very clearly. So few people have a real grasp of quantum physics that you have to be very careful who you listen to. Here’s a simple rule I think works. Never trust anything you read about quantum physics unless the author is either a specialist in quantum physics him or herself or the author names the physicist he or she is quoting. Unless the scientist quoted is called Feynman or Hawking you should do some Googling before believing anything that is said. Trust nothing that is said about quantum physics by a journalist until you have consulted someone who knows a little. All stories written by reporters about time travel, teleportation or multiple universes must not be believed.

Above all, anything you read that refers to quantum physics and also mentions consciousness, healing or God was written by someone who doesn’t understand any of the above.

I got a response about that article I wrote. Someone who preferred to remain anonymous said that my use of:

“words like rubbish to discredit views you don't agree with is a bit intolerant. Nothing in this world is absolutely certain including even our precious science. wisdom whispers: 'when you feel most certain, you should doubt yourself more'. Pride leads to a rapid fall, Lucifer can testify to that.”

Let me take the points one at a time.

Actually it IS acceptable to use words like “rubbish” to discredit view I don’t agree with when those “views” either have no evidence to support them or are based on lies. The claims I was criticizing were, in fact, based on lies, deliberate distortions and fraud. I specifically referred to the “bogus ‘therapists’ offering their health-related services using a device often called the QXCI.”

The QXCI machine claims to be a biofeedback tool that combines:

“the best of biofeedback, stress reduction, Rife machines, homeopathic medicine, bioresonance, electro-acupuncture, computer technology and quantum physics.”

That, I’m afraid is a deception, a lie and a fraud. It’s all utter and complete rubbish.

The complainant also says that nothing is absolutely certain. I agree entirely but at any current moment science has actually given us the best available explanation for the world and it’s contents. The fact that there is doubt doesn’t mean you can replace the doubt or gaps in scientific knowledge with fairytales.

As for doubt, yes, that’s a core part of the scientific method. That takes some confidence to understand.

As for the business about Lucifer, don’t you think it’s interesting that the name Lucifer, often given as the Christian boogeyman, the Devil, can be translated as “bringer of light”? It’s almost as if they didn’t like illumination and preferred their flock of sheep to remain in darkness. But maybe that’s just playing with words.

So sorry to the reader who complained, I’m not planning to change my thoughts or my words about quantum claptrap. It’s hogwash, nonsense and utter rubbish used by either the naïve, ill-educated or the fraudulent. Anyone selling such silliness deserves to be in the rubbish heap.

The "Doctor" will see you shortly. For P5,500.

The papers all have advertisements for a forthcoming seminar by Dr John Demartini, who they claim is a "Human Behavioural Specialist, Educator and Author". His achievements include being "featured in various national and international film documentaries and movies including The Secret, The Opus, The Compass, The Riches and Oh My God".

The Secret? That nonsensical, morally dubious claptrap?

The advert claims that he can "awaken your entrepreneurial spirit" etc etc etc blah blah blah.

You might be wondering how he is a "Doctor"? His first degree was in Biology but that's certainly where the science ends. His Facebook profile says that he "went on to study Chiropractic at the Texas Chiropractic College where he graduated with honors and his Doctorate in 1982".

Chiropractic? He's a chiropractor?

Chiropractic is pseudoscience. It's bogus. At best it doesn't work, at worst it harms people. And this qualifies him to teach us how to improve our lives? Why should we take advice (for P5,500) from a Doctor of Pseudoscience?

Unfortunately he's another of the many "educators" who break one of my cardinal rules. Please don't mention quantum physics unless you really know what you're talking about. If you know anything about physics see how long you can get through this video of Demartini discussing quantum physics without laughing, choking or swearing.

His knowledge of the subject seems similar to that of Deepak Chopra, someone else who also knows nothing about it. The bizarre thing is that he reminds me of someone else. Reading though his profile on his web site I found the following:

"Dr John Demartini is one of the greatest minds and illuminating teachers on the planet" (Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret)

"Dr. Demartini’s trademarked Demartini Method®, which is the result of 39 years of cross-disciplinary research and study into human behavior, works with perceptions and assists people to gain a more balanced perspective and enables them to dissolve their emotional charges, challenges or issues within a matter of hours."

"Dr. Demartini has donated his time to work with prisoners, wardens and police service personnel around the world. His focus with wardens and police has been to assist them in managing the stress and the emotions of their positions, understand human behavior and driving motives, stay inspired by what they do and grow their self worth."

"Dr. Demartini immersed himself in books covering subjects from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, physics, metaphysics, theology, mythology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology, psychology until eventually his insatiable interest took him through the studies of over 280 different academic disciplines."

"At the age of 18 he read a book by the philosopher Wilheim Leibniz titled ‘Discourse on Metaphysics’ [which] inspired Dr. Demartini to set out on a quest to find a way of helping himself and others discover and experience this underlying divine or implicate order that Leibniz spoke of. Today, we now know that Dr. Demartini did master a way which is called the Demartini Method."

Let me think. Who does this nauseating hero-worship remind me of?

Of course you're welcome to drop P5,500 per person to attend this one-day workshop if you wish. It's your money. Or perhaps your company's. Just don't expect miracles. Just expect to be P5,500 poorer.

Weekend Post - You can't trust your eyes. Or your brain.

You can’t trust your eyes. In fact you can’t trust any of your senses. Or even your brain.

One of the most interesting areas of scientific investigation is the study of perception. I remember that as a teenager I became moderately obsessed by visual illusions and wondering how my brain could so easily be fooled.

The image here is a good example. Which of the two horizontal lines is longest? The surprising answer, even when you know it’s true, is that both horizontal lines are exactly the same length. But that’s not what your brain tells you. Your brain demonstrates quite how easily it can be fooled when it fails to correctly interpret this sort of illusion.

There are hundreds of similar examples of such illusions, some much more complicated than this one. They all exploit the sort of perceptual mechanisms that evolved over millions of years that might have been useful in the jungle or savannah where our species originated but aren’t useful any longer in the world of newspapers, smartphones and the Internet.

The great realization is that illusions like the “Müller-Lyer illusion” shown above are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s not just our vision that can be deceived, it’s our entire brain. That’s when an illusion transforms itself into that much more dangerous animal, a delusion.

One of the most common delusions we can all easily experience is called “confirmation bias”. The Skeptic’s Dictionary describes this as “a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.” More simply, it’s the mistake of noticing and remembering things that confirm our prejudices and ignoring, or simply not seeing the things that contradict them.

I had a conversation with someone not too long ago who suggested that religious believers are more charitable than non-believers. He seemed genuinely surprised when I pointed out that perhaps the two most charitable people in the world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both describe themselves as agnostics. He admitted that he knew this but had “conveniently” forgotten it. I think it’s plausible that this was because these facts didn’t fit in with his worldview. Similarly, it’s easy enough for those of us who describe ourselves as atheists to forget that the vast majority of Catholic priests, for instance, are decent people and not child abusers. We remember what we find convenient to remember, not what’s inconvenient. That’s a delusion.

Another example is homeopathy. Every piece of scientific research into homeopathy has confirmed what common sense suggests. It’s nonsense and has no effect. However there are vast numbers of people who swear by it based on anecdotes like “I had a cold, took a homeopathic remedy and within about a week I was better!”

Of course they were better. That’s how colds work, they go away after about a week or 10 days all by themselves whether you take a bogus remedy or not. People forget that but remember the time that they took the useless homeopathic remedy. Believers in so-called complimentary therapies remember the times that the delusional beliefs were falsely “confirmed”.

We also make the common mistake of assuming that correlation implies causation. Because two things happen at the same time or in parallel we assume that they must be connected and one must cause the other. A good example is the observation that increases in medical knowledge in the last century have coincided with a dramatic increase in the number of deaths from cancer. Does this mean that better medicine causes cancer? Of course not, all that’s happening is that the greater lifespan brought about by better medicine has caused people to live longer and older people are much more likely to die of cancer. Cancer is an old person’s disease. Now that we’re much less likely to die from smallpox, typhoid or violence we’re dying of different things instead.

In the same way, the assumption that more and more older people are dying of cancer is somehow caused by the new presence of cellphone masts is another delusion. There is no evidence that cellphone “radiation” causes cancer. In fact the evidence suggests that it doesn’t but it’s extremely human to notice that your aged relative died shortly after the local mast was erected and that one must have caused the other. Tragically your aged relative was going to die anyway.

The good news is that simply knowing about human psychology goes a long way towards combatting these delusions. The better we understand how our brains work (and sometimes fail) the better we can avoid dangerous delusions.

Weekend Post - The threat from pseudoscience

The threat from pseudoscience isn’t just to our bank balance. It also threatens our health.

The biggest pseudoscientific health threat is probably from HIV/AIDS denialists who dare to suggest that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS and that ARVs are the agents causing illness, not curing it. Personally I’m not too worried about that in Botswana because we are one of the great ARV success stories. You can’t really argue with the effects of ARVs that we’ve probably all seen. There can’t be many people who don’t know someone whose health and quality of life have been drastically improved when they started the drugs.

Then there’s the even more dramatic influence the drugs have when given to expectant mothers. Before the PMTCT program around 40% of HIV positive pregnant mothers gave birth to HIV positive babies. After the program was introduced that figure dropped to less than one tenth of that. Each of those uninfected babies is a pretty good hint that it works.

I suspect that HIV/AIDS deniers might actually be happier if more babies died.

But not all pseudoscience is as threatening as this. What about the less harmful examples like homeopathy and reflexology?

The idea behind homeopathy is quite simple. But silly. Homeopaths will tell you that an ailment can be treated with minute quantities of substances that produce similar symptoms to those of the ailment. There is, of course, precisely no evidence that this is true. In fact the evidence shows that it’s all hogwash.

Homeopathy can’t work for a very simple reason. Homeopathic remedies contain no active ingredients. Homeopathic "remedies" are produced by repeatedly diluting a sample of the supposedly active ingredient. A homeopath might take a 1% solution of the active ingredient and dilute it repeatedly. After being diluted to 1% dilutions times it’s easy t work out that only 1 atom in every hundred billion billion will be of the so-called active ingredient. The most common forms of homeopathic remedy are actually diluted in this way thirty times, not just ten. There is simply nothing left from the original ingredient, not a single molecule.

So how do homeopaths claim it works? Apparently the water in which this ingredient once resided "remembers" that it once met the substance in question. Homeopaths talk seriously about "the molecular memory of water".

Want another absurdity? Homeopaths believe that the more diluted the liquid becomes the more effective it is. And another? The principle of homeopathic "succusion" states that the remedy becomes even more effective still if you thump it against the heel of your hand or a leather pad. I promise you I am NOT making this up.

Homeopathy is nonsense. It flies in the face of all that we have learnt over the last couple of thousand of years in the fields of chemistry, physics and biology. And common sense.

Reflexology is just as absurd.

Reflexology is based on the idea that the soles of your feet somehow map the structure of your body. A reflexologist will tell you that if she applies pressure to various spots on your feet it will somehow affect your organs. Squeeze here and your liver will be affected, tickle here and your spleen will be in top-notch shape.

This is nonsense. Every time there has been serious scientific research into reflexology it has been shown to have no more of an effect that having your feet massaged. Of course some of us might like having our feet massaged. It’s not my thing but people say it’s wonderfully relaxing and feels terrific. But that doesn’t make it medicine. It doesn’t make it true.

Both homeopathy and reflexology have been around for years but somehow manage to survive, probably because of human gullibility. But there are newcomers to the pseudoscientific family.

There are places in Gaborone where you can be plugged into an electronic device called either the QXCI, EPFX or the SCIO. This is a box of fake electronics about which some astonishing claims are made. One web site I found describes it as “an incredibly acurate (sic) biofeedback stress reduction system, combining the best of biofeedback, stress reduction, Rife machines, homeopathic medicine, bioresonance, electro-acupuncture, computer technology and quantum physics”.

Apparently it’s “multi-layer faclity enables dysfunction unravelling”. It is also “Equivalent to radonic operation”. Best of all it explains that “Most computers are binary: 1 or 0. Quantum software is trinary - basis for artificial intelligence”.

This is, of course, utter tripe.

You might wonder what “QXCI” means? It stands for “Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface”. Here’s your free scientific and skeptical tip for the week. Anyone who uses the word “quantum” when they are trying to sell you something is a fraud or a fool. Or both.

All of these things have one thing in common. They’re nonsense and they are all ways that frauds, charlatans and fools can take your money and keep it for themselves.

Sources

For a comprehensive summary of our success fighting HIV/AIDS see here.

If you want to know about the silliness that is homeopathy click here, here and here. For a summary of reflexology see here. For the absurd and dangerous claims made about the QXCI fraud see here.

Weekend Post - Pseudoscience

Perhaps the single biggest threat to science and the progress and benefits it offers is it’s illegitimate cousin, pseudoscience. I think it poses a greater threat than all the religious literalists, conservative denialists and political opportunists combined.

So what is pseudoscience? The simplest definition is:

“a set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific when they are not scientific.”

Someone using scientific sounding language but who is actually spouting scientific nonsense is talking pseudoscience.

A very good example is a piece of glass called the Biodisc that a company called Qnet will sell you. This really is no more than an engraved piece of glass but Qnet will have you believe that the disc “increases luminescence, designed with Biophoton production in mind”. What’s more they say the disc “can reduce water surface tension value. This in turn makes water more hydratious, which therefore improves the compatibility of water molecules with the body’s cells”.

It doesn’t take too much recollection of our school science lessons, or too much skepticism, to realize that this is utter claptrap. I’m not sure how water CAN be made “more hydratious” when that just means “watery”. Extra-watery water is an intriguing concept. However, they get away with this because many people fall for the pseudoscientific language. Referring to “surface tension”, water molecules and luminescence lends the product an air of science, if only because many of us seem to find long words impressive.

The key difference between science and pseudoscience is simple but not obvious. Scientific ideas can be disproven, pseudoscientific ones cannot. Not proven, disproven. It would be the easiest thing in the world to test the Biodisc to see if it can reduce surface tension. You and I could do that at home with a glass of water, a Biodisc and a needle. I know, I did a similar experiment with my Dad as a kid.

I admit that the Biodisc is a silly example, as well as being a silly product. It does precisely nothing so the only thing it can harm is your bank balance. The real danger is from pseudosciences that might actually have an impact on you and me or the people we care about. The father of modern scientific philosophy, Karl Popper first spotlighted Freudian psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. All of Freud’s theories of unconscious desires, the id, ego and superego, are all based on assumptions and theories that aren’t properly testable. They can’t be disproven. So psychoanalysis isn’t scientific. It also doesn’t help that it’s hogwash.

The contrast that everyone draws is with Einstein’s theories of relativity. These theories would be very easy to disprove. They all make predictions about the behavior of light, gravity, space and time. So far every time they’ve been tested they’ve held up well under the strain. Of course one or all of them might be disproven tomorrow, it just hasn’t happened yet. It’s safe to assume for now that they’re correct.

Even worse than pseudoscience is scientific fraud. The history of science is littered with theories that have been put forward, thoroughly tested and disproven but which stick around because someone is making money out of them. Homeopathy is a good example. Homeopathic “remedies” contain no active ingredient. The pseudoscientific idea, one that has been disproven countless times, is that the water somehow remembers an ingredient it once contained but that has subsequently been diluted into nothing. It’s utter nonsense but you still see them being peddled by pharmacies all over the place.

However, at worst homeopathy is no more than a waste of money. It gets worse. There are pseudoscientific claims that kill people. For once I’ll overlook the HIV/AIDS denialists. We’re lucky enough to live in a country where I’m sure we’ve all see the impact of HIV and, just as importantly, the impact of anti-retroviral drugs. We all must have seen a relative or friend whose life has been improved almost immeasurably when they started taking ARVs.

But that’s not all, there’s also the whole “debate” about the causes of autism. There was a brief period when mercury poisoning was thought to play a role in the development of autism, particularly the mercury that was once in vaccines given to young children. This fear was based on a number of pseudoscientific ideas.

It began with the coincidence that autism often starts to develop around the time many kids get vaccinated against diseases like measles. But coincidence is not the same as causation. Kids also learn to ride bicycles at that age but nobody thought that bicycles cause autism. There is, and this is actually quite simple to understand, even for objectors to vaccination, whatever their motivation, absolutely no evidence of any relationship between childhood vaccinations and autism. None whatsoever. The effect of these denialists, using their pseudoscience, was to kill small children. After years of various countries being almost free of certain diseases, children started to die again. That’s where the danger lies. Pseudoscience kills children.

Sources

For a comprehensive overview of pseudoscience (and the definition I gave) see the Skeptic's Dictionary.

If you want a laugh take a look at the Biodisc here on the Qnet web site.

There's a comprehensive profile of Karl Popper on Wikipedia along with many links to other sites about him and his work.

For information on the absence of a link between mercury and autism see a Reuters story and a good description of the whole controversy here. Also see the Skeptic's Dictionary article here.

Weekend Post - You are what you eat

You are what you eat. Literally. Every atom of your body has come from things you have eaten or your mother ate while she was carrying you.

That’s why it important to think about the stuff you stuff down your throat. With the exception of any material your body decides not to keep and instead expels (you know what I mean) what you eat stays inside you. But you know that, we all know that. We all know that eating fairly healthily is what we should be doing. We know to cut back on the red meat, the processed foods, the saturated fats and the booze. While there’s nothing wrong with these things in moderation, the more we insert into our bodies, the more problems our bodies will have.

The danger of course is from excessive consumption of bad things. However, perhaps the worst thing you can have to excess, or even in small doses, is nutritional advice. That’s because a lot of so-called “nutritionists” are dangerous charlatans, pseudoscientific frauds or just plain fools. Many of them pose a greater risk to our health than a deep-fried double cheeseburger with extra cheese.

Which? magazine, the UK’s leading consumer advocacy publication recently did an admittedly unscientific but nevertheless fascinating and scary experiment. They sent three researchers to see a variety of nutritional “therapists” and sought advice on a range of disorders. One claimed to have fertility problems, two complained of persistent fatigue and two claimed to have a form of breast cancer.

What they should have suggested was what they should suggest for anyone, regardless of their health status. Take some exercise, eat lots of healthy food, drink lots of water and cut back on the rubbish. That sort of advice would help anyone. Even people with the illnesses described would probably have indirectly benefited from being a little bit healthier. But that’s NOT the advice the researchers were given.

Twelve of the fifteen urged the researchers to buy supplements, some costing P750 a month. They were also told not to buy them from conventional pharmacies because they weren’t “pure enough”. Instead they were advised to buy them from a particular store recommended by the quack. We can all guess why.

One of the researchers who pretended to have cancer was told to stop any conventional medical treatment and instead to beat the cancer by cutting out all sugar from her diet for three to six months. By then she might have been dead.

In fact only one of the fifteen nutritionists dispensed advice that a panel of experts described as a “borderline pass”. Eight of the fifteen cases were considered “fails” and, worst of all, six were classified as “dangerous fails”. These were situations where the client would have been at severe risk if they had followed the advice they were given.

None of the researchers were advised to consult a real doctor or to have any real tests.

The Which? report says:

“One of the researchers - who had been trying to conceive unsuccessfully for over a year - was diagnosed with a ‘leathery bowel’ by a therapist who used Iridology - looking at iris patterns, colour and other characteristics of the eye to diagnose symptoms.”

It goes on to say that:

“Another therapist recommended hair mineral analysis to check 'essential minerals and toxic metals', while one other 'diagnosed' a researcher as having a chromium deficiency after making him 'hold' different liquids in his mouth.”

This is dangerous quackery of the worst kind. This sort of nonsense runs the real risk of killing people. But this is the UK, this sort of thing couldn’t happen here, could it?

Yes, of course it does, we all know it does. Part of the problem is that we have similar laws to those in the UK. Our Health Professionals Council is required to register Dieticians but not crooks calling themselves nutritionists. You or I could set ourselves up as nutritionists tomorrow. We could advertise the “Deep-fried butter and Whisky” diet, have sex with our clients and promote our own homemade supplements and nobody would have the power to stop us.

Frankly, I suspect it’s safer to eat badly than to visit a nutritionist.

Sources

The Which? article can be seen online here. There's an interesting article on science and pseudoscience in nutrition on the CSI site here.

Weekend Post - The New Year is a bad time for science

The New Year is a bad time for science. Part of it is the ridiculous New Years resolutions that so many of us make each year. Most of them, and I confess I’m not immune to this, involve promising yourself that you’ll live more healthily. You’ll promise to cut back on the booze, the saturated fat and the chocolate.

Unfortunately the purveyors of pseudoscience know this and shamelessly exploit our good intentions.

A few days ago I saw an advertisement on TV for the completely nonsensical “Detox Foot Pads”. According to the advert you stick these pads to the soles of your feet at bedtime and they apply warmth to your reflexology points and "detox your body while you sleep". The advert claims that this boosts your immune system. According to the personal testimonials from a range of grinning faces you wake feeling refreshed and with "less toxins and impurities".

According to the various characters presenting these pads they generate "far infra-red radiation equivalent to a full cardiac workout". The graphics they showed of two glowing feet were apparently "Thermo X-Rays" that showed "the incredible effects". Actually it looked more like a kid's drawings of feet with wobbly orange spots but maybe I'm too cynical and perhaps "Thermo X-Rays" are a bit of medical technology I've missed over the years.

Unfortunately they fail to point out that everything they say is complete rubbish.

To begin with there’s the reflexology angle. Reflexology is based on the notion that the soles of your feet are somehow connected to every other part of your body. Reflexologists will tell you that stimulation of specific spots on your feet can remedy problems in related organs of your body. However, it overlooks the fact that these connections simply don’t exist. They’re not there. Nowhere. They are as imaginary as the supposed benefits that reflexology offers. Bring me an anatomy textbook and we can fail to find these mythical connections together. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that reflexology is anything more than just a comforting foot massage. If you like your feet massaged then good luck to you but don’t expect any medical benefits from it.

Then there’s the issue of “detoxing” through the soles of your feet. The advert shows some used foot pads and, amazingly, they are all blackened with what we are told are the toxins extracted from your feet. No chance that the dirt could just be from dirty, sweaty feet is there? Feet are actually horribly dirty things. Why do you think they smell so bad if not washed?

Then there’s the whole issue of detoxification in general. The whole detox industry is based on a series of lies and deceptions. A BBC news story a couple of weeks ago discussed this. A variety of doctors pointed out that thinking of “detoxing” your liver after the Christmas and New Year festivities was a complete waste of time. Despite the claims of the many detox remedies aggressively advertised over the break, none of them offer any real benefit. One of the doctors quoted by the BBC said:

“Detoxing for just a month in January is medically futile. It can lead to a false sense of security and feeds the idea that you can abuse your liver as much as you like and then sort everything else with a quick fix.”

In fact the best way to get healthy after the over-indulgence is just to stop over-indulging and to make a few simple lifestyle changes to protect your health. Your liver is a remarkable cleansing machine so long as you treat it with a little bit of respect. It will do all the detoxing you need if you let it. You don’t need silly footpads, reflexology or any other pseudoscientific claptrap to help get back to good health.

Although detox foot pads are certainly harmless, the danger is that they could be used when real medical help is called for, not just a placebo. They also spread lies about how your body works. That can only lead to danger.

While I think that satellite TV, newspapers and the internet are wonderful things they also have the ability to spread deception, dangerous conspiracy theories and outright lies. Detox foot pads may be a relatively innocent example but they are not that far from things that threaten our welfare, maybe even our lives. Sometimes the detoxing we need is not of our bodies, but of our brains.

Sources

You can see a version of the ad I saw on DSTV here. It's a US version of the ad with US contacts and prices but you'll hear that all of the "happy customers" are South Africans.

You can see an enormous variety of critical comments about these nonsensical foot pads as follows:

• Wikipedia
• Camcheck article from South Africa"
• Stephen Barrett's Device Watch
• The US Food and Drug Administration's variosu comments and rulings
• The Beauty Brains web site (they say "What a load of crap!")

For a skeptical review of the utterly ridiculous concept of reflexology see the Skeptic's Dictionary article here.

The BBC story about the silliness of detoxing can be seen here.

BBC - Alternative remedies 'dangerous' for kids says report

A BBC story about the dangers of so-called "alternative remedies" which are, in fact, not remedies at all.

I get an email about "EFT"

See here for my earlier warning about EFT.

An email arrived regarding my rather dismissive comments as follows.  The email is in red.

Hi It's a shame people are so skeptical without giving something a chance. 

I haven't given shooting myself in the head a chance either, but that doesn't mean I should try it.

I've been using EFT for 7 years on myself, as a practitioner and trainer and I can honestly say that many of the claims for it are broadly true based on my experience and the shifts I see in others. I see some amazing things happening on a regular basis. 

"broadly true based on my experience"?  Is that meant to seem like evidence?

My background is in IT and I'm totally uninterested in fake or airy-fairy techniques that are not really delivering the goods. 

I'm not sure that qualifies you as an expert.  I would rather have decently constructed double-blinded scientific studies investigating the claims made by a treatment but perhaps I'm just old-fashioned?

This is the real mackoy and delivers well above placibo. So give it a chance and try it out. There are free manuals on the web. Thanks, Peter

The word is "placebo".  Forgive me if I don't try something that is based on pseudoscience, was invented by a charlatan and makes extraordinary claims but without any extraordinary evidence.

Peter's own web site include the following, remarkable statement:

"EFT is based on a revolutionary new discovery that violates most of the beliefs within conventional psychology. It contends that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system. With remarkable consistency, EFT relieves symptoms by an unusual (but scientific) routine of tapping with the fingertips on a short series of points on the body that correspond to acupuncture points on the energy meridians. Where there is an imbalance, there is a corresponding blockage in the flow of energy through the meridian system.

The tapping serves to release the blockages that are created when a person thinks about or becomes involved in an emotionally disturbing circumstance. When this blockage is released, the emotions come into balance. Once balanced, the person cannot get upset about the circumstance no matter how hard they try. The memory remains but the charge is gone."

Note: any particularly attractive people are welcome to come over to my place for a glass of wine and a vigorous "tapping" from either me or the wife!

Warning - "Emotional Freedom Techniques"

An email came in from a consumer asking our opinion on a workshop to be held in Phakalane next month entitled “Relax And Repair With EFT” or “Emotional Freedom Techniques”.

This utter nonsense was made up by someone called Gary Craig. His profile says:

“Gary Craig is neither a psychologist nor a licensed therapist. He is an ordained minister through the Universal Church of God in Southern California, which is non-denominational and embraces all religions. He is a dedicated student of A Course in Miracles, and approaches his work with a decidedly spiritual perspective. However, there is no specific spiritual teaching connected to EFT or its Practitioners.”

In other words he’s not a scientist and it’s not scientific, he’s spiritual because he’s been ordained by a silly made-up church in the home state of silliness, but his ridiculous EFT isn’t spiritual.

In fact EFT is based on what they very scientifically call “tapping”. The EFT people say that:

“although based on acupuncture, EFT has simplified the realignment process by gently tapping on key meridian points on the head, torso and hands.”

So they just tap you? On your non-existent “meridian points”? So it’s like acupuncture, which all the evidence suggests is pseudo-mystical, pseudo-scientific claptrap, but without the one thing that might plausibly do anything?

These charlatans claim that EFT can be used to treat asthma, high blood pressure, depression, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cyctic fibrosis and even sexual abuse trauma.

Based on these extraordinary claims I say we should run these extraordinary charlatans out of town!

Ginkgo biloba doesn't work - CNN Health News

CNN Story

"Ginkgo biloba has failed -- again -- to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging."

Full story here. Story alert from The Skeptic's Dictionary.

“How to read articles about health” – by Dr Alicia White

From the ever excellent Dr Ben Goldacre's Bad Science site. How to read articles about health and healthcare

Homeopathy and science - Dara O'Brien

Warning. Not safe for work unless you work for a particularly enlightened company. Lots of rude words but an excellent attack on pseudoscientific nonsense, homeopathy in particular.

GenQuest - Multi Level Marketing comes to Botswana again

A Malaysian called Goh Seng Hong is in Botswana trying to introduce us to GenQuest, a Multi-Level Marketing company. He's doing a presentation at the University of Botswana on 11th July.

Posted on the Facebook site for the event are videos relating to "energised water" whcih of course is pseudoscientific claptrap.

When I contacted the guy he was rather defensive, accused me of a range of sins, but eventually confessed that the product they are selling is the Bio Disc. This is a very good example of the sort of Energy Medicine nonsense that abounds these days.

However, the real product on sale is "network marketing". It's a pyramid-structured selling mechanism where the recruits are promised wealth and happiness by recruiting other people into the scheme beneath them, each level making money from the levels below. Very few people make money from network marketing other than those at the very top.

Steer clear!

Speaking ill of the dead

On 26th December last year, a 52-year old American woman called Christine Maggiore died. The world is a better place without her.

Isn’t that an appalling thing to say? Shouldn’t one only speak well of the dead? Not necessarily. Should we only say good things about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Idi Amin because they’re dead? No, I think it’s OK to say that we’re glad when someone wicked stops disturbing the world with their foul deeds.

Christine Maggiore was wicked too. Maggiore was an AIDS denialist. Who died of AIDS.

She was HIV positive but instead of campaigning for better treatment, greater research and for public education she founded a deranged group of pseudoscientific charlatans called “Alive & Well” who denied the connection between HIV and AIDS, suggested that the she was still alive because HIV did NOT cause AIDS and that anti-retroviral drugs were of no value.

So far all we have is a fool, but Maggiore went much, much further.

Despite knowing her HIV status and despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers she refused to take the appropriate medication while pregnant and then later decided to breast-feed her children.

When she was only 3 years old her daughter Eliza died of pneumonia, almost certainly brought about by AIDS. Still insisting that she was right she claimed that her daughter instead died from a reaction to an antibiotic. The autopsy disagreed. It showed that Eliza had AIDS encephalitis and PCP, the variety of pneumonia most associated with AIDS. In short it showed that her mother had killed her with neglect.

Sometimes people ask where the harm in so-called “alternative medicine” and denialism can be found. They think it’s just a few harmless homeopathic remedies bought by the gullible. They think that a few herbs here or there never did anybody any harm. Well, in most cases that’s perfectly true. Nobody ever died from taking a homeopathic remedy, simply because they don’t contain any remedies, they’re just water. Few people will come to any harm from taking some herbs sold by a quack.

However, every so often someone will take one of these remedies instead of something that works. Every so often someone will fall for the denialist claptrap we see and stop taking their real medication, the one that works. Then they pay the price, or worse still their children pay it for them.

I confess that in a very cruel moment I was glad that Christine Maggiore survived long enough to see what she’d done to her daughter but then I calmed down. Nobody should have to see that, it’s beyond understanding how terrible that must be.

But it WAS her fault. Science, medicine and rationalism could have saved Eliza’s life but they were all rejected in favour of stupidity, pseudoscience and denialism. There’s the harm.

New Year Sense?

I wonder if it’s too much to hope that 2009 will be a year characterised by rationalism? Is it too much to ask that we start the year committing ourselves, as individuals, as families and as a nation to being realistic, thoughtful and rational?

Sometimes I think it IS too much to hope but I’m an optimist.

I hope that this year we can put the so-called alternative, or complementary medical community in it’s place. I hope we can see that there’s no such thing as “conventional medicine” or “alternative medicine”. There is only medicine that works and that which doesn’t. There are drugs that help you recover from illnesses are those that don’t. It doesn’t matter whether they came from a test tube or tree bark. Some have been shown, by experiment, by research, by science to work and others have not. It really IS that simple.

I hope we can put behind us the whole “detox” nonsense. A study by a UK group called Sense about Science published just after Christmas showed that almost all the so-called detox products on the market in the UK (and they’re available in Botswana as well) made ludicrous claims that were totally unsupported by the facts. The group also state that the suppliers of these silly products “were forced to admit that they are renaming mundane things, like cleaning or brushing, as ‘detox’”.

None of us need to “detox”, it’s just a made up term used to push pseudoscience and, more importantly, to sell us useless products. The secret the detox industry don’t want you and me to know is that we all already have nature’s greatest detoxifier. It’s called a liver. All it needs is clean water and a fairly healthy diet and it will clean out the toxins for you. For free.

Maybe this year we can also ignore all the silly conspiracy theories about medicine. The conspiracy theories that lead to illness, misery and death. AIDS is not a conspiracy by the CIA or aliens. Vaccinations are a truly wonderful way to protect children and adults from illness and are not another conspiracy to enslave the poor. The medical profession aren’t evil oppressors doing their best to keep us in bondage.

We should remember our local example of what modern medicine can do. Our PMTCT program reduced the proportion of babies born with HIV to HIV positive mothers from 40% to 4%. It was modern medicine that did that, not superstition, denial or a conspiracy.

Perhaps this year we can also do away with the more revolting aspects of corrupt religion. Maybe we can all see that a preacher to whom you give money who then drives a hugely expensive car and lives in a dream home is almost certainly a liar, a thief and a crook. Maybe we can see that a significant number of religious leaders, particularly those in the American TV evangelist mould, are just in it for the cash. They really do see their flock as sheep: stupid, woolly-headed and ready for slaughter.

Is it too much to ask that we can all be a little bit more skeptical in 2009? That we can use our heads before we give away our money, our health and our beliefs? I hope so.

My Body Talks

It seems that I’ve irritated the BodyTalk community. Last week two supporters of this rubbish wrote to criticise my description of BodyTalk as “pseudoscience”.

They claim in their letter that BodyTalk is based on Quantum Physics. They said “Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating.” To their credit one of them had the honesty to say that “I am not a physicist so do not think I am qualified to go into the nitty-gritty of what this is all about.”

Never has a truer word been written.

I’m afraid that their letter shows that they indeed know precisely nothing about physics and, if it were possible, even less about quantum physics.

For the record physicists discovered nothing of the sort. Quantum physics is simply a model of reality at a truly miniscule level. It describes the way in which particles and energy at the smallest possible levels behave and it had a remarkable impact on our understanding of the way the universe works. Without wishing to sound even more pompous and patronising than usual, unlike Ms Gilbert and Ms Cadfan-Lewis, I do know a little bit about the subject. However, like them I can’t claim to be a specialist but I do know what the theory is and, more importantly, what the theory is not.

One thing that is true about quantum physics is that because it’s quite difficult to understand it’s very often used by woo-woo, New Age, alternative, mantra-chanting, crystal-waving, alien-abducted, energy-medicine groupies to support the latest health fad they’ve heard about, or invented to scam the naïve. Saying that your new energy treatment is based on quantum physics may persuade the gullible but that doesn’t make it real. In fact it’s usually a warning of impending nonsense.

They make some claims about the miraculous effects of their silly technique. Apparently an occupational therapist in Hamburg could revive coma patients using this magic. In South Africa another was apparently able to improve the physical appearance of a child with Down’s Syndrome. However, and very strangely, they neglected to tell us when or in which hospitals these miracles occurred. They neglected to say which real medical journals published these astonishing findings. They neglected to tell us when the medical world started exploiting these findings to help humanity and when when the wicked pharmaceutical industry started making lots of money from it.

I wonder whether this is because these miracles simply didn’t happen. I suspect that this is just more fakery designed to give credibility to an incredible idea. As Carl Sagan famously said, “incredible claims require incredible evidence”. The BodyTalkers offer us the claims but don’t deliver the evidence.

So is BodyTalk a pseudoscience? Well, it’s not based on those old-fashioned but useful scientific ideas of plausibility, double-blinded experiments, peer review and not being silly. But it’s dressed up using clever-sounding scientific terms. Pseudo means “false”. It IS a pseudoscience.

One last thing. Isn’t it curious how they didn’t deny my report that BodyTalk involves pressing on a so-called “energy point”, lightly tapping the top of the head to “stimulate the brain center” and then “tapping the patient’s sternum to announce the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body”. Maybe they didn’t want people to read that bit again. Perhaps because it’s embarrassing and deeply silly? Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it again.

Talk to your body? - Botswana Guardian

There’s been yet another outbreak of pseudoscience in Botswana.  Sorry, I should correct that.  This example isn’t even worthy of the term “pseudoscience”.  Judge for yourself.

I recently received an email inviting me to “Botswana’s first BodyTalk Day”.  According to the invitation this is “a revolutionary new approach to healing that has become the language of health in over 30 countries”.  Wow.  Notice how that claim actually means precisely nothing?  It doesn’t say that millions of people are using it and it cures diabetes, AIDS and asthma.  No. it’s just become the “language of health”.

The invitation goes on to say that BodyTalk “utilises state-of-the-art energy medicine to optimise the body’s internal communications”.  Again, a statement that means precisely nothing.  Note the use of terms like “state of the art”, “energy medicine” and “optimise”.  All very vague don’t you think?

So off I went to the internet to do some Googling.  One of the first web sites I found described in detail how BodyTalk works. 

After a series of paragraphs explaining how our bodies are full of energy circuits, how the atoms we consist of are talking to one another and how we need to be resynchronised it explains what actually happens when you get yourself BodyTalked.

I hope you’re sitting down.  Trust me, I’m not making this up.  This is exactly what it says.

For every malfunctioning energy circuit found, the practitioner or client contacts the corresponding “points” with his or her hands. The practitioner then lightly taps the client on the top of the head, which stimulates the brain center and causes the brain to re-evaluate the state of the body’s health.”

“The practitioner then taps the client on the sternum to “announce” the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body.

So let me get this straight.  This “practitioner” who is presumably either deluded, deranged or depraved gets to touch you, pat you on the head and then tickle your tummy and you’re cured? 

I’m tempted to suggest a modified version of BodyTalk. I think I’ll call it BodyThump.  Come to me with your health problems, I’ll stroke whichever part of you looks appealing, perhaps for quite a long time if it’s VERY cute, smack you on the back of your head, punch you in the stomach and charge you P500. 

So you think I’m joking?  Well, I am, but so are BodyTalk, surely?  Do they really expect us to take them seriously when they are talking such palpable gibberish?

Of course there is no science behind BodyTalk or any of the other ludicrous so-called alternative therapies that abound.  There’s no real evidence that they do anything because they simply DON’T do anything.  OK, forgive me, they do so something.  In fact they do two things.  Firstly they allow the placebo effect to demonstrate itself.  That’s the effect you often see in medicine where simply doing something, even it’s just giving a sugar pill, has a slight effect.  It’s to do with positive thinking, optimism and taking a bit more care of yourself.  The second thing it does is to help you lose weight.  From your wallet.

Homeopathy - Letter to Mmegi

I was appalled to see the article entitled "People living with HIV turn to homeopathy" in Mmegi on Thursday 28th February. Appalled because I don't think we should allow charlatans to sell their ludicrous products and, in so doing, exploit the desperate, the sick and the naïve.

Let's be clear. Homeopathy is based on nonsense. The article states that it is based on the idea of treating patients with a minute dose of the substance that causes the symptoms the patient is experiencing, but this is rubbish. What you actually get from a homeopath is water. Homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that not a single atom of any original substance remains. If you push a homeopath on this subject you’ll eventually get them to confess that they believe the water somehow "remembers" a substance that it once contained. This is utter gibberish.

Every controlled test of homeopathic remedies has failed to show any real effect. The homeo-pathetic movement has consistently failed to help anyone other than themselves. Help themselves to fat bank balances that is. What the charlatans in Maun are really doing is breaking the law. Section 15 (1) (c) of the Consumer Protection Regulations forbids people from promising "outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis". If they take a single thebe for their water treatment they are breaking the law.

The most ridiculous aspects of what they say are almost unbelievable. The homeopath covered in the article confesses that she prescribed a "grief remedy" as well as something for liver toxicity. This is just scandalous.

So what about the wonderful effects the victims are supposedly seeing in Maun? They are nothing more than the placebo effect. Doctors around the world know that giving patients a totally ineffective medicine will make them a feel a little bit better for a short while. But that's more to do with getting a bit of attention and sympathy than any real effect.

What homeopaths pretend to offer people with HIV is hope. Hope is a great thing but only when it is based on a genuine hope, a real hope of improvement. What in fact homeopaths offer is false hope, based on a mixture of ignorance and lies. I have contempt for people who exploit the desperate. Utter contempt. I genuinely hope that nobody falls for this nonsense. If just one person does and stops taking their ARVs, the drugs that DO work, then the homeopaths who have come here thinking they can fool us will have blood on their hands.