For once some encouraging news from the UK education front: “Science is undergoing a dramatic resurgence in secondary schools” as the Telegraph reported. In a period when pupils are generally going for the “sexy” non-sciences, this is indeed good news. And the numbers are quite impressive too:

According to data for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, almost 130,000 teenagers studied GCSE biology this year – an increase of more than 28 per cent.

Entries in chemistry and physics soared by more 32 per cent – to around 122,000 and 120,500 respectively

The only thing the article doesn’t mention, is the possible reasons for this surprising change of heart.

Thirty seconds of free falling were probably enough to justify the high price of tandem skydiving! The moment you leave the aircraft the brain gets confused, heart goes berzerk, senses absorb everything. Unique experience!



Going up! The guy on the very left was my trainer for the day.



…and coming down!

[Yeah yeah I know, next time I will have professional video arranged for...]

This is the beauty of xkcd, which last week produced one of the best (if not the best) geeky jokes I have ever seen:



No wait, screw the “if not” part. I put forth here a motion to accept this as the best geek joke ever!

I am waiting for challenges and ideas!

The Guardian, has an online column called “Comment is Free” where The Guardian, The Observer, and about 600 writers contribute with posts on religion, current affairs, politics, science, and health. Unavoidably, along with thought provoking “comments” you also get “bullshit” -as Penn and Teller would so vividly say.

Rachel Roberts is the latest one I am aware of^*, that produced such bullshit. In her “I don’t know how, but homeopathy really does work“ article, Rachel managed to reuse once more all the crappy logic apparently inherent to her fellow magic-medicine proponents.

Rachel claims that scientific research confirms the efficacy of homeopathy, and the controversy that really remains is how exactly it works. “There has been much propaganda and misinformation circulated [in regards to homeopathy]” she, ironically, claims. Of course that is true, but Rachel is unfortunately one of those “circulators”.

She cites 5 major systematic reviews that (in a ratio of 4 positive to 1 negative) confirm homeopathy. Of interest, she seems not to have read or evaluated any of the systematic reviews she cites. Instead, her statements imply that she merely parrots the misrepresentations of other homeopath believers. Here is Rachel’s erroneous and misleading statement:

Five major systematic reviews have also been carried out to analyse the balance of evidence from RCTs of homeopathy – four were positive (Kleijnen, J, et al; Linde, K, et al; Linde, K, et al; Cucherat, M, et al) and one was negative (Shang, A et al). It’s usual to get mixed results when you look at a wide range of research results on one subject, and if these results were from trials measuring the efficacy of “normal” conventional drugs, ratios of 63:11 and 4:1 in favour of a treatment working would be considered pretty persuasive.

Disregarding the fact that she has omitted some negative meta-analyses and systematic reviews, her statement is simply wrong. I have already discussed in great detail how Boiron, the single biggest manufacturer of homeopathic remedies, and a multi-million dollar company, has misrepresented the evidence before. So I will not go in detail here -read that article and figure out yourself. Briefly though^**:

• Kleijnen’s[1] is the oldest one, and concludes that while “at the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias“. So not “positive” as Rachel would like us to believe. Incoclusive as the authors clearly state.
  
  
• The two by Linde et al. are the best for showing how true scientists should work. Linde did his first meta-analysis in 1997[2], finding that homeopathy might work better than placebo, but with a qualificiation that his team “found insufficient evidence from these studies that homoeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition.” Again, incoclusive at the authors’ word.
  
  What is interesting though, is that Linde went on to test any possible confouding or external factors affecting his strange results (strange in that no scientific basis exists for homeopathy to work). First he re-analysed 32 trials that met his criteria[3], concluding again that homeopathy might work better than placebo, but “the evidence, however, is not convincing because of methodological shortcomings and inconsistencies“.
  
  What’s more, Linde went on to measure the impact of the methodological quality on the studies, and found that high quality trials tend to yield negative results and vice-versa[4], further adding that:

  the evidence of bias weakens the findings of our original meta-analysis, … It seems, therefore, likely that our meta-analysis [the 1997 one] at least overestimated the effects of homeopathic treatments

  This is important on so many levels. First, it shows how scientists should be willing to revise their conclusions in the light of new evidence. Second, not only does this review render the first one (1997) obsolete, it also provides evidence that good trials are likely to show homeopathy to be what it is: bollocks.
  
  Note that this last quote and conclusion, is from the second Linde paper that Rachel cites as positivie in her article!! Does it seem like she has read any of these?
  
  And just to show the big picture, here is Linde’s comment in regards to the “only” positive review cited by Rachel, that of Shang et al [5](after congratulating Shang for their work and conclusions):

  Our 1997 meta-analysis has unfortunately been misused by homoeopaths as evidence that their therapy is proven

  I believe this says it all…
  
  
• Cucherat’s review[6] conclusion was that “There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies“. Again, Rachel cites this as positive!
  
  
• Of course even Rachel acknowledges Shang’s [5] damning conclusion:

  Biases are present in placebo-controlled trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine. When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.

Even disregarding other negative meta-analyses and systematic reviews (like Ernst’s[7] that concluded that “the best clinical evidence for homeopathy available to date does not warrant positive recommendations for its use in clinical practice“) the results are: 2 incoclusive (Kleijnen, Cucherat), 1 obsolete (Linde’s 1997), 1 slightly negative (Linde’s latest one), and 1 definitily negative (Shang’s). Further, Cucherat’s (among others) points strongly to high quality trials yielding negative results.

So, please, Rachel, please explain to us, please, how did you, please, reach these completely ridiculous conclusions, please??? Is *anything* of what you say in that article correct? Did you even read the reviews you cite as positive??

But no reason to care. After all, bullshit is free in the internets…

---
Footnotes:

1. * Hat tip to Elina for this [↩]
2. ** Yes, I am partly repeating myself in this post. But I believe that re-citing the evidence base, and emphasizing again how the homeopaths misrepresent this evidence is an important step towards fighting scientific distortion. [↩]

---
References:

1. J Kleijnen, P Knipschild and G ter Riet, Clinical trials of homoeopathy, BMJ 302 (1991), pp. 316–323 [↩]
2. K Linde, N Clausius and G Ramirez, Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials, Lancet 350 (1997), pp. 834–843 [↩]
3. K Linde and D Melchart, Randomized controlled trials of individualized homeopathy: a state-of-the-art review, J Alter Complement Med 4 (1998), pp. 371–388 [↩]
4. K Linde, M Scholz, G Ramirez and N Clausius, Impact of study quality on outcome in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy, J Clin Epidemiol 52 (1999), pp. 631–636 [↩]
5. A Shang, K Huwiler-Müntener and L Nartey et al., Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy, Lancet 366 (2005), pp. 726–732 [↩] [↩]
6. M Cucherat, MC Haugh, M Gooch and JP Boissel, Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy: a meta-analysis of clinical trials, Eur J Clin Pharmacol 56 (2000), pp. 27–33 [↩]
7. E Ernst, A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy, Br J Clin Pharmacol 54 (2002), pp. 577–582 [↩]

Last night I was watching a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek, on the question: “What best explains reality: theism or atheism?“. I could not help but notice that the same arguments were presented yet again by some religious apologist. Nevertheless, some of them I found interesting not in their argumentative prowess, but in that while they seem intuitively wrong, sometimes I am hard pressed to express my opinion on the subject. Therefore, I am writing this post mostly to document my thoughts, and hope to generate some discussion or provoke some thinking in my numerous (three to be precise) audience.

In the debate, Hitchens comprehensively dismissed Turek’s vacuous “arguments” with his usual ease, sarcasm, and lots of irony. Still, I feel I need to stand to Turek’s first “argument”, just to show how fallacious his thinking is.

He (Turek) starts by mentioning that even the laws of physics now provide evidence for the existence of a deity, a creator that has created the universe with such precision that has made life possible. Turek mentions that he is going to use the law of causality to “prove” that some sort of creator must have created the Universe because there can be no effect (i.e. Universe comes in existence) without a cause (put your favorite deity here).

Of course, Turek destroys his own argument a little bit later, without even realizing his magnificently fallacious thinking. He says that everything as we know it, space, time, the laws of nature, came into existence in the Big Bang, when the Universe was created. In which case I ask, how can you use a natural law (that of causality) which is fully embedded in the created Universe, to “prove” that a cause must have been in place for that event to happen?

In other words, you are saying: “the law of causality doesn’t exist outside of the Universe, but regardless, it proves that the creation of the Universe must have a cause, because the law of causality says so“. If this is not a magnificent combination of circular logic (religions’ all-time favorite) and fallacious reasoning, I don’t know what is…

Wake up Turek, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have the law of causality explaining the creation of the law of causality!

Moving on, but pretty much on the same subject. Turek, building on the “natural laws were created at the Big Bang” mantra (which might be true, but no one knows for sure) claims that for that reason, and because a creator is needed (an assumption that is dubious on its own), then that creator must by definition be a supernatural being.

However, Turek uses a form of equivocation here, by meddling with the meanings of natural and supernatural. Yes, natural laws for *this* universe were created in its beginning, in the Big Bang. But there is nothing to say that some other form of “nature” existed before, out of which our Universe was created. Anything claimed as “supernatural” in this context, doesn’t necessarily have to include magical beings such as Gods of any sorts, but merely something that may abide to different laws than our own Universe’s. Laws that in any sense would be “natural” in their own context.

For example, if we assume that other Universes do exist, then it is entirely possible that the “natural” laws in those Universes are different than our own’s. Nevertheless, they would still seem “supernatural” in terms of our own laws, but that doesn’t introduce any magical beings or “supernatural” entities as religions define them.

Besides, this tired old argument of needing a supernatural creator because the Universe was created out of nothing, is entirely untestable. No one knows what was before our own Universe was created. And no one, NO ONE, is ever justified in making the huge leap from this ignorant position, to deduce that “therefore a Creator is needed“. This is simply not permissable in any scientific, philosophical, or logical system -only in the religious system of malfunctioning “logic”^*.

Turek ironically says that this is not the “God of the gaps” argument, but honestly, I have no idea what else it can be. As already explained, there is no way to jump from our ignorance of how our Universe was created to the need and existence of a Creator unless you employ the God of the gaps mechanism.

Further, as science makes progress amidst constant attacks by the religious zealots, more pieces are being constantly added to this amazing puzzle of our Universe’s creation. There are now some hypotheses, based on empirical and observational data, which claim that our Universe didn’t come into existence out of nothing at all. So now, it seems we have ways to have a glimpse into what a few years ago seemed like the ultimately unapproachable terittory of “before-the-big-bang” era!

Hypotheses like the Big Bounce, which claims that our Universe is simply one in a long series of expansion and contraction cycles; or the existence of multiple Universes, each one with different properties; all make this field ever more interesting.

Be careful: I am not advocating any of the proposed hypotheses, and I do not claim to know which one is the correct one. Alas, my knowledge in this field is dwarfed by the extremely bright minds working on it.

What I am claiming though is this: I don’t know how the Universe was created. Turek cannot know. Science doesn’t know yet. Hence, we don’t know yet. We don’t bloody know. We don’t f@@cking know! How difficult is this for Turek and co. to admit? What is it with this need to make the jump to unjustifiable conclusions about white bearded magical Gods?

Interestingly, even if you make this huge leap, and admit the existence of a supernatural magical guy that created our Universe, this still doesn’t explain our reality better than atheism, since all our natural laws operate very well on the absence of any God hypotheses! Even if this creator made up everything (and what a lousy job he did) there is still not a jolt of evidence that he is supervising everything, that miracles happen, that prayers are answered, and so on. The natural laws are still what determines how our world moves, evolves, and operates.

It has always been the same: Christian apologetics already know the conclusion (”my, and only my God exists, made everything, and supervises everything”) and whenever new scientific evidence comes up, they try to fit it to their predetermined conclusion retrospectively and selectively. The same happens with Turek: he knows, he just knows, that God exists, and tries to fit available evidence (and conveniently ommit contradictory evidence) to his pressuposed worldview.

This is not science. And as Hitchens notes, just accept your Gods on faith, but do not try to deduce your beliefs from scientific evidence, because there is no way you can make the leap and introduce a deity merely by looking at science! Absolutely no way!

---
Footnotes:

1. * And I don’t even have to mention the infinite regression problem of the existence of a creator… [↩]

In a piece of bad, bad news, the Associated Press reported yesterday that Christopher Hitchens, successful British author and activist atheist, has started chemotherapy to fight off a cancer of the esophagus. Hitchens is a very well regarded (albeit often controversial) bestseller author of such books as “God is not Great” and “Hitch-22“.

In a statement on his publisher’s website to break the news, Hitchens provided an almost amusing piece: “I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me”. Amusing if only it wasn’t so sad…

Good luck to one of the intellectuals of our time, a fighter for reason and against tyranny of any form.

Following the recent case of the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh, a lawsuit which was eventually dropped leading BCA to implode under its own absurdity, there is now yet another libel lawsuit against a critic of pseudosciences and dubious practises: Doctor’s Data Inc. against Stephen Barrett, MD.

For those unaware, Stephen Barrett runs the Quackwatch family of websites, exposing bad science, pseudoscience, and “strange” claims in the domain of medicine and health. Quackwatch is a consistent source of important and, at times, entertaining material, so this libel suit could potentially do a lot of damage to the healthy skeptical world.

Stephen wrote a piece on Quackwatch, “How the “Urine Toxic Metals” Test Is Used to Defraud Patients“, critisizing the tests and analysis from Doctor’s Data Inc laboratories, that have been leading “patients” into dubious treatments for apparent heavy metal poisoning; treatments including chelation therapy. That article makes for an interesting read on its own.

Back to our issue at hand though, Doctor’s Data Inc. (DDI) don’t seem to have any strong case at their hands, and they have probably used this tactic in an effort to intimidate Stephen Barrett and shut down anything that criticizes them -in typical fashion for people engaged in pseudosciente and alternative medicine. From quackwatch we can follow the exchange of letters between some random lawers representing DDI, and Stephen Barret. Read and weep at the free-fall of public enquiry and free speech:

[...]

“It is never libelous,” you have said, “to criticize an idea.” However, you have gone way beyond the idea stage, and our client will not tolerate it. You apparently have carried on this conduct in an intentional manner and with the assistance of others. It is clear that you have a specific intent to harm Doctor’s Data, and this conduct must stop immediately.

We demand that you cease and desist any and all comments regarding Doctor’s Data, which have been and are false, fraudulent, defamatory or otherwise not truthful, and make a complete and full retraction of all statements you have made in the past, including those which have led in some instances to litigation.

[...]

To which Stephen Barrett replied:

[...]

I take great pride in being accurate and carefully consider complaints about what I write. However, your letter does not identify a single statement by me that you believe is inaccurate or “fraudulent.” The only thing you mention is my article about how the urine toxic metals test is used to defraud patients: (http://www.quackwatch.org/t). The article’s title reflects my opinion, the basis of which the article explains in detail.

If you want me to consider modifying the article, please identify every sentence to which you object and explain why you believe it is not correct.

If you want me to consider statements other than those in the article, please send me a complete list of such statements and the people to whom you believe they were made.

DDI didn’t bother to provide any such statements, so they merely reiterated their desire to proceed by suing in case the “defamatory” material were not removed on time. Stephen stood his ground:

My letter asked you to identify the claims that you believe are false. You have not identified a single sentence that you believe is inaccurate. Since you have failed to do so, I have no choice but to assume that you cannot. My offer remains open, as it is to anyone who is criticized on any of my sites. If you identify anything that you consider inaccurate, I will seriously consider what you say and act accordingly.

…and the case will now go to court. As I understand it though, the US laws are much more balanced than the UK libel laws, and hence Stephen will not have to go through what Simon Singh went through over the last couple of years. Still, temporary sanctions could be imposed (shut down site until case resolved? remove relevant material?).

So please remember to help keep the libel laws out of science, and follow closely the case for reform of the English libel laws.

Yes, I went up against the whole City of Westminster, and came out with my parking ticket appeal allowed, yesterday, in a personal hearing with an adjudicator (a judge?) with the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service. Surprisingly, it was easier than I expected it.

I am known for being cautious, and double (triple?) checking everything -I don’t like leaving things at chance. I would also like to believe that I am not stupid. So, if I got this wrong, then there is probably something dodgy with the parking signs in that spot (which is off Edgware road by the way).

This was not *exactly* the wording of my defense of course, by the adjudicator appreciated that the signs were too far apart and visibility could be reduced on a night. I didn’t even had to go to the hard core evidence (apparently the signs there do not even follow the regulations!) to get my appeal allowed.

The case header (incidentally also my post title), was quite amusing as it reminded me of “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (or Kitzmiller v. Dover in a more serious tone). However, most of the appeals against the City of Westminster (around 90%!) are being allowed. So it’s not as pessimistic as the case header makes it seem like. I mean, it’s not like all 236,000 citizens of the borough are up against you!

Nevertheless, if someone does want to whisper “David vs. Goliath“, here is a relevant comic:



[source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]