Let's have a laugh!

Oh homeopaths, you're just too easy. Why does anybody buy this stuff?



Thank you Sean the Blogonaut.

The sad tale of Jacques Benveniste

The following was a comment that was intended to go on this post at Marchway Memoirs. It got a bit big, so I posted it here instead.

Oh yeah, Jacques Benveniste. Here we go. Benveniste was a kook bloke who was a scientist. And, of course, like most scientists, he had his human side...

I have the impression you think scientists are derived from some Vulcan-like race of purely logical beings. We’re human, with human faults.

...and his scientist side. And let’s face it; because scientists are human, they are prone to error. And emotion, unlike Vulcans.

On the whole, scientists are disciplined enough at work to let the cold, hard facts get in the way of petty human emotion. But in rare instances, they do it the other way round,..

Scientists are human. I’ve never met [James] Randi, and have no wish to, because I'm human and one of the things humans do is take a dislike to people.

...and when they do, it can really blind the practitioner to the facts. Particularly if the practitioner is displaying very strong emotions such as love, hunger and greed.

Or dislike.

James Randi is one who certainly inspires very strong emotions from both scientist and non-scientist alike. He's not a scientist. But his knowledge of the scientific method appears to be beyond question.

Until now.

And here's the question: Is it possible that dislike of the man could cause one to temporarily take leave of their senses outright and completely miss the point of a particular story?

This blogger thinks so. But let's be honest here - some of the criticism of Randi makes that very allegation against the man himself...

It's not always purely on logical grounds, although he has done some absolutely disgraceful things in my opinion. One example – do you remember the ‘Memory of Water’ hullabaloo? In the interests of fair play, here’s a page against and a page for the idea.

...and I suspect that this is going to be one of those times.

So it can become a bit of a pissing match, where someone stands accused of losing sight of the facts in their fury over the form of the tactics being employed. On the other hand, we have a contention, possibly with merit, possibly not, that those very tactics are being used in a mean-spirited fashion, and their application can skew the very data where they’re being used.

So what can we do when faced with something like this? I would firstly suggest looking at the claim itself…

Jacques Benveniste, a talented scientist, reported in Nature that water was capable of retaining a ‘memory’ of something that had been dissolved in it, even after dilution to the point where none of the compound could be left.

…to see if there’s anything there. Jacques Benveniste was a chemist who thought that he was on to something when he made the claim that water’s chemical structure somehow altered, allowing it to ‘remember’ substances that had been dissolved in it, even if the substance had been removed through successive dilutions. And this, of course, was why homeopathic remedies worked.

The problem with Benveniste’s claim, was that by explaining how the ‘memory’ of water was supposed to work, he had completely bypassed the bit that hadn’t been established about whether homeopathy actually even worked in the first place.

And if you think that’s bad, Nature published it!

Now to be fair, Nature is one of the world’s most read science journals, and gets tonnes of submissions each year. And as we pointed out before, scientists are human, and prone to error.

Nature is peer-reviewed, but because human error occurs, stuff does slip through. Some celebrated slip-ups include the following:

• Jan Hendrik Schon’s fraudulent piece on superconductivity which was published; and
• Enrico Fermi’s breakthrough piece on the weak interaction theory of beta decay, which was not.

Benveniste’s investigation was underpinned by an assumption that homeopathy worked – which, when you think about it, should have set off alarm bells from here to Timbuktu.

Nature’s alarm bells didn’t go off, unfortunately, until the complaints started rolling in, and they ended up having to send a bunch of investigators round to Benveniste’s lab to investigate.

“And why not?”…

Well, Nature arranged to send a delegation to the good doctor’s laboratory. He agreed to this test because he expected his method to work. It had worked many times before. The idea was simple: they prepared three flasks of water, one of which had been treated as described in the method, the other two were just ordinary water. That’s a ‘blind’ experiment – Benveniste, and indeed most of the 'testers', had no idea which flask contained which sample – and it’s the ideal way to carry out any experiment, wherever possible. If Benveniste’s experiment was right, if he had made no mistakes, if there had been no contamination of his samples, then he should be able to find the treated one.

…said Benveniste.

Benveniste and his team were found to have made some errors that were staggering in their ineptitude. These included the following:

1. Benveniste’s experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", and the lab displayed unfamiliarity with the concept of sampling error. The method of taking control values was not reliable, and "no substantial effort has been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias"
2. "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim". In particular, blood that failed to degranulate was "recorded but not included in analyses prepared for publication". In addition, the experiment sometimes completely failed to work for "periods of several months".
3. There was insufficient "avoidance of contamination", and, to a large extent, "the source of blood for the experiments is not controlled".
4. The study had not disclosed that "the salaries of two of Dr Benveniste's coauthors of the published article are paid for under a contract between INSERM 200 and the French company Boiron et Cie."
5. "The phenomenon described is not reproducible". "We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported."

(Source: Wikipedia)

It's relevant at this point to discuss the reviewers engaged by Nature to investigate this and report back:

• Nature editor and physicist Sir John Maddox;
• Scientific fraud investigator and chemist Walter Stewart; and
• Skeptic and former magician James Randi.

Of these, Randi appears to suffer the most vitriole from Benveniste supporters. Randi is not a professional scientist...

You’d think that a group of scientists and a representative from Nature would be enough to deal with this, but they took Randi along.

The information on which flask contained which sample was in a sealed envelope. Sealed before Benveniste could have seen it, so he couldn’t possibly cheat. Enough?

...yet he was in a position almost straight away, along with the other investigators, to see that the process was flawed. Although Benveniste was not in a position to see the contents of the sealed envelope containing the details of which flask contained which sample, other people in the lab whom the tester [Benveniste] and the test apparatus came into contact with were.

So they double-blinded the test. Randi is an ex-stage magician. In a combination of flashy showmanship...

No, Randi insisted on taping the envelope to the ceiling. A serious study turned into a circus. Surely it would have been enough to keep the envelope in someone’s pocket? Or did he think scientists are capable of picking his pocket, steaming open the envelope, then resealing it without leaving a trace and putting it back?

...and a wish to ensure that the lab stayed in good spirits, Randi taped the envelope to the ceiling. This also had the effect of ensuring that any attempts to sabotage the study would also be minimised - it is unlikely that Randi would have assumed that he would be the only person in the lab with a practised sleight of hand.

Supporters of Benveniste like to seize upon this stunt of Randi's...

Randi had gone in there not with the premise that Benveniste might have made a mistake, but that he was a deliberate fraud and was likely to tamper with that envelope, given half a chance. Further, he didn’t trust the other scientists, or even the Nature guy, with that envelope either. It was an unnecessary, childish, and grossly insulting act.

...as evidence that Randi had some kind of axe to grind and that he was out to deliberately discredit Benveniste and his team.

Or even that Randi did this without the support of Maddox and Stewart. This is a questionable claim that isn't supported by the account that they subsequently published in Nature.

None of this is relevant.

At the end of the day, all that matters is that Benveniste was brought undone by sheer incompetence and some extraordinarily bad record-keeping.

Benveniste's reputation was ruined by this. But he never gave up on his idea.

Despite being the junior party in the review panel, most supporters of Benveniste see Randi as being the ringleader in Benveniste's "debunking"...

In the event, Benveniste’s experiment failed. So Randi chalked up another ‘debunking’. Benveniste’s career and reputation took a beating (to be fair, he really should have had someone else look at that data before sending in the first paper, but that’s hindsight for you).

...

I don’t like the way he works. It’s more in tune with the stage than the laboratory, and that’s something I really want to stay clear of.

...despite the fact that at the end of the day he was able to contribute towards an important step towards ensuring that yet another erroneous piece didn't contaminate the human knowledge bank.

Benveniste never forgave Randi. Neither did a whole bunch of Randi critics who saw this as yet another excuse to hate the guy.

In his later years, Benveniste lost the plot entirely and was convinced that the "memory" that he was so convinced that water had, could be transmitted over the internet.

He was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1998 for that.

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

This is really part 2.

Part 1 is here.

We discussed how The Quackometer was stomped on from a great height by the Society of Homeopaths because he wrote an unfavourable post about homeopathy.

You all know what I think. And if you look at Orac's post where I initially found this, you'll see the Streisand Effect going gangbusters.

So I thought I'd join in the fun - now that I have Andy "Le Canard Noir" Lewis' permission to re-post.

So without further ado, here it is:

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

by Le Canard Noir

The Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are a shambles and a bad joke. It is now over a year since Sense about Science, Simon Singh and the BBC Newsnight programme exposed how it is common practice for high street homeopaths to tell customers that their magic pills can prevent malaria. The Society of Homeopaths have done diddly-squat to stamp out this dangerous practice apart from issue a few ambiguously weasel-worded press statements.

The SoH has a code of practice, but my feeling is that this is just a smokescreen and is widely flouted and that the Society do not care about this. If this is true, then the code of practice is nothing more than a thin veneer used to give authority and credibility to its deluded members. It does nothing more than fool the public into thinking they are dealing with a regulated professional.

As a quick test, I picked a random homeopath with a web site from the SoH register to see if they flouted a couple of important rules:

48: • Advertising shall not contain claims of superiority. • No advertising may be used which expressly or implicitly claims to cure named diseases.

72: To avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease.

The homeopath I picked on is called Julia Wilson and runs a practice from the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. What I found rather shocked and angered me.

Straight away, we find that Julia M Wilson LCHE, RSHom specialises in asthma and works at a clinic that says,

Many illnesses and disease can be successfully treated using homeopathy, including arthritis, asthma, digestive disorders, emotional and behavioural difficulties, headaches, infertility, skin and sleep problems.

Well, there are a number of named diseases there to start off. She also gives a leaflet that advertises her asthma clinic. The advertising leaflet says,

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. ... The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs...

Now, despite the usual homeopathic contradiction of claiming to treat causes not symptoms and then in the next breath saying it can alleviate symptoms, the advert is clearly in breach of the above rule 47 on advertising as it implicitly claims superiority over real medicine and names a disease.

Asthma is estimated to be responsible for 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions in the UK each year. It is not a trivial illness that sugar pills ought to be anywhere near. The Cochrane Review says the following about the evidence for asthma and homeopathy,

The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective.

This is not a surprise given that homeopathy is just a ritualised placebo. Hopefully, most parents attending this clinic will have the good sense to go to a real accident and emergency unit in the event of a severe attack and consult their GP about real management of the illness. I would hope that Julia does little harm here.

However, a little more research on her site reveals much more serious concerns. She says on her site that 'she worked in Kenya teaching homeopathy at a college in Nairobi and supporting graduates to set up their own clinics'. Now, we have seen what homeopaths do in Kenya before. It is not treating a little stress and the odd headache. Free from strong UK legislation, these missionary homeopaths make the boldest claims about the deadliest diseases.

A bit of web research shows where Julia was working (picture above). The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for 'treating' various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked scam recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let's remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won't find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them insane nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

Ironically, the WHO has issued a press release today on cheap ways of reducing child and adult mortality due to malaria. Their trials, conducted in Kenya, of using cheap mosquito nets soaked in insecticide have reduced child deaths by 44% over two years. It says that issuing these nets be the 'immediate priority' to governments with a malaria problem. No mention of homeopathy. These results were arrived at by careful trials and observation. Science. We now know that nets work. A lifesaving net costs $5. A bottle of useless homeopathic crap costs $4.50. Both are large amounts for a poor Kenyan, but is their life really worth the 50c saving?

I am sure we are going to hear the usual homeopath bleat that this is just a campaign by Big Pharma to discredit unpatentable homeopathic remedies. Are we to add to the conspiracy Big Net manufacturers too?

It amazes me that to add to all the list of ills and injustices that our rich nations impose on the poor of the world, we have to add the widespread export of our bourgeois and lethal healing fantasies. To make a strong point: if we can introduce laws that allow the arrest of sex tourists on their return to the UK, can we not charge people who travel to Africa to indulge their dangerous healing delusions?

At the very least, we could expect the Society of Homeopaths to try to stamp out this wicked practice? Could we?

I've said it before - homeopathy is a horribly convoluted web of complete lies. I sometimes think that anyone who buys into this rubbish deserves anything they get. Can people be protected from themselves?

But I guess that we have to accept that saving lives and money is an admirable aim, no matter if credulity and gullibility are the cause.

Filthy, rotten lies

Homeopathy is the silliest altie school ever.

Oh sure, some of you will say, what about reiki, therapeutic touch and some of the other wacko stuff out there?

Those ones are built around what is really only a couple of dodgy concepts. Most of which, even hardened woos can’t bring themselves to accept.

But homeopathy? Well…

*deep sigh*

…I’m going to come out with it now. Homeopathy is simply a deeply convoluted web of lies, and Homeopaths have got to be some of the least-principled woo merchants running around. It’s completely unrealistic, and the excuses that homeopaths come out with to avoid contradicting themselves are just iffy concepts piled upon many others. I refuse to believe that by piling all these ad hoc hypotheses upon each other, nothing registers anywhere in the pea-sized brains of homeopathetiques as being bogus and silly, eventually.

Reiki and therapeutic touch come out looking positively angelic, by comparison. If still equally ludicrous.

The next host of Skeptics’ Circle is The Quackometer. The owner of this blog, Andy "Le Canard Noir" Lewis has been ordered to take down a post that homeopaths found offensive.

Orac has posted the text of that post here. I may even seek permission from Lewis to reproduce it on this blog myself. Yes, folks, the Streisand Effect appears to be in full swing, here.

Myself, I’m going to use this blog post to have a good laugh at homeopathy.

Homeopathy basically works on this principle espoused by it’s inventor, Samuel Hahnemann, that “like cures like.”

So what you do, if you’re suffering from anything is to take something that causes the same symptoms. In what could be the grossest over-simplification ever, homeopaths liken this to how vaccines work.

Let’s just ignore that last sentence completely, because vaccines are nothing like how homeopaths say their remedies work. I’ll illustrate with an example.

Imagine that you have cholera. You’re shitting fountains of poo. And you’re a homeopathy fan.

You drag your sorry arse off to the homeopath to get treatment, because the thought of visiting a doctor is somehow wrong to you. So what does he prescribe for you?

Because homeopathy works on the basis that like cures like, our homeopath in this instance might prescribe a laxative.

That’s right. You’re in danger of dehydrating to death, so the stupid quack decides to ensure that your death is a speedy one by prescribing something that will actually hasten your demise.

Most people would do a double take at this glaring stupidity. Obviously, so did homeopaths, because the very thought that curing withdrawal symptoms for recovering alcoholics with a hearty dose of strychnine must have been a bit on the incredulous side.

So Hahnemann then decided that dilute solutions were enough.

But for some completely unfathomable reason, he postulated that the more you dilute something, the stronger it becomes. Soon enough, incredibly "strong" solutions were created to the point where the presence of even a single molecule of the substance in question becomes extremely unlikely to the point of improbable.

The ad hoc hypothesising that went on here is simply breathtaking:

• Water became a medium that developed a "memory" of the substance dissolved in it.
• The shaking of the solution energised the (non-existent) ingredient.
• Serial dilutions increased the active potency of the ingredient, but decreased side-effects such as death.
  

And so on and so forth.

And here's the kicker - no viable evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic remedies has been found. We would need controlled double-blind tests to be done, and so far, nothing.

Yet, on the basis of this glaring lack of evidence, homeopathic remedies continue to be sold.

Yes, folks. "Sold". Homeopathy is a multi-billion dollar business. It can certainly afford the testing.

On top of that, you have these half-wits suppressing dissent by petitioning The Quackometer's hosting facilities to take down the offending post. A post, I might add that pointed out the sheer immorality and lunacy of peddling homeopathic remedies for malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB in Kenya.

This is a DISGRACE!!!™

The point that I want to make is that homeopathy is built on so many ad-hoc hypotheses, risible inconsistencies and surly non-cooperation on the subject of testing that it is time that it was recognised for what it is: A horribly-constructed web of lies.

It's time for homeopaths to be put out of business.

54th Skeptics' Circle

Well, Action Skeptics has the 54th Skeptics' Circle up and there is heaps of good reading here.

Top of the list was a really good one from Moonflake, titled Midweek Cuckoo: How to spot a cuckoo.

This had me in stitches.

Other than that, Aurora Walking Vacation had a good one on homeopathy that had my full attention. I must blog about homeopathy at some stage - it's the silliest altie remedy there is.

Great reading for all the family.

Read it here.