Watch out, Caplin’s about

July 31st, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in alternative medicine, bad science, celebs, homeopathy, nutritionists, religion | 3 Comments »

Watch out, Caplin’s about

Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 31, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· Browsing through the August edition of Marie Claire, looking for preposterous cosmetics ads I hasten to add (stand by for next week), what could be more delightful for the noble bad-science spotter than to come across a photo story about Cherie Blair, also featuring her great friend and aide, New Ager Carole Caplin. Cherie seems much more relaxed around Caplin, Marie Claire reports, and “a homeopathic tincture stands on the table”. “Miss Caplin is back, looming over her to touch up her lipstick,” the journalist writes. Run, Cherie, run!

· It’s possible you don’t know just how bad science Caplin’s world is. Here is a brief tour. When Cherie was suffering with swollen ankles, Caplin introduced her to “Jack Temple, Homeopathic Dowser Healer”, as his website says. Here is Jack on cramp: “For years many people have suffered with cramp. By dowsing, I discovered that this is due to the fact that the body is not absorbing the element ‘scandium’ which is linked to and controls the absorption of magnesium phosphate.” And on general health complaints: “Based on my expertise in dowsing _ I noted that many of my patients were suffering from severe deficiencies of carbon in their systems. The ease in which people these days suffer hairline fractures and broken bones is glaringly apparent to the eyes that are trained to see.”

· Being a devout Catholic, Cherie might want to bear in mind the Vatican’s “Christian Reflection on the New Age” document released a few months ago. At the time, Cardinal Poupard said you’d be better off believing in “encounters with aliens” than New Age “weak thinking”. And the Vatican should know: they’ve got a committee of scientists retained to make certain that miracles are inexplicable by modern science before they make you a saint.

· Caplin also once worked for the 5,000-strong cult Exegesis, who were accused of brainwashing, and who recruited people by saying that its therapy methods could solve personal problems. David Mellor, then a Home Office minister, condemned the organisation as “puerile, dangerous and profoundly wrong” and it was investigated by the police (although no charges were ever brought). Its leader was a Rolls Royce driving businessman, the son of a meat salesman from Essex who changed his name from Robert Fuller to Robert D’Aubigny.

Hollywood science

July 24th, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, celebs, very basic science | 4 Comments »

Hollywood science

Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 24, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· It is possible to be too rational. So there I was, having a quiet hungover moment with a friend at the weekend, watching Honey I Shrunk The Kids with his daughter, when suddenly he could take it no more. “Surely if pressure is proportional to force divided by surface area, and the area of their feet is proportional to the square of their dimensions, then shrinking a human by a factor of 100 will increase the pressure per square inch exerted by their feet by a factor of 10,000.” Milly, having clearly dealt with similar issues on many previous occasions, didn’t even bother to look up from the screen. “From 2 psi (per sq inch) to 20,000 psi, sufficient to break concrete,” continued her father, triumphantly. “They get lighter too, dad,” she mumbled. “Well even if that’s true, their surface area to volume ratio has increased so much that they should be freezing to death. And their legs would snap, since the strength of a structure is also proportional to the cross sectional area.”

· Now, the international superweb being what it is, you are never alone, no matter how deviant you are. And so I am proud to be able to present you with our big find of the weekend, the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics Pages (www. intuitor.com/moviephysics/). It’s their indignation that makes it such good fun. For example, from their review of Star Wars: “In the great battle scene, the bad guys drive up in giant tanks and attempt to blast the good guys who are protected by their force field. This force field is transparent to visible light but nevertheless repels blasts of visible laser beams.” And they reserve particular derision for spaceships exploding in space (where there is no air, and no one can hear you scream) and the fact that you cannot only see it, but also hear it, with the sound waves miraculously arriving not just through a vacuum but at the same time as the light.

· But it gets worse. Proper little Rottweilers, these physicists, and they follow through on the maths. People flying backwards when hit by bullets? Not when the velocity of the victim will be equal to the velocity of the bullet multiplied by the ratio of the mass of the bullet to the mass of the victim – 0.4 miles an hour, they reckon. Copper-plated bullets flashing off steel? They snort with laughter. And 1,000 rounds a minute from a gun, for three minutes, works out at 45kg of metal. So where are the henchmen with the wheelbarrows full of ammunition? And now ask yourself, will the world be a better place when we are in charge? Of course it will be.

The truth about oxygen

July 17th, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in alternative medicine, bad science, ions, mail, oxygen | 6 Comments »

The truth about oxygen

Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· There’s nothing more amusing than a battle for truth between competing schools of New Age bunkum. See how the Daily Mail gushed over the Elanra ioniser from Equilibra. It is, apparently, “the first ioniser that creates negative ions small enough to be inhaled”. So, smaller than your mouth then. Apparently it could be “a huge breakthrough in treating a range of illnesses from asthma and depression to migraine, insomnia and sinusitis”. Not content with its share of the gullible punter market, Equilibra undermines its competitors, claiming on its website to have invented “the world’s only patented technology for reproducing ions of oxygen that are small enough to be ingested”. And that: “Other ion generators can claim to produce negative ions, but they are NOT small or ingestible, and cannot enter your body.” Helpfully Equilibra provides a table of the other ionisers on the market. Snortingly we laugh with it at the large negative oxygen ions of its competitors.

· I looked up the claims on Medline, home of all medical papers. But I found no mention of “small negative ions”, nor does Equilibra give any real explanation, though a nice diagram explains they move at 1.9 cm2/Vs in a 1 V/cm electrical field. “Research conducted at La Trobe University in Australia demonstrated that these ions cause an increase in the body’s production of immunoglobulin A, implicated in enhancing the human immune system,” says Equilibra. I couldn’t find this on Medline or La Trobe’s site either. Bear in mind an Elanra costs £400. Equilibra’s other products include what seem to be laminated playing cards with nice patterns on, or Universal Harmonisers should I say, which for £40 will increase the levels of biophotons in your water. Special photographs with wavy lines on show how they can protect you from the radiowaves generated by your mobile phone. The Daily Mail didn’t cover those, though “all our energy products have been scientifically tested and proven to increase the biophoton levels in water which when consumed enhances the ATP response in the body and therefore they work very effectively”. Biophoton is an obscure phrase for the light emitted by living cells. God knows how they get into water.

· I was surprised not to find a disclaimer on the site, though Equilibra does suggest: “If you do not wish to work through your fears and energy blockages, and clear and balance your energy fields, do not order the energy products for use upon the body.”

At last, astrology

July 10th, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, celebs, mail, mirror, nutritionists | No Comments »

At last, astrology

Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 10, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· Not content with dragging our morality back to the Victorian era, the Daily Mail continues its campaign to to reduce us all to medieval superstition. No half-truths about the MMR jab, diet fads or air ionisers this week though, or rather, no more than normal. But they do publish an article by the author and alleged intellectual Jeanette Winterson about the amazing prescience of her own personal psychic astrologer. Now I can be a sceptical waverer of the “well I can see how the season of birth and winter vegetables in the womb might give you a certain temperament” school with the best of them. But please: when your psychic astrologer tells you to beware of triangular relationships and you’ve written at least two novels about them, the only mystery is the extent of your own credulity. Winterson says she bought a house – sight unseen! – at the behest of her astrologer. Or perhaps I’m being mean. No, hang on. “As a Virgo with a Gemini Moon, Mercury was apparently my ‘double ruler’,” writes Winterson. “Could it be coincidence that I had often used the word ‘mercurial’ to describe a character trait that is both my greatest weakness and my greatest strength?”

· The Mirror’s gossip columnists were delighted to spot Stephen Hawking at Stringfellows lapdancing club in London, where he was treated to dances by 19-year-old called “Tiger”. Perhaps she reminded him of his other Tiger, the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder built to record cosmic rays at the McDonnell Centre for the Space Sciences. I’ll stop now.

· And finally, I am delighted to see the Consumers for Health Choice movement is still going great guns with its campaign against the EU’s sensible plans to regulate and label potentially dangerous dietary supplements and herbal remedies. This in the same week that high-dose zinc supplements (as doled out by alternative practitioners for “physical and mental development, protection and healing”) were shown to more than double men’s risk of prostate cancer. You might be interested to know that the managing director of Holland and Barrett, Barry Vickers, is one of the directors of CHC. Anyway, if you are still keen on high doses of zinc, Auravita (www.auravita.com) will happily sell you 200mg zinc sulphate tablets at £5.99 for 90. But remember – that’s double the dose associated with prostate cancer. Just because it’s alternative doesn’t mean that it won’t kill you.

Setting up camp in the healing field

July 3rd, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, brain gym, dna, very basic science, water | 3 Comments »

Setting up camp in the healing field

Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 3, 2003
The Guardian

· Doing a New Age Bad Science Glastonbury Special is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Which is not to say I’ve had a change of heart: within five minutes of entering the Healing Field last weekend, I was handed a copy of the “Avalon Rising” leaflet. Pay close attention: “Celtic in your DNA? Cutting edge information has established the possibility that a substrand in our DNA connects us through the energy grid to one of 12 sacred sites, stargates or electromagnetic vortexes to enable the vibrational rate of Mother Earth to be energetically stabilised. Glastonbury is one such site. Its guardians are the time travelling grail lines of Celtic/Gaelic Britain: you!” Pseudoscientists everywhere, please note how easy it is to come across like a white hippy racial supremacist when you splash around with big words you don’t understand.

· Brain Gym has struck a chord with many of you since we covered it last month. You might remember the jargon-heavy “educational kinesiologists” from California, with no peer-reviewed data to back up their grand claims for improving academic performance, who were being employed at considerable expense by UK local education authorities. I was moaning that teachers should be teaching our children how to spot this kind of pseudoscience, rather than peddling it. So I was heartened to receive frontline reports from science teachers of the fun they have teasing Brain Gym tutors visiting their schools.

· One was told that after watching telly your brain goes to sleep for eight hours: “Very precise about that, she was. But don’t worry, as long as you sit with your ankles crossed and make a funny shape with your hands this will ‘protect you from the electro-magnetic rays’. She was even kind enough to post me the handouts detailing the Pace [positive-active-clear-energetic] which ‘increases and balances electrical energy to the neocortex _ allowing reason rather than reaction (choice)’ and ‘increases polarity across cell membranes for more efficient thought processing’,” our source reports. My favourite exercise is Brain Buttons: “While holding the navel area with one hand, rub with the thumb and finger of other on hollow areas just below the collar bone on each side of the sternum.” Why? Because, you heartless cynics, “buttons above carotid artery supply fresh oxygenated blood to brain, helps lung/brain function … and brings attention to gravitational centre of body.”