Or: Homeopathic levels of accuracy

Observant readers may have spotted the new Dr Aust Twitter feed down at the bottom of the sidebar on the  blog.

Yes, that’s right – you can now follow Dr Aust on twitter, though I can’t really think why you would want to.

I had resisted signing up on Twitter until just a few days ago. I might bore you with the detailed reasons some other time, but the main one was that, as an Olympic-class procrastinator, I reckoned the last thing I needed was yet another way to procrastinate.

But – I now retract that statement. And Thank Goodness I signed up to Twitter this week.

Because late on Friday afternoon, at about 5 pm, Twitter gave me the best laugh I have had in a couple of months.

This was when several sceptical Tweets directed me to a truly marvellous example of Alternative, not to say Parallel, not to say Quantum Alternative Parallel Reality (“Quap Reality” for short). At which point, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

And it takes a lot to do that late on a Friday afternoon.

The cause was this article, from the notorious Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, or JACM, entitled:

CAM, Free Speech, and the British Legal System:
Overstepping the Mark?

The author of this bravura piece of Unreality (could it be a spoof?) is homeopathic quantum intellectual supreme, Dr Lionel Milgrom.

Or to give him his full title from the paper, which I suspect he would insist on,  since he typically lists all the letters:

Lionel R. Milgrom, Ph.D., M.A.R.H., M.R.Hom., F.R.S.C.

Now, I had occasionally suspected hitherto that Lionel Milgrom had untapped comic talent. But he has outdone himself this time.

Only the first page of the opus is free access, but that is more than enough:

Abstract:

The British Chiropractic Association recently won a libel case against the science writer and CAM ‘skeptic’ Dr Simon Singh

(Italics mine)

As Private Eye like to say – “shurely shome mistake”?

There really can’t be that many people following the BCA v Singh case in even a casual way who don’t know that it is still ongoing.

There is, after all, hardly a lack of coverage, at least online.

While Milgrom’s article clearly went to press before the latest hearing in the case last week – the article has no “accepted on” date, but there is a reference in it that says “accessed Aug 24th 2009″ – surely no-one was under the illusion that Sir David Eady had actually heard the full libel action?

Well, apparently some people were. It gets better:

“The judge agreed with this argument [i.e. that the use of the word "bogus" implied the BCA had knowingly lied about the evidence concerning chiropractic for various childhood ailments] awarding the BCA substantial damages.“

Truly bizarre. It was this sentence that had me speechless with laughter.

The first bit is OK – Eady did, in the main, accept the BCA’s pleaded meaning (this is the ruling that has just been sent back on appeal).

But “substantial damages”? Errr – NOT. Damages get awarded when the case is, like, finished.

(“Substantial Damages” , by the way, is a phrase usually used by successful libel complainants in their victorious press statements to imply that their opponents had been comprehensively slapped with the wet kipper, not to mention taken to the cleaners financially)

How very, VERY odd.

The remainder of Milgrom’s article, which sadly is behind a paywall, is a hoot too, but I will leave that for another time.

What I want to concentrate on now is the Sheer Unreality of it.

Unreality….

Unless….

Unless…

Unless there is some OTHER Quantum Alternative Parallel Reality, to which Milgrom perhaps has privileged access as a “Quantum Homeopath”, where what Milgrom says is actually true.

Of course!

How could I not have known?

Indeed, perhaps this “QUAP Reality” is where all the Alt.Reality folk hang out.

Once you have made that Leap into the Unreal, IT ALL BEGINS TO MAKE SENSE AT LAST.

In this Alternative Reality, of course the BCA won.

Indeed, this new Quantum Alternative Parallel Universe, or QUAP-iverse, seems to be especially favourable for Libel verdicts.

Remember how we saw at the start of this year, in “Keeping It Unreal”, that dropping a libel suit and getting landed with hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs was actually a huge VICTORY for noted Alternative Reality Figure Dr Matthias Rath?

Clearly, in the same (Un) Reality Rath seems to inhabit, the BCA have already won large damages, just as Milgrom states.

And then, of course, all the other seemingly daft stuff falls into place too.

- Diluting a substance makes it MORE powerful.
- Mystical laying on of hands beams out healing power.
- Illness is all in the Mind.
- Pushing on your arm can diagnose your allergies.
- Massaging your feet can magically rejuvenate your kidneys.
- Flushing your rear end with a load of warm water can magically “detox” your liver.
- Sticking you in a “Sweat lodge” and cooking you until you are dangerously dehydrated and hallucinating can be a “healing experience”

- and so on.

So - Silly Me.

There I was thinking these folk were all away with the fairies, when really they were simply privileged to be able to access a QUAP-iverse where all this stuff is really true.

——————————————————-

Or: I was right the first time.

They really ARE Away With The Fairies.

Tinfoil Hats And All.

In this rather party-pooping view, which Alt.Reality folk like to call “Scientism” – though I prefer “Reality” – the normal rules of physics and chemistry apply, homeopathic remedies are water, BCA v. Singh is still ongoing, all the daft “therapies”  I mentioned just now are a bunch of **!*, and Dr Milgrom has clearly not been checking his facts carefully enough.

And nor,  it would seem, has anyone else at the JACM.

(Chief Editor, if you didn’t know: Dr Kim “Dr Q-link” Jobst, FRCP).

Of course, Milgrom is on the JACM Editorial Board (you can see the full membership here), so one is curious whether such extended “Opinion Pieces” – the JACM actually calls the section in which the Milgrom piece features “Paradigms”, whatever they mean by that  - even get read by anyone apart from the author, if that author is a journal editor.

As to whether this apparent carelessness with facts is representative of other bits of Dr Milgrom’s oeuvre, or indeed of other content in the JACM -

- you might well wonder about that.

But – on the advice of my lawyers – I couldn’t possibly comment.

In which Dr Aust considers his lack of promotion prospects, but does attain rank in the “Anti-CAM brigade”

Dr Aust is feeling very sheepish about his lack of blog activity, and even more so since the much-appreciated plug (combined with a bit of gentle chiding) from ace legal blogger Jack of Kent a couple of weeks back

Indeed, a bit earlier last month Jack had even appointed Dr Aust to a rank in the “anti-CAM brigade”:

Which is curious, in one way, since I started off being neutral or even vaguely sympathetic to the less loony bits of CAM. Honestly.

I was recently reminded of this as I came across an old letter I wrote to Prof David Colquhoun almost three years ago, when I first started commenting on the blogs. As a chemistry undergraduate many years ago I was fascinated by natural product chemistry, so I have always found natural product-based remedies intriguing. (Like most biological scientists, I use various natural products as reagents in my scientific work.) And over the years I have taken a number of herbal pills – valerian and hops for poor sleep being an example. I was also probably influenced by Mrs Dr Aust, who trained in medicine in a European country where complementary therapies are more widely used by doctors than in the UK, and are rather more stringently regulated.

So why would I now be pretty relaxed about being labelled “anti-CAM”?

The reason is that the more I have had to do with the CAM folk over the last 2-3 years, the less and less sympathetic I have become. The reasons for this, I think, lie in the behaviour and evasions of the pro-CAM people, neatly summed up in Edzard Ernst’s personal paper here.

If you wanted to boill it down to a brief statement, my objection would be twofold:

Why do people have to invent fanciful and frankly ludicrous explanations for stuff, when there are perfectly reasonable ones around that do not require you to conjure up a special personal reality?

Why do the same people then cry (variously) “Foul!” “Not Fair!” “Leave my reality alone!” or “Libe!!” when people point this out?

In the specific context of science and medicine, if the CAM lot want to play in the game, then they have to play by the evidentiary rules that apply, notably the ones in which good evidence trumps bad. Otherwise, as David Colquhoun often says, it is like throwing the last 50-60-odd years of medical and scientific advancement in the dustbin.

So how did Jack of Kent come to be handing out ranks in the anti-CAM brigade? The answer is that this arose as a result of a mildly surreal letter that noted CAM apologist Prof George Lewith (who seems to have become the go-to-guy when an academic medical defender of CAM is required) wrote to the New Scientist earlier last month. The letter was in turn prompted by an article Jack had written in the New Scientist – “Don’t Criticise Or We’ll Sue” – noting the enthusiasm of Alt.Reality folk for calling in M’Learned Friends.

Prof George concluded:

“It should be noted that the article you published on this matter is from a prominent member of the anti-CAM brigade.”

Which strikes me as rather a cheap shot coming from a “medically-qualified researcher of CAM”, as Professor George describes himself.

Jack of Kent tells the full story here, noting that his only interest in Alternative Medicine has been the use (or misuse, if you prefer) its practitioners make of the Threat of Legal Retribution to salve their wounded reputations.

Jack was rather amused at Lewith’s parting jab:

Gosh!

But I think this [that JoK is a member of the "anti-CAM brigade"] is incorrect.

Not that there is any shame being a member of such a “brigade”. If so, I would want to be Captain Jack serving below Brigadier Ernst, Colonels Colquhoun and Goldacre, and Majors Noir, Aust, and Gimpy.

Gentleman rankers?

Now, though I happily plead to membership, I’m not sure what rank I should be accorded in the “anti-CAM brigade”. “Major Aust” does, I admit, have a certain ring. And I have been variously described by several of my line managers as “a major something-or-other”. (The something might be “puzzle”, or sometimes “pain”.) However. I have to say that I’ve never really seen myself as officer material.

In fact, a certain aversion to the officer class seems to run in the Aust family. Dr Aust’s father, who was a national service conscript in the early 50s, was the only family member to be a commissioned officer, but he insists this was due to a combination of his technical aptitude for fixing things and his left-wing politics. It was, according to Dr Aust’s dad (or “Grandpa Aust” as he will henceforth be known on the blog, since this is approximately how Jr Aust and her cousins address him), viewed as a bit dangerous to have well-educated and articulate leftie types in the ranks, as they might foment discontent among the enlisted men. Therefore it was safer to make them junior officers and stick them variously in the Education, Intelligence, or Engineer Corps. As Grandpa Aust was both mechanically skilled and a keen teenage radio ham, he was sent to officer training school and then off to the Royal Engineers as a 2nd Lieutenant.

No other member of the Aust family, as far as we know, has ever achieved officer rank. Indeed, Dr Aust’s maternal grandfather, a career soldier who became a Regimental Sergeant Major, turned down a battlefield commission in World War 2.

Anyway, Dr Aust’s failure ever to get promoted in two decades in his current job seems to me to be more of a pedigree for a cynical old NCO than for an officer. And sergeants do feature among Dr Aust’s comic heroes, notably Sergeant Wilson from Dad’s Army, and the wonderful Sergeant Bilko.

So all in all, I think it will have to be Sergeant Aust of the anti-CAM brigade.

But what kind of a Sergeant?

Now, Dr Aust has always had a kind of unofficial job advising on scientific equipment, particularly for optical microscope-based imaging, plus rescuing and renovating older bits of scientific kit and re-distributing it to where it is needed around the Department.

So perhaps his brigade rank ought to be Quartermaster Sergeant.

Though come to think of it, an alternative job might be as a Sergeant Instructor. I do have plenty of teaching experience. And the anti-CAM brigade seems to be gathering fresh recruits by the day.

For which, I think, we must thank our old friends at the British Chiropractic Association.

Indeed, if I may allow myself a brief officer-style compliment:

Cracking work, chaps. Carry on.

Not got round to doing any extended chiropractic debunking as yet, though I am enjoying tremendously seeing what the rest of the posse have been up to. Anyway, as a small contribution, I thought that perhaps the counter-Chiropractic unreality movement needed a theme song. So here is my attempt.

For the tune I have chosen a late 60s classic of pained disaffection with the state of the world. It seemed appropriate somehow. For full versions of the song see below.

————————————————————————–

Back Crack quack attack

Back crack quack attack

Lawyers’ fangs rip honest hack

Reality’s all out of whack

Nineteenth century Chiro sCAM

—————————————————————————-

Writs gag – rich man’s law

Chiropractors scream for more

Free discussion shown the door

Nineteenth century Chiro sCAM

—————————————————————————–

Back crack quack attack

Libel lawyers’ lips will smack

But beware! The nerds fight back

Nineteenth century Chiro-sCAM

—————————————————————————-

The little video above, which is actually just the last part of the song, comes from an early performance of the song 21st Century Schizoid Man when King Crimson supported the Rolling Stones at a famous free festival in Hyde Park in 1969. This was the festival a few days after ex-Stones guitarist Brian Jones’ death, and the performance at which Mick Jagger famously read Keats to the assembled fans in memory of Jones – a clip which turns up on many a TV documentary and indeed on Youtube.

And before you ask, of course I wasn’t there. I’m old, but I’m not that old.

The full audio of 21st Century Schizoid Man from the same performance (no visuals) is here, with the album version here. Finally, there is another version, apparently from a BBC session, here.

——————————————–

PS In an earlier version I did have a slightly different verse:

Laws to keep the truth unsaid
Legal maze and robes of red
Keep the rich and powerful fed
Nineteenth Chiro sCAM

- which might have been better, but sadly it seems that English High Court Judges sitting on defamation cases no longer wear the old red robes.

In which Dr Aust considers the plight of Simon Singh, the Alice in Wonderland world of defamation law English-style, and the implications of Mr Justice Eady’s ruling.

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Stop Press 18/05/09 9.30 pm: Simon Singh “hopes to appeal but cannot confirm yet” Simon says he hopes to make the final decision on whether to appeal Mr Justice Eady’s preliminary ruling by the end of next week. You can read more in a hot-off-the-press account of tonight’s meeting and announcement at the New Humanist blog here.

——————————————————————-

**Apologies, this post still has  some of the links missing**

So where to go with blog commentary of the BCA vs. Simon Singh case?  After all, it has been said, really. Apart from Jack of Kent’s coverage, many other Badscience and sceptical bloggers have had a go. Most recently, Andy Lewis at the Quackometer has produced a brilliant post lamenting the surreal madness of a legal system which can put precise words on trial, without addressing in any way the substance of the issue of fact that was being referred to – a system, needless to say, whose prohibitive costs make it the preferred way for the rich and powerful to suppress examination of their conduct.

Plus, in just over 21 hours we will learn what Simon Singh is actually planning to do.

Bogo-metrics

For a time I thought of writing a short dissertation on the meanings, ancient and modern, and formal and more vernacular, of the much-debated word “bogus”. Hence, indeed, the title of the post.

However, the excellent – actually, in context that should be “truly most excellent!” – Language Lab has got there before me, so you can go and read theirs. Suffice it to say that the High Court judgment would strike Bill and Ted (video here – note the word 44 sec in) as “totally bogus”, strictly in one of its hacker / slacker vernacular senses of “really really bad”.

Language Lab will also introduce you, via the Jargon File, to the related concepts of bogosity, and the semi-mythical bogometer. There has even been some discussion of what to name the SI Unit of bogosity – in its hacker sense of  “wrong-ness” -, with some interesting suggestions coming in (one wag suggested the ”micro-Eady”, which is kind of catchy).

I rather fancy getting hold of a bogometer, which seems to be a relative of the Bullshit Detector that my mates and I used to sing about back when we were playing Clash covers several decades ago. Anyway, if anyone knows where I can buy a, like, truly righteous bogometer, let me know.

What next?

Anyway, the real questions now for Simon Singh are self-evidently (i) what are his options, and (ii) what is he going to do? Jack of Kent has covered the first of these, and as I said above, we must wait until tomorrow (Monday) night to find out the second.

I actually posted my thoughts on these two issues a few days back to a comments thread over at Respectful Insolence, hence the silence here. But in case anyone’s not read them, I will repeat (slightly edited):

“The real problem with the ruling in the present case is that it restricts Singh’s defence to one that is untenable, first off since it would require him to prove the truth of something he never meant to say and pretty clearly does not believe. And this simply on Eady’s ruling that this meaning (to paraphrase, “you accuse them of deliberate deception”) is the only way that what Singh wrote could, and would, be interpreted by a typical citizen.

The defence [i.e. the defence Eady's judgement said Singh would have to run] would also be asking Singh to prove something pretty much unprovable, even if it were true (which, again, no one is claiming it is). How do you prove someone, or a trade body, did something “with malice aforethought”? It is a non-starter, really, unless there is a “smoking gun” memo somewhere that you can find (like, to give an example, the Big Tobacco company reports about “let’s put more nicotine in cigarettes as we know it is addictive and makes people keep smoking”). Indeed, the impossibility of proving same is another reason why I would argue Singh self-evidently did not mean the article in this sense.

As Jack of Kent makes clear, the prospects of changing Eady’s bizarre ruling are poor unless it goes to the European Court, but that would require several London-based appeal stages. Of course, the legal fee-o-meter will be running (very expensively) on both Singh’s and the BCA’s legal tabs through any and all appeal stages. Worse, if Singh ultimately loses he would likely end up liable for ALL the costs of BOTH parties. The “smart” move, absent matters of principle, would be to cut and run now, issuing a public statement clarifying the meaning he ascribes to “bogus”.

I think, myself, that Singh will be tempted to appeal Eady’s ruling. The question is how he would be able to meet the running costs of the appeal and “insure” himself against the potential further costs of possibly losing. Personally I would like to see the newspaper in which he published the article, the Guardian, step up and fund his appeal against the ruling as a matter of clear public interest. The Guardian were expressly NOT sued by the BCA, which suggests they apologised for running Singh’s article (and Ben Goldacre has said as much on his blog). But the implications of Eady’s ruling for clear speaking on contentious issues in general are so chilling that I think the paper should strap their ‘nads on, get off the bench, and into the game.”

[Apologies to UK- based readers for the American vernacularisms at the end]

Now, we have no idea whether the Guardian are in any way involved, but at least some journalists, a well-known comedian, and even a politician or two are taking an interest. Private Eye ran, in the latest issue, a short column on Eady’s judgement which seemed to owe a debt to Jack of Kent’s reporting. Lib Dem MP Evan Harris has added his two penn’orth, and Observer columnist Nick Cohen is appearing with Simon Singh tomorrow when we will hear what Simon is going to do. If Singh does decide to appeal the ruling – and gossip on the internet suggests he is leaning this way – I would think he will need a legal expenses fighting fund. I would be more than happy to kick in a few quid myself, and I imagine many other sceptics will feel the same. And a few sceptical benefit evenings, or concerts, or other events, would help too. I’m sure Ben Goldacre would be available for benefit gigs, and I reckon we can also count on Dave Gorman. Wonder if Stephen Fry would like to do one too? Or Tim Minchin?

But all this must wait, of course, until tomorrow when we will know which way Simon Singh is going to jump.

Words…. don’t come easy…

One aspect of the case that has given the whole affair a surreal feel is the “libel trap-door” effect of particular words, and their imputed meanings. Hence the discussion of “bogus” above, as well as extended discussions on several blogs. Some commentators have pointed out that “bogus” seems to be a term which has especially strong and specific meaning for Mr Justice Eady when he has met it previously in the context of an allegedly defamatory statement. Others, including a libel expert commenting on Jack of Kent’s blog as “Richard Keen”, have noted that this is not clear-cut, and that other phrases Singh used may have contributed to the interpretation Eady chose to place upon his words.

Whichever it is, it still rather fries the brain cells to think that the outcome of this hearing could have hinged in large part on the use of one particular word like “bogus” – as opposed to any one of the numerous alternatives Singh might have used which are arguably harder to read as “implying deliberate deception” – such as “daft”, “unbelievable”, “discredited” “ridiculous” “wholly implausible” or “risible”, to name but a few.

Another point is the largely unfathomable – at least to the layman – nature of English defamation law. This is an issue which clearly has resonance for sceptical bloggers in general, as many commentators have made clear. There seem to be few reliable principles in defamation cases, and almost unlimited judicial discretion. An approach that works in defending one case seems not to work in defending another.

Take, for instance, an earlier defamation case familiar (at least in outline) to UK-based skeptical readers, the Matthias Rath vs. Ben Goldacre and Guardian newspapers case . This was heard by a different judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat (PDF of his ruling here). Ben G’s lawyers argued successfully at the preliminary hearing – again, as I read it, NB IANAL (disclaimer) so take with pinch of salt – that the whole of an article had to be used to give context to, and thus clarify the meaning of, contentious (i.e. argued to be defamatory) statements made within that particular article.

The judgement in the BCA vs. Singh case seems to be saying precisely the opposite. Curious. Perhaps a lawyer can explain it to me… Or are we to take it that certain “red flag” words are construed by the law of libel to have no contextual nuances whatsoever in their received meaning?  Or perhaps that, going back to Jack of Kent’s pseudonymous commenting libel ninja, if one or more phrases are used in a particular way (as in Singh’s first paragraph), the law will not allow you to clarify, or set out, the meaning you thought you were giving the phrases later – even in the next paragraph?

Which raises an interesting thought. What if Singh had put the paragraph where he sets out why he regards the treatments as “bogus” before the paragraph where he talks about the BCA “promoting” them? Would that have been construed as less libellous? Or at least, would that have made the meaning Singh wanted to try to impute to the offending phrases more arguable / allowable in the Judge’s view? Some of the legal and journalistic commenters on the case (see e.g. here) have noted that earlier rulings by Mr Justice Eady had made it easier for English newspapers to mount fair comment defences of defamation actions – provided the newspaper could argue that they had clearly distinguished the known facts from the interpretation subsequently put on them. Thus the adage - “first state the established, or establish-able, facts, then give the interpretation, but do not mix the two”.

Which in a weird way reminds me of an old line about how to write a scientific paper, one which to this day promotes heated, often inter-generational, arguments:

“Don’t put the interpretation in the Results Section! It belongs in the Discussion!”

So… did poor Simon Singh simply get the paragraphs the wrong way round?

Enough word-salad. Let’s talk turkey.

Now, all this discussion of nuances of phrase and the order of paragraphs may appeal to those academic professional wafflers (like Dr Aust) or amateur lawyers-manqué, (probably like Dr Aust again), who are intrigued by words and their use and meanings.

But we can all agree that it is all enough to make your head hurt.

Let alone potentially cost you the shirt off your back.

Turning to consequences, it does not take a genius – or even a libel silk – to work out that there are a number of things that are highly likely to follow, albeit indirectly, from Eady’s judgement.

———————————————————————————

- It will make defamation and “reputation management” lawyers richer, since it remains clear that navigating the baroque and Byzantine English defamation laws is not a task for a layman.

- Sceptical commentators, on any issue, will be walking a tightrope in terms of the precise words of description they use, and even of the order of their paragraphs.

- There is likely to be even more recourse to law in the future by Alternative Medicine practitioners, and bodies like Alternative Therapy professional associations, seeking to “defend their reputation”, when people point out that their offered nostrums are unproven and sometimes known to be nonsensical.

- These lawsuits will NOT, it is clear, hinge upon the validity (or not) of the scientific statements made by the Alt.Therapy types. Not if they have smart lawyers, anyway.

- Consequent upon the last, there is likely to be less open debate of the validity (or not) of such practices – at least, I would suggest, in the mainstream media.

- The UK – more specifically England, and more specifically still London’s courts – will be ever more firmly tagged with the description “the place where there is no defence of free speech against defamation claims”. This is a common view in the US in particular, as you can infer from Pal MD’s comments here.

- And as a consequence of the last, “Libel tourism” to England will not be going away.

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All. Really. Rather. Tremendously. Depressing.

I don’t want to leave you on too depressing a note, though, so here is a more positive thought. A chiropractic professional association, like the BCA, can sue you. “Chiropractic” cannot. Nor, in fact, can a body established by English law like the General Chiropractic Council (GCC) which licences chiropractors in the UK.

This point was made by the libel expert commenting on Jack of Kent’s blog as “Richard Keen”:

“It is important to keep this all in perspective.

…it is perfectly possible to use the word “bogus” to describe chiropractic. Just be careful of mentioning an entity which is able to sue.”

Which reminded me of an exchange that we had back in January when I posted my update to the Singh case. In response to some interesting comments from reader Blue Wode, who is highly knowledgable about chiropractic, I wrote:

“As the General Chiropractic Council is a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament it would not, as I understand it, be able to sue someone for defamation. So I wonder what would have happened if Simon Singh had said “Chiropractic” (in general) supports treatments for which there is no evidence base, rather than saying “the BCA”. The GCC would not be able to sue, and it would probably be harder for the BCA to claim they had been libelled than with the form of words Singh actually used.”

To which Jack of Kent replied succinctly:

“Correct”.

So to finish, I will give you one of my favourite pithy cut-to-the-chase summaries of chiropractic (in general), from American doctor-blogger PalMD, in a post entitled “Why chiropractic is patently ridiculous”:

“I am often asked my opinion of chiropractic care. My usual answer (based on evidence) is that it can be somewhat helpful in the treatment of low back pain. That’s it. Any further claims are complete and utter [expletive] …”

Which sums it up nicely for me.

Now, I have been doing some browsing round on the websites of UK chiropractic practitioners, both in my own geographical area and further afield. Thus far, every single site I have looked at makes multiple “quasi-medical” claims about how chiropractic, and chiropractors, can help with things far beyond lower back care.

I think one might reasonably infer, from the prevalence of these claims, that they are practically “boilerplate” for practitioners of chiropractic.

You may draw your own conclusions.

But – and I must make this absolutely clear – don’t ask me anything – anything at all – about the BCA.

As Manuel from Fawlty Towers would say:

“I know nothing”.

[BPSDB]

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Edit 20/05/09 – Jack of Kent has reminded me that it is English defamation law, NOT “UK” – Scotland has separate laws. “Confused? You will be… “ Anyway, corrected accordingly.

I found Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman to be very interesting.  He made some good points about how people can be so superficial and settle with what they want to hear.  I agree with him when he says that it isn’t a scientific world because the way advertisement works is based on what the consumer wants to hear.  If the consumer hears the true meaning or whats behind what they are buying they might not buy it.

“In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to
help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the
information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or
another.”

I agree with this, I believe as a consumer I should get all the details and I can choose to look into them or not but either way I have all the information available to see if I would really make that purchase or follow their theory’s.

source

A small round-up of what I have been reading.

The line “You couldn’t make it up” is a rather over-used one in the UK. Nonetheless, it often seem apposite when confronting enthusiasts for Alt.Reality.

Sometimes the line springs to mind when a particularly egregious example of Alt.Med abuse surfaces. One such of recent vintage comes from Gimpy’s brilliant coverage of the extraordinarily deluded Jeremy Sherr, the homeopathic guru who thinks that homeopathy can cure HIV/AIDS. More that that, Sherr is on a kind of Sacred Mission – I am oddly reminded of the Blues Brothers – to bring the joys of pure-water-plus-hocus-pocus to desperately unfortunate people in Tanzania who are both HIV-positive and in the grip of poverty.

Gimpy has done a tremendous job of exposing Sherr’s messianic delusions and ethical blind-spots – but the “You couldn’t make it up” moment does not stem just from Sherr himself. It also comes from the hordes of homeopaths who have lined up to defend – and heap praise on – Sherr, and from the homeopathic “trade bodies” which have been stunningly silent on what Sherr is up to. Behold the chorus of disciples on, for instance, Gimpy’s threads here and here.

AIDS is a deadly disease. It can be staved off with drug treatments. These antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), particularly the protease inhibitor cocktails, constitute one of the greatest recent achievements of the much maligned (often with considerable justification) ” Big Pharma”. Without ARV treatment, it is essentially inevitable that eventually your immune system will fail and an opportunistic infection will finish you off – as has sadly happened to most “It’s not HIV! ARVs are evil!” activists. With the triple cocktails, or similar ARV regimes, you have a good shot at living for many years. People with a grip on reality have campaigned tirelessly for HIV-positive people in the developing world to have access to ARV drugs at cost. These activists, like the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, are the real heroes.

But apparently, most lay homeopaths are quite convinced you should forego the anti-retrovirals and embrace their particular brand of “spiritual healing”.

You really, truly, couldn’t make it up.

And let’s not forget – Jeremy Sherr is widely regarded within homeopathy as a leader of the “discipline”, one of their key intellectuals and most revered teachers. Which says it all, really. You could hardly want for a more perfect demonstration of just what an extraordinary parallel reality homeopaths inhabit.

Did you call me a cult?

Also in the “You couldn’t make it up” category, but perhaps rather more predictable, the anti-vaccine cultists have resoundingly ignored the recent body-blows for the anti-vaccine cause. The first thing I am thinking of is the US Autism Omnibus decision, where the judges decisively rejected the idea that MMR vaccine could cause autism, and laid out in excruciating detail (excruciating for the anti-vaccine believers, that is) precisely how discredited, half-arsed, and nigh-on fraudulent is the so-called “research” and laughably useless “experts” on which the anti-vaxxers relie.

The second body-blow was the latest tranche of revelations from investigative journalist Brian Deer about Andrew Wakefield’s original work at the Royal Free that triggered the MMR scare. If even a fraction of what Deer alleges is true, then Wakefield stands revealed as a data-fabricator of the worst kind, and everything he has ever said turns irrevocably to dust.

However – none of this seems to have had the slightest effect on the True Believers. You can see this from a mammoth thread over at Kev Leitch’s Left Brain/Right Brain blog. A collection of the usual suspects from anti-vaccine group JABS – John Stone, Isabella Thomas, etc. – are clearly unshaken in their faith. They view the recent events, and the scientific revelations like Prof Steve Bustin’s devastating testimony on the stunning incompetence of Wakefield and O’Leary’s RT-PCR work, as a side issue. They are, predictably, more interested in trying to spread slurs and conspiracy theories about Brian Deer, and nitpicking over obscure legal decisions on what UK expert testimony was or wasn’t made available to the US courts.

If you can face the mega-thread, look particularly for the posts by “brian” (who identifies himself as a medical doctor and a molecular biologist), and see the responses they draw from John Stone and friends. The JABbies, as has been said before, are beyond reason. They are a cult.

Though they are a cult, sadly, that retains the odd friend in the media. Notably, the increasingly-out-of-touch-with-reality Melanie Phillips. Phillips  is still determined that Wakefield was right – though we don’t really know how she would know, given that she doesn’t understand the science – and that it is all a Dark Conspiracy.

Reading her latest post on this I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be almost no commenters apart from the hard-core Wakefield Groupies – John Stone, Clifford G Miller, Isabella Thomas, Seeonaid etc etc. Unsurprisingly, Melanie’s previous comment, a few days earlier, had echoed precisely the line taken by the JABS Mafia over at Left Brain/Right Brain by re-framing the whole thing as an attack on Brian Deer.

Among the dwindling band of normal people reading Melanie’s rant I was particularly struck by this comment from a poster styling himself “Valetinius” (7th comment on this thread):

“This is actually indicative of the new dogmatism that has deprived Melanie Phillips of the independence of mind that once made her a commentator of note. There is a lesson in discourse analysis on all of these recent pieces… …not that here is a journalist with an interesting, novel assessment of a controversial issue, but here is the definitive, conclusive, indisputable truth, sweeping away all contrary evidence and labelling opponents variously as knaves, liars or antisemites. Of all of the controversies [Phillips] has adopted as personal crusades, [MMR] is the most revealing. With infinitely more proof than global warming could ever hope to command, study after study has comprehensively refuted the Wakefield MMR-autism hypothesis, yet Melanie tastelessly maintains her contrarian position. She doesn’t seem to realise how revealing this is and how much damage it has inflicted on her defence of her other favourite causes. I agree with those who lament this personal and professional lapse of judgement. Instead of refreshingly adversarial, she now just looks silly.”

This summarised perfectly why it is that, for the last couple of years, I have been turning off BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze as soon as they announce that Melanie is on the panel. But perhaps it offers a clue as to the reasons for Phillips’ unwavering support of Wakefield, even as the scientific underpinnings of his ideas and his credibility have crumbled.

It is our old Alt.Reality friend the Galileo Gambit – an unshakeable belief that you must be right, precisely because everyone else is telling you that you are wrong.

Alternatively, of course, you could just be wrong.

How DARE you not take me seriously?

Something that comes across strongly in long argumentative threads on Alt.Medicine themes is a sense of just how seriously Alt.Reality folk take themselves. They also have thin skins. This is particularly marked, I have been finding recently, with Chiropractors.

Now, chiropractors are institutionally, as well as individually, thin-skinned – as the BCA vs. Simon Singh libel case, and recent events in New Zealand, show. They also seem to be rather humourless. I started to get this latter idea while reading a recent Economist thread on Alternative Medicine. Here you will find a Dr Robinson – a “Doctor of Chiropractic” (DC), to be precise – defending Alt.Reality and getting a bit huffy when anyone appears not to be taking her as seriously as she takes herself. Rather scarily – from my point of view – it turns out she works for this bit of the World Health Organisation (more about them here).

I casually (or possibly mischievously) posted a link to the Economist thread over at Respectful Insolence, thereby inadvertently triggering another “discussion” about Chiropractic and its relationship (or not) to reality.

The Respectful Insolence thread makes for an interesting demonstration of how many Alt.Reality types see their own professions, including those of their fellow “practitioners” who are at the wackier end of the spectrum:

Chiropractors who advise against vaccination? Just a few bad apples.

Chiropractors who push chiropractic for things that it is demonstrably useless for? Exercising their clinical judgement.

Chiropractors who wrench peoples necks around? There’s no stroke risk, the people who caution that there is, like Edzard Ernst, MUST be liars.

Chiropractors who call themselves “Doctor” and don’t make clear they are not conventional physicians? Well, why not, Chiropractors are fully trained clinicians, with all the expertise to resuscitate you if you keel over. (Seriously, some of them believe this).

Ben Goldacre once wrote somewhere that the most defining characteristic of CAM was its hard-wired inability to critique itself in any meaningful way. Threads like this show you exactly what he meant. And remember, a US “Doctor of Chiropractic” with the DC degree is the absolute top of the training tree in terms of a CAM practitioner, at least with regard to length of training. As Dr (of Chiropractic) Robinson pointed out to me, they do a postgraduate degree taking 4 years to become a DC, just like a conventional US medical degree which takes four postgraduate years.

Having said which, if I rocked up in an American ER with a chest pain, I would not want to see a DC. I would want an MD. And personally I would feel the same about a bad back. If I had back pain, and shooting pains down my leg, I would want a medical doctor to assess me. If I had uncomplicated lower back pain, and wanted spinal manipulation, I would go to a manipulative physiotherapist. A chiropractor might know slightly more background about spinal ailments than the latter, but I would have zero confidence in the clinical judgement of someone who believes that chiropractic spine-bashing is a useful way to treat a small child’s asthma.

[In the interests of balance, it should be said that there ARE some people in chiropractic who would like to make it evidence-based, and who campaign for chiropractic to remove the quasi-religious overtones, fact-free 19th century hocus-pocus, anti-vaccine propaganda, and general nuttiness. However, if recent surveys of what practising UK chiropractors actually believe are to be trusted, these reformers are going to have their work cut out. Needless to say, their ideas have not really caught on in the chiropractic community]

No logic please – we’re intuitively crazy

Last of all, and by far the best from a surrealist point of view, here is an example of Alt.Reality that provokes laughter and “you couldn’t make it up” in equal measure. Andrew Taylor of the “Apathy Sketchpad” blog tells us that he has been banned from the earnestly reality-free Homeopathy4Health blog.

The reason? He has been guilty of dangerous use of logic. Apparently logic is frowned upon when discussing homeopathy. Though I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised.

The blog owner, the homeopath who goes by “Homeopathy for health”, starts it off.  Another old friend of ours then chips in:

————————————————————————

Andrew’s comments are no longer allowed on this blog. This is because he has a tendency to write opinions based on logic and not from experience or facts. He is a programmer by profession.

Comment by homeopathy4health — 7 March 2009 @ 10:45 am

————————————————————————

h4h, that’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written. Am I to assume that only illogical arguments based on experience and facts are allowed?

I had a bad egg this morning, therefore it rained.

Comment by gimpy — 7 March 2009 @ 1:55 pm

—————————————————————————–

You can’t present opinion on logic alone.

Comment by homeopathy4health — 7 March 2009 @ 2:31 pm

——————————————————————————————–

To which there is really no answer, apart from rolling on the floor helpless with despairing laughter.

Or – as they say – “You couldn’t make it up”

Which is, of course, where we came in.

Goodnight. And – as the late, great, Dave Allen might have put it –

“May your Personal Alternate Reality go with you.”

[BPSDB]

Ecco un omaggio per i simpatici e attenti studenti del Liceo Scientifico Leonardo Da Vinci che di Genova oggi hanno preso parte al seminario tenuto dal sottoscritto: “Uno sguardo all’Universo noto e ignoto” – sottotitolo: “Real science vs Cargo cult science”.

La prima parte del seminario ha proprio riguardato alcune riflessioni su cosa sia da considerarsi scienza e su cosa, invece, si spacci come tale, ma si riveli solo pseudo-scienza o, come la chiamava Feynman, Scienza del culto del Cargo.

Abbiamo letto la prima parte del discorso inaugurale tenuto agli studenti del Caltech di Pasadena in occasione dell’apertura dell’Anno Accademico 1974-75 da Richard Feynman, brillante premio Nobel per la Fisica nel 1965.
Il testo completo (8 pagine snelle e che scorrono veloci) è stato aggiunto dal sottoscritto nell’area download di questo blog (colonna di destra), ma potete anche scaricarlo cliccando qui.
Buona lettura!

Andrea Macco

“Ancora oggi mi capita di incontrare gente che ad un certo momento porta la conversazione sugli ufo, sull’astrologia o su qualche forma di misticismo, di coscienza allargata, telepatia, parapsicologia e roba simile. Io da questo ho concluso che non viviamo in un mondo realmente scientico…
[...]
La gente crede, a volte, a cose talmente strane che ho voluto cercare di capire perché. E così quella che è stata definita la mia curiosità per la ricerca mi ha trascinato in mezzo a cumuli di idiozie tali che mi sono spesso trovato senza parole.
[…]
Così parlo di scienze da cargo cult: sono scienze che seguono i precetti e le forme apparenti dell’indagine scientifica ma alle quali, però, manca un elemento essenziale… Si tratta dell’integrità scientifica.  Un principio del pensiero scientifico che corrisponde essenzialmente ad una totale onestà, ad una disponibilità totale.”

Richard Feynman
(da“La Scienza del culto del cargo”)

As buzzwords go, it’s a pearler. Cargo Cult Science incorporates all of the subtleties of the various areas of pseudo-science in three short words, far more effectively (in my opinion) than Voodoo Science or Quackery.

I came across the word last week while reading an article about bad programming practice where a problem was isolates as being “Cargo Cult Programming”. The scenario was one where a developer obviously had an incomplete understanding of the reason why certain things are done and just blindly did the same thing again and again because he heard it was good practice … even though, in the scenario the article analysed, it was probably worst practice.

So where does “Cargo Cult” come from? Cargo Cult is an anthropological term to describe the tribes of Micronesia and other areas of the South Pacific who had a rather strange belief. During World War II, the islands of South Pacific became strategic locations for the Japanese, the Americans and the British Royal Navy based in Australia and New Zealand. In some cases, the isolated tribes of the region had their first encounters with outsiders during the war. They would watch as armies moved in, constructed airfields, and strange cargo arrived from the heavens. Believing that the cargo had been sent by the gods, these tribes believed that simply constructing an airfield would mean that they would get cargo. After building simple “airfields” and not receiving any cargo, they did not discard their assumption but assumed that the airfield wasn’t detailed enough.

Over time, after carefully spying on the airfields that the armies had constructed, the cults began building highly detailed airfields from the available materials and even had control towers with bamboo aerials, a traffic controller sitting behind a desk wearing a “headset”.

When I heard about this years ago, I thought that it was a fallacious rumour, a joke about how “backwards” primitive thinkers are. Only when I heard the term now did I start researching the subject again.

So like the Cargo Cults, Cargo Cult Programmers will be found copying and pasting code almost at random until it seems to work, not actually understanding the underlying principles. Similarly, the Cargo Cult Scientists like homoeopaths, reiki healers, vitamin mega-dose doctors and so on, are all pretending to do genuine science, they have all the authentic equipment, the big words and the white lab coats, but they are only imitating, not grasping the actual essence of scientific research.

The term “Cargo Cult Science” was coined by Richard Feynmann (the other giant name in Quantum Physics) during the Caltech commencement speech in 1974. You can read the speech here and I highly recommend it.

In which Dr Aust gets all Gilbert and Sullivan on celebrity Nutritionistas and their airs

Dr Aust is into rhyming at the moment.

This is in part because the Aust-mobile (a twelve-year old tin box on wheels with the absolute minimum of features) finally gave up the ghost a few weeks back. The clutch started making strange groaning noises, and was diagnosed as terminal, and the gearbox is apparently also on its last legs. As result I have been travelling to work and back each day on our wonderful (note: irony) local public transport system, after a gap of nearly a decade. I now get 40 minutes* each way, daily, to read a book (too much paper-folding to read a broadsheet, the Metro is too brain-numbing to count as a newspaper, can’t face working), or to do some thinking.

(*median value: the range so far is 30-55)

Anyway, one of the more relaxing ways I have found to pass these journeys is to try and think up lyrics to comic (more specifically, parody) songs.

But who to write them about?

Well, recently I was thinking it had been a while since I wrote anything about our friends the Nutritionistas. And then I saw this amusing – if rather depressing – piece about an Old Friend of the BadScience Blogosphere who is something of a National Nutritionista celeb.

The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place when my father, while visiting last weekend, told me that he was once in the chorus for a student production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore.

For those not familiar with HMS Pinafore, Wikipedia notes that one of its underlying themes is

“pok[ing]…fun at… the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority”

G and S were rather good at puncturing pomposity and sending up those with inflated ideas of their eminence and importance. The particular scene that swam into my mind’s eye on this occasion was this one from Act One of H.M.S. Pinafore.

I have attempted a Nutritionist re-write.

Scene: A conference held in the Institute of Optimistic Nutrition.

An audience of worried looking people sit in anticipation. Many are clutching books with a picture of a bronzed and healthy-looking smiling man with short greying hair on the cover.

Enter THE CHORUS stage right. They are dressed as journalists, and carry notebooks, laptops and Blackberrys. Some are Lifestyle journalists, recognisable by their GoreTex bicycle clothing (men) or unfeasibly large handbags (women)

A second chorus of younger people (THE GRADUATES) files on stage left. They are wearing white coats and smart trousers and carrying clipboards and glossy brochures. Their leader is a glamorous blonde (the NUTRITIONAL THERAPIST).

Finally, THE NUTRITIONIST enters, smiling and waving, to applause from the CHORUS OF GRADUATES. He is clad in jeans and a collar-less denim shirt, and looks about 35.

[Note: If the production budget stretches to this, he may be accompanied by a MINOR CELEBRITY, for instance an actress, model, has-been singer or serial footballer dater, The MINOR CELEBRITY does not speak or sing, but should look at THE NUTRITIONIST adoringly].

Music: “Now give three cheers” (sometimes known as “I am the monarch of the sea”)

NUTRIONIST (N): I am the Great Nutritionist

On that my revenues quite insist

To whom packed lecture halls pay tribute

NUTRITIONAL THERAPIST (NT): And so do the graduates of his Institute!

ALL: And so do the graduates of his Institute!

N: I know what’s best for you and me

Vitamins A, B, C, D and E

My supplements are just as good as eating fruit

NT: And so say the graduates of his Institute!

ALL: And so say the graduates of his Institute!

The Graduates of his Institute!

N: When sceptics try to catch me out

To claim the rules of evidence I flout

I’ll just deny I made the statement in dispute

NT: Supported by the graduates of his Institute!

ALL: Supported by the graduates of his Institute!

And also by his clients who think it must be a science Institute!

(music changes to tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “First Lord’s Song”, sometimes known as “When I was a lad”)

The Nutritionist’s Song

N: When I was a lad I took a degree

In experimental psychology

In a library book I found the odd conceit

That schizophrenia is caused by what we eat

ALL: That schizophrenia is caused by what we eat!

N: I seized on this idea so avidly

That I now am a Nutritional Authority

ALL: He seized on this idea so avidly

That he now is a Nutritional Authority!

——————————————————–

(NB Repeats similarly for each following verse)

———————————————————

Finding that my skill was at the writing game

I churned out books and got a shot at fame

I found that people crave Eternal Youth

And pseudoscience makes my Snake Oil sound like truth

I flannelled away so semi-plausibly

That I now am a Nutritional Authority

—————————————————-

My Richard Gere looks and healthy glow

Won me a slot on a breakfast TV show

I plugged antioxidants and vitamin pills

Whilst denouncing the Poisons of the Pharma Shills

I smiled so winningly handsomely

That I now am a Nutritional Authority

——————————————————

To improve education I took a new route

By setting up my very own Institute

And no-one could have been more surprised than me

When it then awarded me a very special degree!

I burnished my CV so meticulously

That I now am a Nutritional Authority

——————————————————

Now I lecture round the country giving more hard sell

To my target audience of the worried well

I listen to their piteous laments

And then I plug my own-brand range of supplements

I’ve played this game so successfully

That I now am a Nutritional Authority

————————————————–

So nutritionists all whoever you may be

If you wish to rise to the top of the tree

The Golden rule is to smile – insist it’s “common sense”

And at all costs have no truck with evidence

Stick to this rule – and charge eye-watering fees

And you too may be Nutritional Authorities

[BPSDB]

In which homeopathy (spelling optional) gets a new theme tune (and it even rhymes).

If I could have had any talent I wanted, I think I would most like to have been able to write witty satirical comic songs, like my musical comic hero Tom Lehrer.

Unfortunately I have only ever been able to be snide in a small and juvenile way, but you make do with what you have.

Today was a quiet day in Dr Aust’s office. Summer has gone – you can tell because it has stopped raining – the conference season is pretty much over, and there are still a couple of weeks until the students return. Anyway, as I sat there at 4.40 pm, wondering if it was early enough to go home, something came drifting unbidden into my head.

First came an old tune, and then the words.

So without more ado I give you:

———————————————————–

The Homeopath’s Song (Super calibrated shaking)

(with apologies to the Sherman Brothers and Mary Poppins)

———————————————-

Super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions

Even though the logic here is frankly quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious

Yes super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions!

————————————–

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay

Think of Sam Hahnemann shaking away

————————————–

Because I learned some chemistry when I was just a lad

Our complementary therapist said I was very bad

But then one day I learned something that saved my aching brain

If you embrace parallel reality this can be your refrain:

—————————————————

Oh – super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions

Even though the logic here is frankly quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough you’ll always sounds precocious

Super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions!

——————————-

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay

Think of Sam Hahnemann shaking away

———————————–

I like to talk and theorize to sound quite erudite

Invoking Quantum Theory in terms most recondite

So when crowned heads and celebrities consult me for their health

I can sell them magic water and relieve them of their wealth

————————————————

Oh – super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions

Even though the logic here is frankly quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough you’ll always sounds precocious

Super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions!

—————————————————————

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay

Think of Sam Hahnemann shaking away

Shout until it makes you hoarse

Disturbance in the Vital Force

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay

Um diddle diddle and shake away

———————————————-

So when the scientists put you down there’s no need to dismay

Just summon up this magic phrase and you’ll have lots to say

But better shake it carefully or it may make you ill

For with too much wristy potentizing ignorance can kill

—————————————————-

Oh – super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions

Even though the logic here is frankly quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious

Yes super calibrated shaking makes the magic potions!

———————————

(repeat ad nauseam)

[BPSDB]

]]> http://laserlike.com/2008/09/02/cargo-cult-management/ Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:53:20 +0000 Mike Speiser http://laserlike.com/2008/09/02/cargo-cult-management/

Cargo Cult (background from Wikipedia).

A cargo cult appears in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. Focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, the cargo cult believes the wealth was intended for them by theirdeities and ancestors.

“The most widely known period of cargo cult activity…was in the years during and after World War II. First, the Japanese arrived with a great deal of unknown equipment, and later, Allied forces also used the islands in the same way. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. Some of it was shared with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war, the airbases were abandoned, and cargo was no longer being dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

Cargo Cult Science.

In his 1974 Caltech commencement address, Richard Feynman compared examples of modern “science” to cargo cults, and called the phenomenon cargo cult science.  As I read the text of Feynman’s address again this weekend, I couldn’t help but to think of the similarities between what he was describing and so much of what I have seen and read in modern business management.

Cargo Cult [business] Management.

Why are most of the meetings you attend so worthless?  Perhaps those in leadership positions are themselves subject to the same thing from their managers and are simply replicating the same behavior?  ”It works for him and he is the CxO, so if I do it I will be CxO someday?”  Why do so many presentations contain so much content yet so little information?  In my experience, professionals are trying to fit the “proven” formula within the company (e.g., executive summary, lots of detailed text and charts to show you how smart you are, and a conclusion).  ”Jack does it that way and he’s successful, right?”  Trust me on this — the formula sucks.  Try telling a story instead.  Why do leaders hold so many all-hands meetings, yet neither inspire anyone nor communicate a byte of new information?  They are likely doing what they think other good managers do, based on some vague association they gleaned from an MBA case study, a business book, or even a story about Jack Welch on the news?  This is almost never the result of a single manager, but more often an organizational cancer which will eventually prove malignant.

Hit the BUSINESS section of your local bookstore for insights into why cargo cult management runs so rampant — it’s hard to find authors that understand the difference between causation and correlation.  Jim Collins’ Built to Last and Good to Great are two of the biggest piles of cargo cult crap out there — oh, and best sellers.  In Good to Great, Collins and his team of “researchers” examined historic stock returns of potentially “great” companies relative to a market index.  The research team took the top historic performers and then narrowed the list down further by looking for only those companies that did much better than their industry peers (e.g., if an entire industry did exceedingly well, the company was dropped).  They compared these “great” companies to companies with lower stock returns which are just “good.”  How did they compare the companies?  By reading news articles and doing interviews and “systematically” coding the results into “strategy, technology, and so forth.”  They then used all of this research to see patterns so that they could tell a story about how any manager could take a company from good to great.  It’s a great story, but would be more appropriately located in the FICTION section of the bookstore. 

What if aerospace engineers employed a similar analytical approach — look at historic data and use induction to find the answers in patterns gleaned from the data?  I’ll bet you that our airplanes would fly about as well as the one in the photo above.  Without the empirical testing (observational) part of the scientific method it’s quite hard to know if what you have is causation or correlation.

Entrepreneurship.

While there are examples of cargo cult entrepreneurship, startups run this way have a dramatically higher probability of running out of money.  Of course, as startups that survive earn the air-cover of a business with momentum they often allow inefficiency and bad management to creep into the system.  Or they were just lucky to begin with.

I believe that the biggest advantage a startup has over a big competitor is intellectual honesty.  Most of the entrepreneurs I know start their own companies or join startups in order to do what they wanted to do at their larger [previous] employers — to do something worthwhile.  Then they finally reach the conclusion that the only way to avoid cargo cult management is to start from the ground up.  This is particularly true of technical professionals who view intellectual honesty as core to their job.  How often do you hear business people poke holes in their own arguments the way engineers do?

Which brings us back to the last line of Feynman’s 1974 address:  

“So I have just one wish for you — the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.”

Well said.

Via The Reference Frame, Luboš Motl: Cargo cult science: a video

Richard Feynman comments colorfully on the Cargo Cult Science of Al Gore and James Hansen, far in advance (1974). As Luboš Motl relates it:

Feynman was trying to explain what’s wrong with various careless, agenda-driven, biased, preconceived mental frameworks that try to pretend that they are scientific but they don’t honestly eliminate falsified hypotheses according to the results of objective tests.

The falsified hypotheses of Al Gore and James Hansen are indeed resilient. On the surface, it’s not a scientific world, Richard; nor in the short term. We must admit to living in a world sullied by eruptions of cargo cult science, precisely as described in the video below. In the end, real science will inevitably triumph. Al Gore and James Hansen will sooner, or later eschew their cargo cult science, just as the aborigines of Australia have done.

Read “Cargo Cult Science” by Richard Feynman, thanks to The Reference Frame.

Rather depressingly, the anti-vaccinationists, those Never-say-die Energizer Bunny types of the Alt Reality fraternity, are back for another round.

As a lot of Bad Science-aware people will already know, American surgeon-blogger Orac, of Respectful Insolence blog fame – and bete noire of the vaccines-cause-autism lobby – has been writing about the imminent UK arrival (well, next week) or American writer and darling of the anti-MMR vaccine crew, David Kirby. It turns out that Kirby is not just doing some book–signings and the odd lecture; he is also down to give a briefing in the Houses of Parliament, no less. To quote Orac:

“My British readers, say it ain’t so! Hot on the heels of learning that, bankrolled by antivaccinationists, David Kirby is planning a trip to the U.K. in early June, I find out something even more disturbing.”

Orac then reproduces the following press release:

From: “Clifford G. Miller”

May 23, 2008 — CONTACT: David Kirby – dkirby@nyc.rr.com

BESTSELLING AMERICAN AUTHOR
DAVID KIRBY TO SPEAK AT HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

Briefing by Journalist Who Covers Vaccine-Autism Debate is Sponsored
By Lord Robin Granville Hodgson, Baron Hodgson of Shropshire

U.S. Journalist David Kirby, author of the award winning book “Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic – A Medical Controversy,” will give a special briefing on this debate at the Houses of Parliament in London, on Wednesday, 4 June.

Mr. Kirby will speak about recent legal, political and scientific developments in the United States in the ongoing vaccine-autism controversy. The briefing is open to Peers in the House of Lords, Members of Parliament, their Staff, members of the Media, and Invited Guests.

The briefing will take place on Wednesday, 4 June at 3:30PM at the Houses of Parliament, Palace of Westminster, Committee Room 4. It is being sponsored by His Lordship Robin Hodgson, Baron Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, Shropshire.

In addition to his Parliament briefing, Mr. Kirby will also give a free public lecture on Wednesday 4th June, 6:30-10PM at Regent Hall, 275 Oxford Street, London.

Hmm. A number of things spring to mind.

First, Kirby’s book may be “award-winning”, but it has very definitely not been winning science awards. Orac has written scathingly about David Kirby’s (mis) understanding and (mis) use of scientific evidence.

Second, Kirby is frequently billed in articles or press releases as a “former New York Times contributor”. This is strictly factually correct as written, but conceals the fact that Kirby was not a science or health correspondent for the venerable NYT. He was actually a travel writer.

A more specific question for us UK geeks would seem to be how Lord (Robin) Hodgson, the peer sponsoring the event and a real Tory grandee, is connected to David Kirby. Hodgson has no track record on health issues, as his key Shadow “portfolios” for the Conservative Party in the Lords have been Trade and Home Affairs.

Where is the noble Lord coming from?

I had written a long discussion on this, but as I was about to post it I saw that noted autism blogger Mike Stanton had beaten me to it over on his excellent Action for Autism blog. So rather than repeat what he has said, please pop over there and read his discussion of Lord Hodgson’s views on vaccines, as expressed in a House of Lords debate back in Feb 2003.

To cut to the chase, Hodgson has a son diagnosed with mild Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Like many parents with kids with ADHD or autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), he has felt dissatisfied with the mainstream treatments on offer and become interested in alternative therapies. However, he has also seemingly bought some of the anti-vaccine lobby line:

“It is unlikely that there is any one single cause [of ADHD]. Genetics and heredity will probably be found to play a significant part. But what other factors are in play? One matter looks increasingly likely to be a significant contributory cause: the requirement in this country that every baby receives three injections in the first 16 weeks of life as immunisation against diphtheria, tetanus and whole cell pertussis—whooping cough, to laymen—(DTwP). As I understand it, each standard dose of the vaccine used in the UK contains 50 micrograms of a substance called thimerosal. Each dose of thimerosal contains 25 micrograms of ethylmercury. Mercury is a highly toxic substance. That means that, by the 16th week of life, every baby in this country, with an inevitably fragile immune and nervous system, has been injected with 75 micrograms of ethylmercury…”

This would explain the Hodgson – Clifford G Miller – David Kirby connection: as even a cursory squint at Clifford G Miller’s website will show, he is a long-time anti-vaccine campaigner, and serial haunter of the BMJ electronic comments threads on the topic.

But… the vaccines don’t have mercury in any more

The problem for Kirby and other thimerosal aficionados – including British psychologist and author Lisa Blakemore Brown, who Hodgson also mentioned in his speech, and who seems to have played a part in Kirby’s upcoming UK tour – is that the thimerosal theory is on its last legs. This is mainly because even once thimerosal was removed from the vaccines – which happened in September 2004 in the UK – ASD diagnosis rates have not dropped. Hence, as Orac has again noted, the move to blaming ill-defined ”Toxins”.

[PS - the MMR vaccine, contrary to the urban legends, never contained thimerosal. If you want to read more about thimerosal there is an old (2003) NHS factsheet here (NB - pdf). And the lack of effect of removing thimerosal from infant vaccines on autism rates has been shown by large studies in Denmark, Canada and the USA, all of which stopped using thimerosal earlier than the UK did.]

Given these facts, it is hard to disagree with Orac’s view that it isn’t mercury, or toxins that really matter – for these people ”It’s All About the Vaccines”

And why now?

A further interesting question is: what has re-activated Lord Hodgson’s interest now?

Since UK politicians are infinitely more sensitive to what is going on in politics – including US politics – than to what is going on in science, one wonders if this isn’t in some way a knock-on effect of the rather ambiguous remarks some of the US Presidential candidates have been making about an autism “epidemic” (see Orac posts passim, for instance here). Indeed, the press release that accompanies David Kirby’s visit specifically makes this connection in a later section.

Orac has detailed how all the US presidential candidates, plus ex-President Bill Clinton, have been making depressingly ambiguous – not to mention scientifically inaccurate, and even disturbingly stupid – statements about autism and its possible causes. Many bloggers think the candidates should sack their science advisers, although perhaps we should sit tight and just put it down to electioneering politicians’ desire not to put off a single potential voter, no matter what way-out things the voter might believe.

However, let’s hope whichever of the US candidates does gets elected in November can find proper science advisers once in office, rather than being swayed by celebrity nitwits like Jenny “I read it on Google” McCarthy. There should be a few folk round the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) that can direct them to suitable people.

And closer to home, let’s hope Lords and MPs give David Kirby’s blusterings the wide berth they deserve. Or perhaps even better, let’s hope some of the science and medicine-literate Lords and MPs can be persuaded to go along and nail Kirby with some hard questions about the facts, as opposed to his conspiracy theories and scaremongering. If you would like to give your MP a prod, you can contact them via writetothem.com, or look up the email address of any Lords you can think of with medical or scientific know-how here.

I have little doubt that anti-vaccine types are writing to their MPs as you read this, urging them to give an ear to Kirby’s anti-vaccine PR. So feel free to give your elected and non-elected representatives a more scientific steer.

Stop press: Mike Stanton has just added a second post about Lord Hodgson’s comments on thimerosal and vaccination. Mike’s take is that Hodgson should be careful who he takes scientific advice from, as someone has been pointing him to some dire “anti-vaccine fringe science”, including a couple of notoriously awful papers – read the post for more. The dangers of self-styled experts and cargo-cult science are, of course, topics familiar to readers here.

Follow-up: To hear an eye-witness account of what a damp squib it turned out to be (i.e. no-one at the lecture but the usual mercury /vaccines conspiracy crazies, and barely anyone at all at the House of Lords), click here and follow the links.

I recently discovered this webpage, which makes for very interesting reading.

I always wondered what B.L. Cohen would have to say about Caldicott’s claims.

The more objective, informed people are exposed to Caldicott’s work – the more they’re all saying exactly the same things.

Mark the dates – Caldicott and her friends have been making the same arguments, the exact same hyperbole, for the last ten years.

We’ve made the same arguments against it, and we’ve seen the same lack of sensible response. All the while – the inevitable meltdowns, the epidemics of cancer and death, the four horsemen of the nuclear powered apocalypse have been on our door step for the last 10 years…

…Where are they?

Were Strontium-90, Americium, Caesium-137 and so forth really released in the Three Mile Island accident? Well, the Kemeny commission report says nothing of the sort, but if Caldicott and her colleagues are so damned sure, then go to Pennsylvania with a shovel, take the soil, and perform gamma-ray spectroscopy, and publish the empirical data in their books. If I was in the United States, I’d be doing just that, and posting the data for the world to study and reproduce.

That’s how we find out; with this thing we call the Scientific Method. With this tool, we vanquish the impossible, as Caldicott’s friend Carl Sagan once said.

On that note: I have the deepest respect and admiration for the late Carl Sagan. Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it’s madness, and everyone has an excuse.

Carl had, as many of us have, great respect for Caldicott’s tireless work on nuclear weapons policy, nonproliferation and disarmament. But would he tolerate this perversion of science? This complete disregard for the tools and philosophies of science, in favour of an agenda of political rhetoric? What would he have to say to Dr. Caldicott, today?