Comments on: A new ethics of bullshit

By: diudiu

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By: richard_p_auckland

richard_p_auckland — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:06:40 +0000

Our student radio station here in Auckland has a slot for a naturopath. I was quite impressed that when someone called in with kidney pains, she told them to go and see their GP to get it checked.

I guess if you had a big banner with “Get your ineffective pills for self-limiting conditions here” it would spoil the placebo effect?

By: Barnacle Bill

Barnacle Bill — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:38:38 +0000

Mmm, perhaps you should also have a go at the religious brigade and the ethics of using intercessionary prayer for healing. One quack is as good as another, and I make no distinctions.

By: b33k34

b33k34 — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:18:02 +0000

I’m still feeling really rough after Glasto. I definitely blame the electrosensitivity.

I really like Yoga and did 3 hours over the weekend in the Green Fields. I basically look at it as cheap physiotherapy that you actually spend an hour doing rather than lying that you have done – most of the postures are very similar to those that physios give you. The spiritual/meditation element doesn’t do much for me but it’s actually really nice lying quietly focusing on thinking about nothing for 10 minutes.

On the VIP area Charlie Brooker’s piece in the Grauniad was interesting – he reckoned the only advantage was that it gave you a shortcut between the two main stages. Given that the stages are low down, on the flat, and the area in front of both was under about 4″ of mud slurry I can’t imagine it was one of the better places to be camped.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:26:41 +0000

Could they use the stage lights to provide the “solar” power?

By: roymondo

roymondo — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:15:29 +0000

Ben, why don’t you get yourself booked to speak in the Green Field next year? So long as you didn’t clash with Chas ‘n’ Dave you’d probably have quite a large attendance.

By: physics_geek

physics_geek — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:18:15 +0000

I was camped near The Park… Great fun, but very muddy, and annoyingly full of woo. I actually wondered what you would think of the healing fields Ben; an entire field of CAM therapies without a single representative in favour of evidence-based medicine.

I was personally most irritated by the Sustainable Futures field. The thing was perfectly summed up by a guy sharpening a farming tool using man-power; he was cycling a mountain bike (mass-produced), linked to turn a whetstone (industrially produced) to sharpen a tool that he certainly didn’t make by hand. Do Greenpeace et. al. not see the problem with that?

At the Avalon stage, they were planning on using solar power to run the computer controlling the lights (the lights themselves certainly needed more than solar power), but I believe they abandoned the idea due to the weather. Ah, the irony.

I’d like to see a Rational Field at Glasto next year; full of stands showing the wonders of vaccination, flushing toilets and nuclear power.

By: Beermonkey

Beermonkey — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:31:33 +0000

I was camped out under the power lines up by the farm, and my electrosensitivity’s really giving me gyp. Still, I’m not sure if it was the high tension wires or all the ley-lines leading to the stone circle, which has been venerated by generations of druids since they built it in oh, 1970-something.

By: ayupmeduck

ayupmeduck — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:26:41 +0000

@inicholson: Are you doubting my knowledge of probabilities?!? If you want further proof, just look at todays Dilbert:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert21222030070625.gif

I rest my case.

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:19:07 +0000

i’m totally touched that anyone should think i was in any posh bit of glasto, i was camped in the green fields with my mates like i have been every year for at least the past 15. in some respects i first started writing the column because of getting into arguments with hippies up trees at newbury bypass protest etc, and every now and then i’d think: hey, i wonder, if i ever meet someone who actually knows about transport policy and the arms trade, whether it might turn out that i’m as ignorant about those things as my mates are about CAM. luckily it turned out i was right about everything. phew.

By: Dr* T

Dr* T — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:19:24 +0000

Just back from Glast. Mud bath. But was still fantastic.

No doubt Ben was in some posh corporate suite somewhere…..

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:36:06 +0000

Drugs? At Glastonbury?

By: Dubby

Dubby — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:36:04 +0000

I can’t believe that Aupmeduck (sorry I can’t be bothered to check the spelling! Anyway he sounds Yorkshire so I don’t know why a good Lancashire boy should read him anyway!)hasn’t deliberately messed up his stats.

Weather, the river card, the roulette wheel have one thing in common.

They don’t have a memory!!

(No real offence intended.)

Dubby.

By: Seany

Seany — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:02:59 +0000

“I want to know if Ben paid for his tickets like hoi polloi or if he used his â€˜media personalityâ€™ credentials to sponge off the sponsors?”

Nah, he’s in the pay of big pharma so he’s gone as the guest of a drug rep.

By: BSM

BSM — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:55:39 +0000

When I qualified (as a vet) I was reminded that sometimes you need to bullshit the clients in order to retain their confidence, but what you must never do is bullshit yourself.

The problem wth most woos is that they bullshit themselves to the severe detriment of the public understanding of science and the health of their patients/victims.

By: anita

anita — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:48:44 +0000

I think, the thing is that the holistic medicin has to recognize it own mistakes, otherwise, Why a person would like to take pills that no-one knows?? what does it contein??
I mean, if a patient would feel ok, content by his/her doctor, he/she wonÂ´t search for others therapys.
The question is, why a person goes to an alternative therapy?
The answer, in my opinion is around the physician-patient relationship. ItÂ´s no strong enough, so the patient goes to another person who listen him/her.

Ok, sorry about my english (iÂ´m argentinian).

By: Andrew Clegg

Andrew Clegg — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:52:35 +0000

“A new ethics of bullshit” — a headline that one could only come up with, surely, while sitting in a soggy field surrounded by floating turds.

Andrew.

… no I don’t mean the woos, but still…

By: stever

stever — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 10:26:57 +0000

just pragmatic zooloo.

By: inicholson

inicholson — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:48:29 +0000

ayupmeduck said:
“Itâ€™s good to hear itâ€™s a mud-bath on my year off, that means that theres statistically a much higher chance of it being sunny for me next year.”

Ben, I think you need to write another piece on statistics!

By: woodchopper

woodchopper — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 08:56:05 +0000

I have some sympathy for th idea. Everyone needs a hobby, and if people’s idea of entertainment is to indulge in woo then thats their choice.

However, the problem is if people are offering medical treatment and you want it to be beased on informed consent. To do that the ‘woodoctor’ will have to tell the patient that there isn’t any sound evidence for the treatment. The upside is that he can tell the patient that there are no side effects, becasuse the treatment has no physical effect on the human body.

But would any woodoctor be willing to do that? I think that that level of honesty would cause a lot of them to be put out of business.

The same goes for psychics etc. If they had to tell people that numerous studies had shown that they had no ability to contact the dead, would anyone visit them?