Six foolhardy souls in Sydney have filmed an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide by overdosing on homeopathic sleeping pills. Alas, the pills only provided a small increase in their caloric intake.
This was part of the 10:23 event which targets homeopathy, possibly the most stupid “alternative medicine”. The only good things that can be said about it are 1) it has a placebo effect in some; 2) it’s very difficult to have any side effects.
This morning I dropped in to Collins Books at Smithfield, like I do most Saturdays, to see if there were any new titles on the shelves I might like to read. I’ve found that they tend to have the best selection of science and philosophy/religion books in town. I was pleasantly surprised to find Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst’s Trick or Treatment, which I’ve been planning to order for a couple of weeks, and grabbed a copy.
Singh is in the news at the moment as he is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association over an article he wrote for the Guardian in which he criticised chiropractic treatment of childhood illnesses such as colic. The case has attracted a lot of publicity, with Singh even being interviewed on ABC’s Lateline here in Australia. I’m pretty sure that the BCA case is the reason the book is starting to appear on the shelves.
As many organisations have learned in the past, the worst way to silence a critic is to sue them in the digital age. It just gets your critic publicity, and the backlash can be quite stunning. The BCA and chiropractors in general are now feeling this effect, with light being cast upon the shadow they dwell in, and complaints being lodged with health standards organisations. The criticism is well deserved.
Trick or Treatment consists of dedicated chapters on how science tests treatments, acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine. It closes with a “rapid guide to alternative therapies” which briefly covers many other claimed therapies. Collins Smithfield still had one copy in stock after my visit. I hope they’ll need to order more.
There’s a growing backlash against the British Chiropractic Association for its libel suit against Simon Singh, and some chiropractors are starting to panic. The McTimoney Chiropractic Association is reported to have released a warning to its members saying:
Because of what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors, we are now issuing the following advice:
The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research. The safest thing for everyone to do is as follows.
- If you have a website, take it down NOW.
When you have done that, please let us know preferably by email or by phone. This will save our valuable time chasing you to see whether it has been done.
- REMOVE all the blue MCA patient information leaflets, or any patient information leaflets of your own that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic or at any other site where they might be displayed with your contact details on them. DO NOT USE them until further notice. The MCA are working on an interim replacement leaflet which will be sent to you shortly.
Essentially they’re saying “Quick! Hide the evidence!”. They realise that many of their members have acted in a way that could potentially get them into legal trouble.
Oh, they also said:
Finally, we strongly suggest you do NOT discuss this with others, especially patients, Firstly it would not be ethical to burden patients with this, though if they ask we hope you now have information with which you can respond.
Most importantly, this email and all correspondence from the MCA is confidential advice to MCA members alone, and should not be shared with anyone else.
There’s a bit of a schism in chiropractic, with one side holding to the traditional view of subluxations (misalignments of the spine) interfering with the flow of some mysterious Inner Intelligence of the body, resulting in illness. The other side has moved away from subluxations and towards a more physiotherapy oriented treatment of skeletomuscular problems. This latter group may have some scientific support for their claims, however the former is pure quack medicine. Some chiropractors fall in between.
The MCA email seems to have been leaked by a pro-subluxation chiropractor on a pro-Chiropractic website in a post titled The McTimoney Chiropractic Association would seem to believe that chiropractic is “bogus”.
What about here in Cairns? Chiropractic Works in Cairns Central and In Form Chiropractic on Mulgrave Road have websites that talk about subluxations of the spine. The former includes a long list of diseases and conditions they apparently think spinal realignment can treat, including some cases of deafness and blindness, asthma, and haemorrhoids!
More information on the British Chiropractic Association vs Simon Singh can be found on the Sense About Science website. New Scientist’s What you should know about chiropractic is also good reading.
For about a century Creationists have been trumpeting the imminent demise of evolution. It’s a bit like claims of the Second Coming of Christ… It’s always coming real soon! Needless to say, their prognostications have always failed, and evolutionary biology has grown into a healthy field of science. I became interested in evolution largely due to David Attenborough’s Life on Earth, and I have read avidly on the subject and related fields ever since.
A few years back, that interest led me to do a little reading on the nature of consciousness, reading books by Daniel Dennett, Susan Blackmore, Nicholas Humphrey and others. I wondered why the scientific exploration of our minds didn’t get Creationists even more upset than evolution. I also wondered why parasitology didn’t get them worked up, but the idea of critters crawling around our intestines and even our brains isn’t relevant to this post (despite evidence parasites may modify our behaviour). The real enemy of Creationism is “materialism”, or, more correctly, methodological naturalism. The idea that we could explain the human mind using naturalistic science seemed that it should be far more threatening to their world view.
The first time I noticed anything from Creationists on the neuroscientific front was the ramblings of Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon with some rather wacky ideas about the way the mind works. His work was trashed by many, especially over at the Panda’s Thumb, where jokes about “Egnorance” became commonplace. Egnor quickly became associated with the Discovery Institute, the most prominent ID propaganda group. Other dualist/anti-materialist voices also spoke up, and hooked up with the Discovery Institute.
The vast majority of the Discovery Institute’s hacks are conservative Christians and Creationists (there are a couple of exceptions, such as Michael Behe – a confused Roman Catholic who accepts common descent but thinks God triggers the mutations upon which natural selection acts). The Discovery Institute’s Wedge Strategy, which reveals their true agenda, includes this statement:
Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism.
A recent opinion piece in New Scientist, Creationists declare war over the brain by Amanda Gefter, talks about the growing Creationist/Intelligent Design attempt to attack neuroscience. She discusses the role of the Discovery Institute in marshalling a group of scientists who disagree with the naturalistic view of the mind which, rightly, dominates the field of neuroscience.
Steve Novella, from the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, has probably spent more time debunking the claims of Michael Egnor than anyone else. Novella’s posts about Egnor on Panda’s Thumb and other places were always a great read. In response to the New Scientist piece, Novella has a couple of posts on his blog:
It’s interesting to see neuroscience is getting more attention from the whackaloons. It’s an area in science that is still in its early phases, and much is yet to be learnt. There are many gaps in our knowledge into which the Creationists can try to push their God of the Gaps. As we learn more about the workings of the human mind, light will be cast into those gaps, and the retreat of that God will result.
The God of the Gaps is bad theology, and it’s bad science – be that science evolutionary biology, neuroscience, or any other field.
. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001)
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