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.

73rd Skeptics' Circle

Skeptics' Circle # 73 is now up at Holford Watch where Patrick Holford has done an excellent job.

This time around I had to do a double take at this excellent post at Whitecoat Underground titled Quantum intuition, meet therapeutic touch…

Laugh? I nearly spontaneously combusted.

Greta Christina's Blog has a great post on AIDS denialism and anti-vaxxers. Also very good, and written well.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of stuff for the whole family. Enjoy.

72nd Skeptics' Circle

The 72nd Skeptics' Circle is now up at The Quackometer. And as always there is fun for all the family.

Making news this time around is my debut on this excellent blog carnival, with one I did a week or so ago, "Filthy, rotten lies".

Grabbing my attention this time around:

• Orac, on why it's a bad idea for scientists to publicly debate woo merchants;
• Steven Novella, of Neurologica Blog on why chi is popular woo, especially amongst martial artists;
• Zoo Knudsen, of Knudsen's News on the discovery of a cheese danish that looks like Charles Darwin;
• Eric Michael Johnson, of The Primate Diaries on an actual point of agreement (albeit qualified) with the intelligent design lot, coupled with details of the hypocrisy that outlines the qualification; and
• Mark Hoofnagle, of Denialism Blog on more hilarity regarding Uri Geller.

I've been a little slack in reading Skeptics' Circle lately - apparently Infophile's last one was excellent. But I'm getting there.

Enjoy.

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.

67th Skeptics' Circle

Over at the Bronze Blog, Bronze Dog has put together what could possibly be the best Skeptics' Circle ever. And it comes with an excellent mech theme.

Holding my attention from the outset were two excellent posts by Orac at his blog, Respectful Insolence:

What a lot of it boils down to when it comes to antiscience; and

Your Friday Dose of Woo: A soothing footbath of woo

I love Orac's Friday Dose of Woo series.

I've plugged Infophilia in the past, and this post caught my attention mainly due to the fact that I've recently posted about the idiotic concept that is Pascal's Wager.

Infophile puts a new spin on this ridiculous concept in this great post, and tells a riveting story at the same time. It can truthfully be called a parable:

The Greater Good

Anyway, as always there is tonnes of excellent reading for all the family.

Click here.

Doggerel #100

Over at the Bronze Blog (formerly Rockstar's Ramblings), Bronze Dog has churned out his 100th post in this excellent series.

This is a sensational achievement, and an excellent post to boot - he's looked at "Truth" for this one.

Not being one to rest on his laurels, he's immediately followed this up with Doggerel #101, which is about the phrase, "We can believe whatever we want!"

I say congratulations, BD. Well done.

Dungeons and dragons

Proving once again that his blog is indispensible, Jack Marx has had a go at woo, "self-help" and eastern religion.

His conclusion is stated early on, and quite well:

For peddlers of pseudoscience are the most successful of all hucksters, thanks to what at first seems to be an uncanny ability to appear above criticism, but is actually just the simple fact that you can't bust a dealer when he's selling bags with nothing in them.

As far as pseudoscience goes, this statement sums it up better than anything else I've ever heard and I plan to use it heaps in the future.

The comments thread has gotten a bit out of control - you could apply all of Bronze Dog's Doggerel statements to quite a lot of them, but anyway, have a read for yourself.

Read it here:

The Daily Truth: Dungeons and dragons

50th Skeptics' Circle - in memory of Carl Sagan

Yay! Skeptics' Circle number 50!!

And this one is dedicated to the memory of Carl Sagan, the closest person to a "patron saint" of skepticism. Except for maybe Harry Houdini.

Humbug! Online has done a fantastic job with this one.

Sagan died ten years ago, but his memory lives on through his excellent work.

(And I must make a mental note here to remember to buy Cosmos on DVD.)

Anyway, it's taken me a little while but I've finally read it and there is, as always, tonnes of reading for everyone.

The one that caught my attention this time round was Orac's excellent post on the infiltration of religion into medicine.

This scared the poo out of me. Orac has blogged in the past about the infiltration of alternative medicine into medicine and this is really the next logical (sadly) step.

I sometimes think that organised religion steals all its ideas from the alternative medicine industry, and it appears that medicine is copping it from all sides here.

Anyway, read those. They're great.

The rest are here.

Enjoy.

40th Skeptics' Circle

Some excellent reading here, this fortnight.

There are interesting things to being a bloke.

One of these things is that mention of "colon" is guaranteed to raise a smirk.

That's why my favourite this time around has been Orac's Your Friday Dose of Woo: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

Brilliant stuff.

As always, tonnes of stuff for everyone.

Read it here:

Daylight Atheism » The 40th Skeptics' Circle

39th Skeptics' Circle

Yes it's up here at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant.

He's done a brilliant job, and the Scooby Doo theme is hilarious.

My highlight this time around is Aetiology's expose of the Discovery Institute's War On Science.

They've found a new weapon, and it appears to be global warming. I never knew that they were global warming denialists.

Elsewhere, as always, it is all good stuff.

Read it here:

Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant - A Circle of Sleuthing Skeptics #39

38th Skeptics' Circle

Skeptic Rant is hosting this this fortnight, and as always, there is a wealth of good reading. Skeptic Rant has done a superb job, and the cola motif is excellent.

This fortnight, my attention was taken by an article over at xenophile. This one goes for the jugular on an academic who appears to have found a new and creative way of saying, "The kids of today don't give us elders and betters no respect!"

Elsewhere, there's tonnes of good stuff.

Read it here:

Skeptic Rant: Thirsty for Truth? Try Skeptic Cola

37th Skeptics' Circle

The 37th Skeptics' Circle is up!

This fortnight it's at Autism Diva's blog, and may I just say that she's done a spectacular job, particularly with the fishy subtext.

Yes, I apologise for that particularly bad pun.

Of interest to me this month is one by Skeptico where he criticises a book by a guy named Daniel Pinchbeck, a bloke who appears to be what's technically described as a "major kook".

Pinchbeck appears to have had an apocalyptic revelation, strangely coinciding with an intake of ayahuasca.

Skeptico has since published a sequel here.

One issue that it raises is, can you legitimately criticise something that you haven't read?

Personally, I haven't read Mein Kampf or Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but I believe that I know enough about them to be able to say without reservation that they are complete Croco-Stimpy's.

In the case of Pinchbeck, when you add what Skeptico has written about this book to what Pinchbeck himself has posted on these two posts of Skeptico's, you really are left with the conclusion that Pinchbeck is one certifiable melonfarmer.

I'm going to disclose that I haven't read Pinchbeck's book.

Notwithstanding, I'm also going to disclose that I believe it to be 100% rubbish of the silliest possible kind.

Apart from this, as always, there is all sorts of wonderful stuff for everyone here. Get amongst it.

Read it here:

37th Skeptics' Circle

A field guide to pseudoscience and quackery index

A photon in the darkness is an excellent blog from Prometheus.

This is an outstanding series of his that I serialised earlier in the year, and have been meaning to index.

So without further ado, here it is:

A Field Guide to Quackery and Pseudoscience – Part One

A Field Guide to Quackery and Pseudoscience – Part Two

A Field Guide to Quackery and Pseudoscience – Part Three

A Field Guide to Quackery and Pseudoscience – Part Four

A Field Guide to Quackery and Pseudoscience – Part Five

And how good is that?

When you visit A photon in the darkness, leave a comment - it's time Prometheus blogged again.

Doggerel Index & Suggestions

Rockstars' Ramblings is an excellent blog with lots of little, um soundbites - actually, I'm really not sure what the blogosphere equivalent of this word is at all.

Anyway, I was going to serialise Bronze Dog's excellent series Doggerel, but he's gone ahead and stuck an index out there, which he's retroactively updating. Rather than re-invent the wheel, just go straight here for the good stuff.

My personal fave has been "Science doesn't know everything," so far, but he'll probably outstrip that one some time soon.

Find it here:

Rockstars' Ramblings: Doggerel Index & Suggestions

36th Skeptics' Circle

This time around, the 36th Skeptics Circle is being hosted by The Examining Room of Dr Charles which is yet another quality blog moving to ScienceBlogs.

And he's done a very good job.

And as always, there's something for everyone. Andrew West over at WongaBlog wrote an incisive article on Life Coaching which actually has some personal relevance to me - and no, as Bart Simpson would say, "I didn't do it!"

Read it here:

The Examining Room of Dr. Charles: 36th Skeptics' Circle

Doggerel #1: "Supernatural"

Rockstar's Ramblings is another skeptical blog that I enjoy.

Their Doggerel series is a series that, I suspect, could go on for a while.

But the this series is immensely entertaining, and I hope it continues on for a good while.

I'm providing links to these so that I can have them all in the one place.

Hopefully, though, you'll all get to enjoy them, too.

Rockstars' Ramblings: Doggerel #1: "Supernatural"

35th Skeptics’ Circle

Skeptico (or is it "Skeptico"?) is hosting the 35th Skeptics Circle.

And it is a corker.

Of particular interest to me was one blogger, Einzige's review of a Real Estate Guru (now there's an overused term) named John Burley.

Apparently Burley's investment "tips" read a little like a horoscope.

Not enough financial stuff gets a skeptical eye cast over it, so kudos to Einzige.

Elsewhere, this a bumper read with all sorts of stuff for everyone.

Read it here:

Skeptico: 35th Skeptics’ Circle by a guest blogger

What the hell is wrong with financial planning? (Part 1)

Financial Planning is an industry well short of maturity in Australia.

It can be considered an infant industry - hey, it's only been going since the late eighties in Australia. Financial Planning was the logical successor to the Life Insurance Advice industry, which needed room to grow.

Like all infant industries, Financial Planning is temperamental, emotional, irrational and lacks a substantial degree of theory behind the practical... and its practitioners, likewise.

This blogger happens to be a former financial adviser, and still works in close proximity to the financial advice industry. So he's allowed to bag it.

Once upon a time, financial advisers in Australia were accorded a social status marginally below that of Real Estate Agents and Plaintiff Lawyers and marginally higher than that of sufferers of Hansen's disease.

Now, thanks to a raging bull market, clients think that financial advisers can do no wrong.

And it's being reflected in society's opinion of them, showing that their popularity has increased.

But is the industry resting on its laurels?

This blogger has noted in the past that the FPA very much appears to have favoured its licensee members, and not the public interest when it has been making policy.

For example, the tectonically slow pace of reform on adviser commissions appears to be moving in the direction of a model rejecting commissions. It is clear to even Blind Freddy that commissions for advisers is a blatant potential conflict of interest, however, the FPA could not spot a conflict of interest if it swung a cricket bat up between its legs.

Given the slow pace of policy reform from the industry's key body, which represents the vast majority of financial advisers and advice houses, what is in the offing is a potential powderkeg of recriminations and finger-pointing once the next bear market hits.

We're already seeing this in a lightweight form with the Westpoint fiasco. What would happen if the shit were truly to hit the fan?

The irony is that the whole Westpoint thing could easily have been avoided if financial advisers had stayed true to the old maxim "build and diversify".

Clients who have been burnt appear to have one thing in common - their adviser recommended that quite a large portion of their portfolio went into just this asset.

If their advisers had been a little more diligent, there would have been substantially more attention paid to a client's diversification profile.

Or, to put it another way, I find it very, very difficult to believe that all clients who were burnt required all their property portfolio to be managed by the one very small company.

But the financial planning world does some funny things these days.

Lets look at some areas that are contentious.

1. Rejection of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH)

This appears to be a recent thing and appears driven by a desire by dealer groups to use products other than index funds.

Put simply, all forms of the EMH suggest that it is impossible for anyone to expect to outdo the market consistently (on average).

Which means that, if the EMH holds, a fund that approximates the index - such as an index fund - is going to represent the best bet over the medium to long term.

The problem with the EMH is that some of the underlying assumptions have not been researched thoroughly enough to be able to even underpin the hypothesis itself.

Naturally, this means that the EMH will probably remain a hypothesis for some time, yet, as a way to test it has not been found.

(Ironically, this often leads to claims by Technical Analysis proponents that the EMH is pseudoscience. Honestly, what planet are these guys from...)

It does appear that a systematic campaign to discredit the EMH is being waged by fund managers and advice houses and, sadly, this appears slanted towards selling non-index products that charge higher fees and pay higher commissions.

And perform worse, more often than not. Oh yes. The stats are available.

2. "Active portfolio management"

Following on from point one is a new twist which is one that, financial advisers are pushing active portfolio management more and more.

This appears to coincide with a rise in fee for service advice.

This, sadly, appears to be a downside in the move to more objective advice. It now becomes in the adviser's interest for a client to not be a "set-and-forget" client.

More and more opportunities will arise to "add value" to a client's financial planning requirements.

Add value. I cannot stand that term. Whenever I hear it, I see several shades of red. It is a cynical term that means, "What can we cross-sell?" And it isn't the client who benefits, it is the adviser.

What I don't get, is that they're "adding value" in contentious areas.

Why aren't they doing stuff that they traditionally haven't touched which they need to do? Such as budget planning? Debt management? Bank account shopping?

If financial advisers are going to continue to call themselves this, they need to be able to justify this title with some more extensive work.

Otherwise, hey. Why don't we just call them "investment advisers" cause that's all they appear to do.

Back to active portfolio management, though.

The most annoying thing about his is that it is a straightforward example of financial advisers not heeding their own advice. Financial advisers tell you to hold your investment for a suggested time horizon. What kind of example is a financial adviser giving when they tell you to drop an investment and switch into another?

I recently spoke to a former colleague of mine and asked him, "What benefit is to be gained by doing this?"

His answer told many stories: "You've got to be seen to be doing something."

Seriously, this is no way to do business.

Let me make this perfectly clear.

A. Financial advisers do not have to be seen to be doing anything. This is a stupid rule perpetuated by stupid American management consultants.

B. If a financial adviser makes a recommendation which they then vary a year later, they at least should have the decency to say that they made a mistake the first time. Then, they should count the "mistakes" that they made. Do they outweigh getting it right? If they do, why should they think that they're any good?

C. Will incurring unnecessary Capital Gains Tax (CGT) events every year really help their clients?

How on earth advisers can advise with conviction if they keep changing their minds is beyond me.

3. A move towards directly owned assets

This one is a direction that I figure that financial planners had to go in eventually.

However, some advisers have gone well beyond what I would consider prudent in recommending these.

Basically, a managed fund allows someone to benefit from either a portfolio that replicates an index, or is managed by a fund manager who has a reasonable degree of skill in excess of the average schmo.

Either way, there are economies of scale cost-wise that the average investor cannot hope to replicate.

Also, in the case of active fund management, you are piggybacking off some of the brightest fund management sparks in the world.

Currently, advice houses plug direct ownership as a way that an investor can keep their costs down and their investment performance up.

This is a furphy. And I'll tell you why.

No adviser who is this good as a stock picker will be a financial planner.

The other small issue is that most client's diversification profiles do not lend themselves to direct investment.

The thing about clients' risk profiles is that they specify a maximum degree of risk that is acceptable to a client.

Clients then look at the maximum return that they are willing to aim for given a certain degree of risk.

For about 90 to 95% (my guess) of clients, lower amounts of risk for higher returns are achieved through diversification.

Advisers are supposed to take all of this into account.

Of course, beyond a certain amount of diversification, that higher potential return for a given level of risk becomes hard to come by.

Some have said that this level of diversification can be achieved by purchasing as few as 15 assets per asset class.

But you still have to pick them. Could you?

At the very least, it is said that at extremely low and high risk profiles, diversification becomes less effective.

But then as I pointed out before, 90 to 95% of people lie in between.

(Hell, if purchasing the family home is considered to be an investment decision, most Australians who own or are paying off their houses have what could be considered to be one of the most inappropriate investments ever)

The only thing I can conclude from the push to directly owned assets is that it is another "value add".

Stockbrokers have been doing this sort of stuff for years - and clipping the ticket every time a trade is executed.

Financial Planners now are doing it as a value add - hey, this fee for service thing really pays off.

It requires more intensive maintenance, more work, more transactions, and, not surprisingly, more Statements of Advice.

And you can be sure that some clients who use these services would, of course, be better off buying and holding an index fund.

What is going on?

The above are only some of the questionable tacks that financial planning these days has embarked on.

In Part 2, we'll look at someone who believes that he has the answer as to why this revolution is going on, and who stands to benefit.

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. Are you an idiot? I didn't think you were. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.

How to De-stabilise Rational Thinking in 10 Easy Lessons

After the arse-kicking that they received in the Kitzmiller vs Dover case (also known as Scopes II), IDiots have been strangely quiet.

But don't discount them. They'll be back. And they'll be back in a way that means that when they do, all us rational folk will be needed for the showdown.

After all, there are plenty more battlefields out there that haven't even been fought at yet.

Evolution is just one of the possible targets that they could name. They could come back with a sneaky attack on the Big Bang, Gravity, the list is too big to mention.

In the fallout after this case, attention has been focussed back on the Discovery Institute, the shadowy right-wing thinktank that has been pushing the ID line.

What is most disturbing is that, amidst all the double-talk, wheeling and dealing and spin, the Discovery Institute seems to be ashamed to acknowledge their admitted religious agenda.

You wouldn't think so if this really was all there was to it.

Anyway, back to the story at hand.

What appears to be the case is that up to this point, the boys and girls over at the Discovery Institute have been going out of their way to introduce a concept called Intelligent Design into the science classroom through a process of deliberate confusion called "Teaching the Controversy."

Teaching the Controversy is simply asserting that a controversy exists where there isn't one. Great trick, if you can pull it off. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are particularly good at this.

What is certain about Teaching the Controversy is that it is designed to exploit a weak point identified fairly early on by the Discovery Institute. The weak point that I am referring to is that many people don't know what science actually is.

Disgraceful, really.

Mark Nutter is a bloke who keeps a very interesting blog on reconciling religion with science called, Heaven is not the Sky.

Nutter has identified a top ten, an "action plan", if you like, for sabotaging science in the name of religion.

These read as follows:

1. Focus on a vague, generalized group of presumed antagonists (e.g. evolutionists, “Darwinists”) whose motives are always presumed to be corrupt, dishonest and evil.
2. Emphasis on atypical examples of cases that make a theory (e.g. evolution) look bad, generalized to imply that the whole theory is bad.
3. Attacking a scientific theory (e.g. evolution) on religious, non-scientific, or pseudo-scientific grounds, rather than by offering detailed scientific explanations whose specific, verifiable predictions are a better fit for the observed data.
4. Manufacturing phony challenges to the legitimacy of a theory (e.g. evolution), and inflating the credentials of those challenges.
5. Manufacturing spurious and unsupported alternatives to a theory (e.g. evolution) and using non-scientific channels to get them acclaimed as “scientifically superior,” so as to displace the challenged theory.
6. Manipulating the educational and political system to control public perception of scientific information independently of the scientific process.
7. Spreading distorted information and false information about a theory (e.g. evolution) and/or the people who support it.
8. Maintaining a facade of false neutrality and objectivity while clearly working to promote a monopolistic agenda.
9. Claiming to promote scientific research while never doing any actual research beyond looking up materials that can be used to try and discredit the target theory (the “Hollow Curiosity” indicator). Note that this failure to produce any documented results is often masked by complaints of “censorship” by mainstream science, despite the fact that until you do the research, you have nothing publishable for mainstream science to censor!
10. Tight PR controls on all media outlets (including blogs) owned and operated by the creationists themselves.

My questions are these.

Firstly, there are many religious types who don't approve of what 'mentalists like the Discovery Institute are doing.

Why don't they have a serious bash at destabilising the 'mentalists? The vast, vast majority of Christians (and I will specifically single Christians out here. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc all seem to be immune to all this silliness) simply do not support literal interpretations of the Bible.

In fact, if you were to ask them, and promise them confidentiality, I would hazard a guess that 9 out of 10 Christians do not even support the notion of Biblical inerrancy.

Secondly, this goes for scientists and the rest of us.

Up to now, the PR nous displayed by scientists has been atrocious.

Kitzmiller was won through sheer dumb luck. Luck in that it was lucky that the plaintiffs had such a good case and a decent legal team.

When the IDiots attempt to pull another one over on the rest of us, they will come better organised.

It is time for scientists to go out on the attack and lauch a PR blitz of their own.

And there is a really, really good reason why this is the case.

In the next few weeks this blogger plans to examine the concept of Dominionism. Is it just another wacky conspiracy theory? If not, then what is it?

Even if it is pure codswallop, wouldn't you feel more comfortable if our friends with pointy heads were at least getting out there and making themselves known?

Because if they don't, and our fundamentalists come a calling, normal people are going to feel safer with them than the forces of logic and reason.

And this has the potential to return us to the dark ages.