Download Lectures on Biostatistics (1971). Corrected and searchable version of Google books edition
Download review of Lectures on Biostatistics (THES, 1973).
Monthly Archives: May 2007
The Nature title picture was ‘Taken from The Complete Guide to Homeopathy, © Dorling Kindersley Ltd’ (not a recommended text book at UCL)
Nature (March 22 2007) ran this commentary, alongside a News item by Jim Giles:
Download a reprint of the article here.
Download the while 2005 westminster University miasmatic exam paper here.
Degrees in homeopathy slated as unscientific
and a Nature podcast [listen to podcast].
Here is some of the coverage of this commentary (more soon, including some of the abuse). A transcript pf the podcast is here.
Interview on the BBC’s Today Programme, with Edward Stourton.
Listen to interview
Material World (BBC Radio 4). This excellent science programme, presented by Quentin Cooper, had a longer version of DC versus David Peters (Westminster University). There was helpful intervention from Michael Marmot who had talked, in the first half of the programme, about his longitudinal population studies. [listen to part 2].
Radio 5 Live interview.
BBC London News (BBC1 TV), An interview of DC and Peter Fisher
by the News Presenter, Riz Lateef. Dr Fisher, who is clinical director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, made a very interesting comment, at the end of a discussion about whether homeopathy was a suitable subject for a science degree.
| Riz Lateef (presenter): “Dr Fisher, could you ever see it [homeopathy] as a science degree in the future? Dr Peter Fisher: “I would hope so. I wouldn’t deny that a lot of scientific research needs to be done, and I would hope that in the future it would have a scientific basis. I have to say that at the moment that basis isn’t comprehensive. To that extent I would agree with Professor Colquhoun.” |
Download the movie (5.9 Mb .wmv file: (quotation is at the end)
]
A shorter version of the movie, showing only the quotation at the end has appeared on YouTube.
Evidence? During the interview, Peter Fisher said
“. . .if you look in the Cochrane library, . . . you will find that there are two treatments for flu that appear to be effective, and one of them is homeopathic”
I presume this refers to the Cochrane review “Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like yndromes”. What this actually says is
“Trials do not show that homoeopathic Oscillococcinum can prevent influenza. However, taking homoeopathic Oscillococcinum once you have influenza might shorten the illness, but more research is needed.”
Well, it might, but even if it did, the average length of the putative “shortening” of the illness was a mere 0.28 days, i.e. 6.7 hours. To call that “effective” seems to me to be just a tiny bit of an exaggeration.
The newspapers
“Faith-based degree ‘damages science’ ”
Mark Henderson, Science Editor, The Times. I love that title: it says it all.
Homeopathy science degrees ‘gobbledygook’
Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian.
Alternative medicine degrees ‘anti-scientific’
Roger Highfield, Science Editor, in the Daily Telegraph
Universities ‘are duping students with homeopathy science degrees’
Steve Connor, science correspondent The Independent
Less than complementary? James Morgan in the Glasgow Herald
Alternative therapy degree attack
UK universities are teaching “gobbledygook” following the explosion in science degrees in complementary medicine, a leading expert says. BBC News web site
University homoeopathy degrees ‘gobbledygook’, claims Professor
Fiona McRae in the Daily Mail.
and the story even got into the free London papers, Metro and The London
Paper
And some from abroad
British health expert brands homeopathy ‘gobbledygook’
From ‘our correspondent’ at DailyIndia.com.
Homeopathic Degree in Britain Puts Scientific Gloss on Nonscientific Dross, Critics Say
Susan Brown in The Chronicle of Higher Education (USA)
UK Fight Over Anti-Science in Medicine
Dr Steven Novella comments in the NeuroLogica Blog, part of the New England Skeptical Society site.
Some follow up
A matter of degree. Why the letters after a homoeopath’s name really do count
Mark Henderson, 24th March, in The Times (Body and Soul section)
Ann Robinson, in the Guardian’s Comment is Free (Sunday 25th March) gives me a bit of a slagging off. But her piece is followed by a flood of comments, almost all of them thoroughly sensible. One comment, from ‘Midas’ ends thus.
So why not homeopathy alongside medicine? Right. Why not Levitation alongside Aeronautical Engineering?
And the blogs: quite a lot of blogs picked up the story.
Thanks to everyone who sent letters of support, not least the regular scientists from Westminster, and University of Central Lancashire who are clearly rather embarrassed by their homeopathic colleagues.
Inevitably there were a few bits of hate mail too, each answered politely, and some even resulting in a degree of agreement. The only one worth quoting is a rather mild one from George Lewith (see below).
| “Do you realise that your own university (University College London) offers a BSc in architecture? I have yet to find that this particular course (from personal experience) involves a single piece of science. You might like to investigate at the Bartlett.” . . .”I suggest you make a formal complaint to your Provost, the Dean of the Medical School, and the committee of UK Vice-Chancellors of Medical Schools. You must know that you are completely out of sync but perhaps you don’t? Kind regards George |
I guess one of us is out of sync anyway. Unlike George (it appears), I know little about architecture, but the idea of design for a tower block based on homeopathic principles sounds a bit scary to me.
One year from our first letter to NHS Trusts, we sent another. Listen to the interview by John Humphrys on the Radio 4 Today Programme, with Raymond Tallis and Peter Fisher. :And hear Fisher suggest that he works for UCL (not true). You can also download a summary of the current evidence in the form of an example commissioning document which accompanied our letter.
May 23, 2007. A year ago, our letter to NHS Trusts urged them to stop paying for “unproven and disproved treatments”. A year on, we sent a second letter. Read it here.
On May 23 2007, John Humphrys introduced coverage of this on the Radio 4 Today Programme with the words
“Doctors who think homeopathy is a waste of time and money seem to be winning the argument”
To listen to his interview with Raymond Tallis and Peter Fisher click here. In the interview, Peter Fisher not only misrepresented the evidence, as usual, but also he said
“We are integrating it [homeopathy] within NHS services in University College London which is one of the leading, you know, biomedical centres in the country.”
Hang on a moment! I’m glad that Fisher thinks that UCL is a “leading biomedical centre”, but he does not work for UCL (which is a university), but for the UCLH Trust, which is an NHS Trust. This shameless attempt to use the reputation of a quite different institution to bolster his case smacks of desperation (not to mention mendacity).
After Fisher’s emphasis on “integration”, Tallis commented
“The use of the word integrate is interesting. I mean I suppose you can regard combining medicines that don’t work with medicines that do work as a kind of integrative approach . . “;
The evidence
Our second letter to NHS Trusts said “If you have not already reviewed your own trust’s provision, you might find it useful to consider, in conjunction with your Director of Public Health, the paper that we have enclosed which, while not a full review of the scientific position, has been used by other trusts to promote evidence based commissioning.”. This letter has a summary of the evidence,
Good reports in the newspapers include
“Hard-up NHS trusts cut back on unproven homoeopathy treatment”: Mark Henderson in The Times
“Doctors renew drive to ban NHS homeopathy”: James Randerson, in the Guardian
[This post has been transferred from my old IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page]
Follow-up
Homeopaths have been harping on about our alleged misuse of the NHS logo, ever since this second letter was sent. It is often said that the letter was sent under the NHS letterhead. As so often, they don’t bother to check. There was no NHS logo on the letter. The only place the logo occurred was on the sample template fo commissioners that was sent with the letter. That template has always been available for download from this post. It is very obviously intended to be a template, with sections that are to be completed by commissioners highlighted. There is no way it could be taken to be representing itself as a letter from the NHS. This is how it starts.
A colleague wrote to his MP to ask if anything could be done about the defrauding of the public by “psychic surgeons”. He wrote, in particular, about Stephen Turoff.
Turoff was the subject of the first episode of “Trust me I’m a Healer”, a programme that looked at “fake psychic healers”. They are the BBC’s own words (see badpsychics.com).
Psychic surgery is nothing but a total hoax.
Psychic surgery was discredited by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 1975. In a unanimous opinion, the commission declared that “‘psychic surgery’ is nothing but a total hoax.” Judge Daniel H. Hanscom, in granting the FTC an injunction against travel agencies promoting psychic surgery tours, said: “Psychic surgery is pure and unmitigated fakery. The ‘surgical operations’ of psychic surgeons … with their bare hands are simply phony.” (see here)
Eventually my colleague got an answer from Lord Hunt, junior minister at the Department of Health (generally loyal Blairite, but he did resign over Iraq).
The response makes one wonder what planet the minister is living on Psychic fraud a “profession”? And capable of self-regulation? This letter is just surreal.
Clearly misunderstanding the nature of science is not restricted to any political party. In any case, regulation of crackpot medicine arguably does more harm than good (see Letter to the Times).
Most sorts of crackpot medicine are desperate to be “regulated” by the government. They know that the regulation is ineffective, and they know that it gives them a stamp of government approval with few obligations on their part. They can then claim to be “professional” psychic surgeons
(or whatever) and pretend to be proper doctors. And foremost among those pressing for this sort of phony respectability has been the Prince of Wales Foundation for Integrated Health (see here and here).
An early day motion in support of homeopathic hospitals shows that irrational belief in magic is not unique to one party. Virtually all MPs have no idea about science. But I was quite surprised to find out in a reply from my MP that it is official Conservative policy.
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
A new paper, with a very large sample, almost 300 000 men, shows an association between taking large doses of multivitamin supplements and death from prostate cancer. But this, like most observations on diet, was not a randomised study. The paper itself discusses the interpretation carefully. The reports in the newspapers did not.
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
A web site comes very close to claiming that cancer can be cured by a homeopathic preparation made from the blood of someone who had, allegedly, been cured of cancer by laying-on-of-hands. The site is run by a Sue Benford who has also written papers that suggest “explanations†of spontaneous human combustion and the incorruptibility of human corpses. All this scores maximum points for bizarreness. It would be hilarious but for the fact that it takes advantage of sick patients.
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
A particularly powerful plea to forget homeopathy from Michael Baum, based on his experience as a cancer surgeon.
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
Two scams in which the alleged ingredients don’t exist, and the alleged evidence can’t be traced.
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
The latest Cochrane review finds no good evidence that acupuncture or acupressure are effective for stopping smoking
Read more on the original IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
The Health Supplements Information Service (HSIS) is a spin organisation for the supplements industry. I came across them when they attempted to discredit a report that supplements could actually increase mortality. In that case Ann Walker spoke for HSIS.
The same Ann Walker wrote an editorial for the British Journal of General
Practice (January 2007), “Potential micronutrient deficiency lacks recognition in diabetes”. The conclusion is “Although still considered to be controversial by some, taking a daily multinutrient supplement would bridge the gap between intake and requirements and ensure that nutrient target intakes are met”. The affiliation given is senior lecturer in nutrition at the University of Reading, where she has a one-tenth full time appointment. No competing interests are declared. The University of Reading tells me that she has “consultancies for two supplement companies and for the Health Supplement Information Service. Dr Walker has also declared a private patients clinic”.
Ann Walker is also course director for an organisation called New Vitality. And she “operates a Clinic from her home on two days a week, using a combination of nutritional therapy and herbal medicine to treat patients with a wide variety of conditions.” All this sounds rather less academic.And so it is. Take red clover. New Vitality’s view is shown on the right What on earth is a “blood cleanser” or a “cleanser of the lymphatic system”. This is so much meaningless gobbledygook. The term “blood cleanser” means nothing whatsoever.
An enquiry about what “blood cleanser” means has yet to produce a reply.
The description of red clover on the New Vitality site
And is red clover really good for “symptoms of the menopause”? There is quite a different view on Medline Plus. This is an information service run by the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health. They say, of red clover for menopausal symptoms,
“most of the available human studies are poorly designed and short in duration (less than 12 weeks of treatment).As results of published studies conflict with each other, more research is needed before a clear conclusion can be drawn.”
Medline Plus lists six other indications for red clover that have been suggested
by herbalists. The conclusion in all seven cases is “Unclear scientific evidence for this use”
Likewise, New Vitality says of elderflower
“The primary use of elderflowers is for colds and influenze where its anti-viral properties come into play.”
But Medline Plus says
“it remains unclear whether there is truly any benefit from elder for this condition. Additional research is needed in this area before a firm conclusion can be reached. Elder should not be used in the place of other more proven therapies, and patients are advised to discuss influenza vaccination with their primary healthcare provider. It should be noted that the berries must be cooked to prevent nausea or cyanide toxicity.”
Thia item was posted originally on the old IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page