If I had to choose the one thing that has most transformed human civilization it is science. Prior to this remarkable invention history was characterized by conflicting ideologies, philosophies, superstitions, and religions.

Some practical knowledge managed to move forward, including various technologies and even enlightenment philosophy, but our attempts to understand and manipulate the world were burdened with magical thinking. Science set us on a new track, and in the last few centuries we have systematically replaced our old traditional thinking about the world with scientific thinking.

A thousand years ago European physicians attempted to understand and treat illness by manipulating the four humors while their eastern counterparts were faring no better with an astrology-based system of blood letting. If we wanted to anticipate future events, an astrologer would consult fanciful charts that have no actual influence on reality.  If we wanted to make our lives better, ensure a good harvest, or survive a plague we would pray to imaginary powerful beings.

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Every now and then we get a public peek into the mind of a crank or pseudoscientist. This is not to say that they don’t utter complete nonsense often, but usually in public they try to put a sanitized and rational face on their quackery. An unfiltered rant can be refreshing and illuminating.

Recently a homeopath, Mary English, wrote such a public rant against Simon Singh, who is a science communicator and promoter of rationality. What has English so riled is the fact that Singh is threatening to sue the National Health Service (NHS) for wasting taxpayer money by funding homeopathy.

Singh is an open critic of so-called alternative medicine. He has written about homeopathy before, explaining why it is complete unscientific lunacy. He famously was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for daring to say that they embrace “bogus” therapies (because they do).  He works for a charity, the Good Thinking Society, which has challenged the UK powers-that-be to reconsider their support of homeopathy:

In February 2015, The Good Thinking Society, working with Bindmans LLP, wrote to Liverpool CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) in order to highlight and challenge the CCG’s decision to approve spending on homeopathic treatments – a decision we believe to be unlawful, and contrary to the best interest of local patients. In April 2015, Liverpool CCG conceded our challenge and agreed to make a fresh decision on the issue.

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After Simon Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for libel, he used the opportunity to rally for libel reform in the UK. Simon won his suit, but defending his free speech was tremendously expensive. Fortunately for him, he had the resources to go the distance. Libel laws in England are especially bad, favoring the plaintiff and are ridiculously expensive – so much so that they motivate “libel tourism” in which someone sues someone else specifically in England for maximal effect.

At the time I thought I was lucky for the fact that the US has more rational libel laws. The burden of proof is heavily on the plaintiff, as it should be. In the US we take our first Amendment rights to free speech seriously.

Then, of course, I was sued, and I realized how wrong I was.

The problem with libel laws in the US is that the legal battle is more about who has money than who is right. If you want to shut down someone’s right to free speech all you have to do is sue them for defamation. There is no barrier to doing so. The defendant then has the option of either taking down their blog post, article, podcast, whatever and giving in to the demands of the person threatening to sue them, or face tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend their free speech. What do you think most people are going to choose?

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Alternative Medicine’s best friend, and in my opinion largely responsible for what popularity it has, is a gullible media. I had thought we were turning a corner, and the press were over the gushing maximally clueless approach to CAM, and were starting to at least ask some probing questions (like, you know, does it actually work), but a 2006 BBC documentary inspires a more pessimistic view.

The documentary is part of a BBC series hosted by Kathy Sykes: Alternative Medicine, The Evidence. This episode is on acupuncture. The episode is from 2006, but was just posted on YouTube as a “2014 documentary.” Unfortunately, old news frequently has a second life on social media.

First, let me point out that Sykes is a scientist (a fact she quickly points out). She is a physicist, which means that she has the credibility of being able to say she is a scientist but has absolutely no medical training. It’s the worst case scenario – she brings the credibility of being a scientist, and probably thinks that her background prepares her to make her own judgments about the evidence, and yet clearly should have relied more on real experts.

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This is an interesting story with an unfortunate update.

UK self-proclaimed psychic, Sally Morgan, sued the Daily Mail for libel because they claimed that she used deliberate fraud during some of her performances by receiving messages through an earpiece (Popoff style). The case was recently settled, with Morgan receiving £125,000 to cover damages and legal fees. In a statement the paper said:

Brid Jordan, for Associated Newspapers, told the judge: “The Daily Mail withdraws the suggestion that Mrs Morgan used a secret earpiece at her Dublin show in September 2011 to receive messages from off-stage, thereby cheating her audience, which it accepts is untrue.”

The story may therefore be a cautionary tale for skeptics – don’t overstate criticism or state as factual speculation about motivation or fraud. This is challenging when also wanting to engage in critical analysis of dubious claims without pulling any punches – but that is the line we have to walk.

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NECSS 2013

The first national skeptical conference of the season is NECSS 2013 (The Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism), hosted by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society. The conference will be held in New York City on April 5-7.

We have a great lineup of speakers this year. The keynote is physicist Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. In addition we have Simon Singh, Michael Shermer, Mariette DiChristina (editor of Scientific American) and many other great speakers. As always there will be live performances of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and Rationally Speaking podcast.

We are also running a number of workshops on the Friday of the conference. I will be running one with George Hrab on using podcasting and other social media to promote your cause (or just for fun).

Readers of Neurologica can receive a 10% discount by registering with the following code – NECSS2013 (I know, real tricky).

If you do come be sure to come up to me at the SGU table and introduce yourself.

Darwin Day

For the last five years Darwin Day has been an international celebration of science and humanity. There are many local events held on or around February 12th (Darwin’s birthday) – you can probably find one in your area.

I live in CT, and there will be a Darwin Day celebration here. There will be a dinner on Saturday Feb 9th starting at 6pm, at the Continental Manor in Norwalk. (See http://darwindayct.org/ for more details and to register.)

If there are no Darwin Day events in your area – then perhaps you are just the right person to organize one.

There seems to be no end to the questionable tactics of CAM promoters. The one thing they do not have on their side is the science. Two decades ago, when they really started clamoring for legitimacy, their frequent cry was that all they wanted was a fair chance to prove that their modalities worked. They claimed that treatments like acupuncture and homeopathy were simply not studied, and once they were properly studied the world would see how effective they were.

Now, two decades and billions of research dollars later (mostly through the NCCAM) the evidence is increasingly clear – these modalities are alternative for a reason, they don’t work. Those clinical trials that are well controlled an rigorously designed demonstrate that acupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, and similar methods do not work any better than placebo. They are physiologically inert.

If proponents were intellectually honest, they would have simply admitted this and moved on. But CAM proponents use scientific evidence (to borrow an excellent metaphor) as a drunkard uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.

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I have stayed only peripherally involved in the debate going on over at the Atlantic over alternative medicine, spawned by an article by David Freedman. I first wrote about the article here, with a follow up here. Orac has written a series of articles about it as well, and we covered it on Science-Based Medicine.

The Atlantic has also hosted an ongoing debate on the topic. Apparently at the Atlantic they feel that a fair debate is to have six prominent advocates on one side, along with the original author of the article, against a lone token skeptic on the other side (Steve Salzberg). Well, at least they are not revealing any bias. At the urging of Salzberg they did add a second token skeptic, David Colquhoun.

The debate, such as it is, at least reveals the current rhetorical tactics of the CAM proponents. They can be summarized largely as – we know that CAM modalities don’t work, but we’re nice and they will give you a good placebo effect. Plus science-based medicine isn’t perfect (shocker), so (false dichotomy) we offer an alternative. CAM proponents further try to take as much credit as they can for just good medical practice and some science based modalities, like nutrition, exercise, and good communication skills.

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We are in the midst of a public push for libel reform in England. (I know there is a difference between England and the UK. Apparently it is the English libel laws that are the major problem, but still the issue is often presented as reforming UK libel laws, which I guess would subsume the English laws.) This issue came most prominently to light over the British Chiropractic Association’s libel suit against Simon Singh. Simon rode that costly trial through and eventually the BCA withdrew and will have to pay Simon’s legal costs.

The episode helped fuel a libel reform campaign – a grassroots campaign to keep the political pressure on for reform. This is one of those issues that will only change with constant public pressure – and you can help. Add your signature to the petition here: http://libelreform.org/

This is an issue of free speech. While everyone deserves the right to defend their reputation from malicious attack, there needs to be a proper balance to also protect public discourse and free speech. In England the libel laws are simply broken. It is ruinously expensive to defend even a frivolous libel suit, so the threat of suit can be used to silence critics and stifle debate.

David Colquhoun on his Improbable Science blog today presents some recent examples of much needed scientific criticism being silenced by bullying libel suits.

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It’s been a bad year for homeopathy, and it’s still February. The 10^23 campaign has been making a proper mockery of the magical medicine that is homeopathy, capped off with their mass homeopathic “overdose.” In Australia skeptics have been taking homeopathic websites to task for making unsupported health claims. And in the UK there has been increasing pressure to question NHS support for homeopathy – most recently the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that homeopathy is nothing more than an elaborate placebo and the NHS should completely defund and remove any support for homeopathy. This could be a death blow to homeopathy in the UK, and provide support for similar efforts elsewhere.

Last year was no better. Most memorable was this comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb, who nicely skewered homeopaths and other cranks. When comedians are not ridiculing them, homeopaths were doing a fine job of lampooning themselves – the best is this video where Dr. Werner tries to explain how homeopathy works – pure comedy gold. Of course the best real explanation for how homeopathy works is here.

Even before the House Committee presented its final report, the embarrassing moments were being immortalized on YouTube, for example the head of a major UK pharmaceutical chain admitting that they market homeopathic products with full knowledge that they don’t work.

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