Recently six former directors of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met in Aspen to talk about the FDA. According to reports much of their criticism for their former agency was focused on lax regulations for supplements.

I, too, have been a consistent critic of how supplement are regulated in the US and elsewhere. Currently the regulation is determines by the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). This law passed while David Kessler was commissioner of the FDA, a law he vigorous opposed.

The Atlantic reports:

Jane Henney, commissioner from 1998 to 2001, recalled that the DSHEA law actually passed in the wake of the FDA “really trying to get their arms around stronger regulatory authority with dietary supplements.” This attempt at requiring supplement producers to guarantee the quality and safety of their product was countered by one of the most intense lobbying campaigns in history, in which TV commercials warned citizens that the government was coming for their vitamins. “I believe that the amount the Congress heard about this whole issue was greater than what they received about the Vietnam war,” she said. ‘I mean, it was tremendous.”

By all accounts this was a clear case of an industry lobbying the government in order to pass regulation friendly to industry and against the interests of the public. They were successful for a few reasons.

Continue Reading »

Yes. Yes we should.

This is an interesting idea I had not previously considered. Danny Chambers is a UK veterinarian from Devon who started a Change.org petition to ban the veterinary use of homeopathy in the UK. He has 1,000 signatures from UK vets so far (out of the 22,000 total UK vets).

Chambers said:

“We think vets these days should be offering 21st Century medicine,” he told BBC News.

“It’s been shown that homeopathy doesn’t work, so it probably shouldn’t be offered any more even if it is offered with good intentions.”

It is absolutely clear that homeopathy is worthless. This is among the most solid conclusions in all of medical science. First, there is no possible way according to our current understanding of physics, chemistry, and physiology that homeopathic potions can have any biological effect. It’s not just unknown – we have very good reasons to conclude that homeopathy cannot work (follow the link above for more details if you are unfamiliar with these reasons).

Continue Reading »

One of the silliest grand conspiracy theories is that the US faked the Apollo moon landings. Moon landing hoaxers engage in a combination of anomaly hunting and the argument from personal incredulity or ignorance. They engage in an elaborate exercise in JAQing off (just asking questions), like, “why are there no stars in the background of pictures,” and “why does the flag wave if there is no air?”

They have no positive evidence for a conspiracy, just a wild theory and completely unimpressive anomalies that have all been easily and adequately explained. They also ignore gaping holes in their theory. How could NASA maintain this 50-year cover up when scientists around the world, including in competitor nations, could easily reveal it?

Some moon hoaxers engage in a related theory, that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was the one who filmed the fake moon landing footage for NASA. It is not uncommon for such theories to aggregate around famous people. Otherwise it is not clear why they would chose Kubrick and not a struggling director desperate for cash who could be conveniently eliminated when the task was done.

Continue Reading »

John Mack was a Harvard psychiatrist who famously fell for his patient’s own delusions. He came to believe that some of his patients were actually abducted by aliens. He was never able to provide any compelling evidence of this, just their testimony. Despite being a professional in mental health, he lacked the skeptical skill set necessary to see his errors.

We now have another very similar case – a Yale trained psychiatrist, Richard Gallagher, who has fallen for his patients delusions that they are possessed by demons. His editorial in the Washington Post is stunning for its utter lack of skeptical awareness.

I am sometimes questioned by well-meaning but confused scientists who do not understand the role that scientific skepticism plays in society. Isn’t science itself enough? Aren’t all scientists skeptical, or at least they should be?

What they miss is that skepticism is a real and deep intellectual skill set that works with science. It includes specialized knowledge that is not necessarily acquired during scientific training. There are frequent examples of this, and Gallagher’s article is now a prime example as well. He hits almost every true-believer trope there is. Ironically he has created a classic case study in the need for scientific skepticism.

Continue Reading »

A recent Time Magazine article tries to answer the question: Does Acupunture Work? Their answer:

For certain conditions—particularly pain—there’s evidence it works. Exactly how it works is an open question.

This answer is wrong. Granted, this is a deceptively complex question and there is a tremendous amount of authoritative misinformation out there, so it is hard to blame a journalist for getting this one wrong.

Perhaps the biggest pitfall in science journalism is the problem of outlier or non-representative experts. A journalist talks to someone who has appropriate credentials, but whose opinion on a topic is either a minority opinion, or just one side of a legitimate controversy. The journalist then mistakes this one person’s opinion for the consensus scientific opinion.

Continue Reading »