Download Lectures on Biostatistics (1971). Corrected and searchable version of Google books edition
Download review of Lectures on Biostatistics (THES, 1973).
Anti-science
This was posted originally on the old IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page
UCL felled by a herbalist?
OK this isn’t really bad science, but it’s caused inconvenience to me and to readers. It still puzzles me that UCL has not got the resources to deal with a herbalist (the reason that I was given for the move). The herbalist in question, Ann Walker, got rather angry when I called her use of the term ‘blood cleanser’ as gobbledygook
On Friday 1 June, 2007, when it was announced that the IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page had been moved from the UCL server, several people sent letters to the provost. Here is one of them. I have never met Prof Shafer, but his letter, and other similar ones, lightened an otherwise bad day.
| Dear Dr. Grant:I am very sorry to learn that you have requested Dr. Colquhoun to remove his “Improbable Science” web page from the computer system at University College London. It is particularly disheartening to learn that you made this request after receiving a complaint from a practitioner of nonscientific medicine.
I don’t know how many of your faculty publish in Nature (Colquhoun D. Science degrees without the science. Nature. 2007;446:373-4). However, based on my experience at Stanford, I would guess precious few. You now appear to be attempting to squelch his academic freedom, or at least disassociate UCL from his efforts to educate the public about quack science. Perhaps you were put off by the “unprofessional appearance” of the web page. If so then you have misunderstood its purpose. The public is inundated by junk science, A large portion come from the Internet. There are almost no Internet resources where a lay reader can find a counterweight to the extensive claims of pseudoscientists. Dr. Colquhoun’s blog is a unique resource. The format may put off a scientific reader, but it is exactly the format required to get the message to the web surfer with a 10 second attention span. In my view the Improbable Science web page was among the most important public services made available by the University College London. I don’t know the facts of your decision. Perhaps there are policies, procedures, and regulations that Dr. Colquhoun has violated in creating the Improbable Science web page. However, I do know that any request to remove the page that follows a complaint from an individual offended by the page is entirely inappropriate. Even were your request otherwise reasonable, the mere appearance of academic censorship should have been absolutely unacceptable to you. (Think of it like conflict of interest – there is a need to avoid not only true conflict of interest, but the mere appearance of It is thus with shock, sadness, and disappointment that I have learned of this decision by the University College London. I hope that you will reconsider. The present course makes it appear that UCL has caved in to pseudoscientists and is engaged in academic censorship of possibly the most important public service offered by the UCL. Sincerely, Steve Shafer Steven L. Shafer, MD Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia Professor, Department of Anesthesia, Stanford University Adjunct Professor, Biopharmaceutical Sciences, UCSF Stanford University Medical Center Stanford, CA 94305 |
No doubt it is an exaggeration to say “the Improbable Science web page was among the most important public services made available by the University College London”. But thanks anyway.
After an unrepentant response, Professor Shafer replied thus.
| Dear Provost Grant:I appreciate your taking the time to respond. I’m sure that as provost you live on the receiving end of a firehose of correspondence, as do I as a professor and a journal Editor-in-Chief. I’m sorry to have added to the e-mail overload. I appreciate your finding time to respond.
It would be my hope that Stanford University would shoulder the responsibility of dealing with whatever harassment would come my way by virtue of my scientific and academic pursuits. Yes, when legal action is threatened, and staff are consumed with processing paperwork, I’m sure my Dean, Provost, and President would prefer to ransfer everything to me. However, the effect would be chilling. Universities are supposed to provide a haven to insulate scientists from harassment. I’ve looked at Dr. You note that Dr. Colquhoun “accepts that he needs to be in a position where he shoulders directly the burden of responding to Dr Lakin.” I applaud his fortitude, but note that are only 24 hours in a day. If the administrative resources of University College London are inadequate to respond to Dr. Lakin, how is Dr. Colquhoun, on his own, without the resources of UCL, expected to survive the harassment, legal hallenges, and other pressures to silence him? As a counter example, the University of California at San Francisco stood solidly behind Stanton Glantz when the cigarette industry tried to destroy him for his efforts to expose their activities. Had he agreed to “shoulder directly the burden”, we would never have known of the extensive research conducted by the cigarette industry over two decades that identified the health risks, and guided their extensive disinformation campaign. I would hope that Stanford University would following the UCSF example, and devote the necessary resources to defend my academic freedom, rather than the UCL Again, I appreciate your responding to my e-mail. I hope that my perspective is a least thought provoking on the complex mutual responsibilities between a prestigious University and an equally prominent faculty member with outspoken views. Thank you for your consideration, Sincerely, Steve Shafer |
The Goldacre effect
Saturday 9 June 2007. The wires (and my hit counter) are melting after Ben Goldacre’s comments on the move of this web site from UCL’s servers. That’s understandable: his excellent badscience.net site gets 12,000 hits a day and 95,000 unique visitors per month.
Like all the other comments, his badscience column in today’s Guardian, was not solicited by me, but it’s wonderful to know that somebody cares. His badscience.net version (“The Mighty David Colquhoun” !) was even more over-the-top. I can’t say I’m feeling very “mighty” at the moment.
Goldacre’s piece starts “I’ve always said you’d get a lot more kids interested in science if you told them it involves fighting – which of course it does.” A correspondent today enlarged on the theme “you have got me thinking and yes my kids would be far more interested in science if a playstation game was created whereby Prof. Colquhoun was zapping disgruntled alternative therapists”. The mind boggles. Making money out of selling mindless violence (in the news again today) must be even worse than making money out of selling useless pills. A university should be one of the few places left where one cannot be accused of knowing the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Contrary to what some people seem to think, I don’t enjoy rows. They keep me awake at night. But some things are just too important to duck out of them.
Read the provost’s reply.
Goldacre has posted the complete text of the provost’s reply to one of the many people who have written to him. You should read the other side of the story too (click here and search for “letter from provost”). Grant has a real problem. He shouldn’t have to spend time fending off herbalists. Yet if they aren’t fended off, more attacks will occur. Who’d be a provost? That is all sorted out now.
Papers sent to me from Imperial College revealed abuse of crude an ineffective metrics for assessment of the performance of staff. These metrics are demonstrably bad science as well as inhuman. The Times Higher Education Supplement (June 1, 2007) devoted several pages to the problem. An extended version of my analysis is on DC’s Goodscience blog.
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
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
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
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
Sales of chondroitin and glucosamine are a worth billions of dollars, but the evidence that they work has never been good.
A new meta-analysis of clinical trials now shows that chondroitin on the symptoms of osteoarthritis is “minimal or nonexistent”.
(Reichenbach S and others. Meta-analysis: Chondroitin for osteoarthritis of the knee or hip. Annals of Internal Medicine 146:580-590, 2007: download the paper]
It is the same old story. Early trials were small and badly-designed. They seemed to show some effect, which was wildly exaggerated by the supplement hucksters to push sales. Eventually somebody does the trials properly, and it is found that there is little or no benefit.
Look at Figure 6 from the paper (below). It shows the size of the beneficial effect plotted against the year of publication. The black circles represent trials with a large number (over 200) patients, the white circles are smaller (and mostly badly-designed) trials. As soon as the trials are done properly, the alleged benefits vanish.
The authors conclude “Use of chondroitin in routine clinical practice should therefore be discouraged.”
Analyses by ConsumerLab.com has reported that 8 out of 20 products said to contain chondroitin failed its quality tests, with four containing between 0% and 8% of amount stated on the label.
Glucosamine shows a similar trend. Glucosamine is a synthetic chemical, but it is not a licensed medicine in the UK. It is marketed as a “food supplement”, not as a drug. It is not approved for precription on the NHS. The latest Cochrane review does not entirely rule out some benefit, but again the effects seem to get smaller as the trials get better.
Thanks to Quackwatch for the alert about the Reichenbach paper.
The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) published another bash at BSc degrees in anti-science. This one was accompanied by a defence from Brian Isbell, head of the department of complementary therapies at Westminster University. Isbell’s defence was different from Westminster’s first defence, but every bit as unsatisfactory, in my view.
Following the kerfuffle caused by Nature, THES asked for 800 words on the same topic, Bachelor of Science degrees in subjects that are anti-science (read it here). Every time I read an official validation document I am reminded inexorably of the inimitable Laurie Taylor, which is why the article starts thus.
| The vice-chancellor of Poppleton University is pleased to announce that the university’s finances have been transformed since the conversion of its old-fashioned department of physics and astronomy into the new department of alternative physics and astrology. Quality is ensured by the course validation and top Quality Assurance Agency rating, both awarded by a distinguished panel of academics with appropriate expertise in astrology. (Apologies to Laurie Taylor.) |
As it happens, Laurie Taylor’s column in the same issue of THES is on “Maintaining Standards”, and is as grimly hilarious as always. And his column in the following week (13th April) was about the report of the external examiner, Professor J.K.L. Anonymous, on the Universlity of Poppleton’s BSc in palmistry (“There were 36 first-class papers, 22 upper seconds and only one marginal failure”. Well, there’s a coincidence.
My piece ends thus.
| If a few vice-chancellors appear to value bums on seats more than honest science they should justify their views in public. |
THES plans soon to bring us some responses from the hitherto elusive vice chancellors. That should be interesting. Well they should have been interesting, but all but four of the sixteen letters that were sent by THES were ignored entirely, and the four replies that were received were deemed to be too boring to publish.
| This was accompanied by an article by Brian Isbell, who is head of the department of complementary therapies at Westminster University. He presumably had a hand in the (unsigned) response of Westminster to the Nature article, but this time the response was rather different (could that be because he’d read my comments on the original response?). This time there was no quoting of bad evidence, or the Society of Homeopaths, but rather a defence based on the fact that BSc degrees in CAM include some real scientific content. Let’s take a look at this new response. Isbell says |  Brian Isbell |
| “The shared philosophy across Westminster’s range of complementary therapy degrees is that students need a compulsory core of health sciences. This includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology and differential diagnosis. Phytochemistry and pharmacology are included for degrees in herbal medicine and nutritional therapy.” Brian Isbell |
So on Mondays and Thursdays (for example) the students must believe that response increases with dose, but on Tuesdays and Fridays they are called upon to believe that response decreases with dose.
Isbell admits as much himself when he says “at times students have to work with conflicting scientific models that may not always fit with their clinical practice”. What he does not say is how this absurd conflict is resolved, or how it can be made compatible with science or simple common sense. The course evidently teaches you how to believe several mutually contradictory things at the same time, or at least on alternating days. You don’t need to be a scientist to see that is plain daft.
Not only are some of the doctrines of CAM incompatible with science or common sense, but they are often also incompatible with each other. Homeopaths subscribe to the bizarre doctrine that the less you give the bigger the effect, but herbalists do not. Herbal medicine is nothing other than pharmacology, albeit pharmacology as practised at the beginning of the 20th century, before biological standardisation was introduced to assure constant potency of medicines. So they want to give a sensible dose, but don’t know what it is. Nutritional therapists go to the opposite extreme and want to give huge (and sometimes toxic) doses.
I have been told that herbal medicine students at Westminster are instructed not to talk to the homeopaths in another part of Isbell’s school, because they talk rubbish. They even have separate sections on the university’s intranet, so that one sort of CAM can’t be polluted by the beliefs of a different sort of CAM. Likewise, students of reflexology are taught that a small area on the big toe is connected with the pituitary gland. Not only is this incompatible with physiology, but it is also incompatible with homeopathy, herbal medicine and nutritional therapy.
The department of complementary therapies seems to resemble a collection of religious sects at war with each other, rather than anything recognisable as science.
The second plank in Isbell’s new defence is that students are taught to develop research skills. Homeopathy students get one course (out of 22) called “Methods of Research in Complementary Medicine”, and a project, “Research in Practice”. It is impossible to know what is taught on these courses because the university refuses to release any of the course materials. But I find it hard to imagine that the courses are very critical when the official response from the university cited the Spence (2005) study as though it provided evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy.
If that is the best the teachers can do, what hope is there for the students?
The day after “Science degrees without the Science“ appeared in Nature, the University of Westminster issued a statement . In my view, their statement provides the strongest grounds so far to believe that the BSc is inappropriate.
Let’s take a look at it.
| “The BSc (Hons) Health Sciences: Homeopathy is a fully validated degree that satisfies internal and external quality assurance standards.” |
Well, since the University has so far refused to release any of the documents, it is hard to judge that that validation is worth. The validation documents will, no doubt, appear eventually. Watch this space.One mechanism that is intended to maintain the standard of degrees is the external examiner. Their identities, like almost everything else, are kept secret. In the case of the Westminster BSc in homeopathy, however, we are in luck. According to the Teaching Quality Information (TQI) site, their external examiner is the “Chair of the Society of Homoeopaths”. Since April 2004, that has been Andy Kirk RSHom, a homeopath in private practice, with no degree and no scientific qualifications. He, I imagine, is not likely to question the bizarre homeopathic doctrine that the smaller the dose you give, the bigger effect you get.Correction (4 April 2007). It seems that Westminster supplied wrong information to the TQI site, and the external examiner is not Kirk. They refuse to say who it is. But watch this space.
| “The University’s stance received the backing of the Society of Homeopaths, the UK’s largest register of professional homeopaths”. |
Yes, I’m sure it did. The Society of Homeopaths is an organisation for homeopaths who have no medical qualification. Their scientific credentials can be judged from this quotation from their web site.
“If they are so dilute, how can they work?
After each dilution the mixture is vigorously agitated in a machine that delivers a calibrated amount of shaking. This is called succussion. It is thought that this process imprints the healing energy of the medicinal substance throughout the body of water (the diluent) as if a message is passed on. The message contains the healing energy.”
This is pure gobbledygook. The word “energy” is being used in a way unknown to science. It is mere armwaving in an attempt to ‘explain’ a phenomenon that almost certainly doesn’t occur anyway.
| “In fact there is considerable evidence demonstrating the clinical effectiveness of homeopathic treatment, including a large outcomes study published in 2005, of an analysis of over 23,000 outpatient consultations at the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital, in which more than 7 per cent reported clinical improvement,” |
(Notice the Freudian slip. That should be 70%)
The study to which they allude here has to be the worst paper ever published. It is the infamous Spence (2005) study. Oddly enough, this paper is one that Westminster students were asked to assess critically. Sadly, though, it hasn’t been possible to see any marked answers.
The fact that this is the best evidence that the University can produce in response to criticisms is, perhaps, the best reason ever to think that the material being taught is not, in any sense, science, and is not appropriate for a BSc. It seems that they are hoist by their own petard.