Quackery

Quackery and the Law

In the United States all products marketed as drugs must be tested in order to guarantee their relative safety before being made available to the public. There is one exception to this law. Homeopathic 'remedies' can be marketed as drugs but are except from the same safety standards as other drugs.

This goes back to 1938 when a former homeopath-turned-Senator (Royal Copeland of New York) added a provision to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that exempted homeopathy from the same oversight by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that other drugs receive. Homeopathic 'remedies' require no proof that they're safe or effective in order to be marketed and sold, unlike other drugs.

Herbal and other supplements are in a different boat. If an herb or supplement is marketed with the claim that it will cure a disease or illness, then it must be reviewed by the FDA before going to market. If there's no claim to a cure, then the FDA doesn't really make an issue of it (unless the product has been shown to cause harm). Of course, one way to get around this is to use customer testimonials. As long as the customers are giving testimonials, and they reflect the customers' honest beliefs about their experiences, then it's fair game, but that's an issue for another blog.

The point is that homeopathic 'remedies' can claim to cure disease and illness (unlike herbs and supplements), and they don't need to be tested to prove that they actually work.

Robert L. Park, in his book Voodoo Science, points out that the smoking-cessation chewing gum Nicorette had to be proven safe and effective through numerous clinical trials before it could be marketed. Whereas on the same shelf in the same store you might find another smoking-cessation gum called CigArrest. This product required no clinical trials to test its safety and effectiveness because the manufacturers claimed that the gum was homeopathic.(1).

Since homeopathic 'remedies' have no active ingredients, there would be nothing to test for in a clinical trial. But homeopaths can still claim that it's a cure. As Park points out, locating the active ingredients in homeopathic 'remedies' "would be like trying to prove that holy water has been blessed."(2).
-------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Park, Robert L. (2000). Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 58.

2. Ibid, p. 58.

Florida Evolution Update

Florida Evolution Update

I've been informed by a reliable authority that the Florida School Board's 4-3 decision to require that evolution be taught in public schools is in fact a victory for evolution, even though the science standards will now refer to evolution as "the scientific theory of evolution."

It would seems that conservative Christians were lobbying the school board to refer to evolution as a theory, in the sense that evolution is only a theory, as in a hunch or a guess.

Well, the school board granted this request, but not how you might imagine. They decided that the phrase "the scientific theory of..." will precede a host of scientific theories such as evolution, plate tectonics, relativity, and so on.

What's great is that these science standards explicitely state that "a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer." And the standards also state that evolution is a "fundamental concept underlying all of biology."

I don't think the conservative Christians were pleased with this move by the school board. I'm glad I was wrong in my initial blog (which I've deleted). This is good news indeed.

Here's a link to a report about the Florida decision by the National Center for Science Education.

Synchronicity, Carl Jung, and The I Ching: Nothing but Ordinary Coincidence

[[Some background information on Synchronicity and The I Ching.]]

C. G. Jung was impressed by the ability of the I Ching (The Chinese Book of Changes) to offer clear answers to important questions. Jung had previously coined the term synchronicity, a principle which he used to explain how the I Ching works, stating that “...whatever is born or done in this moment of time has the quality of this moment of time.”[1] Synchronicity deals with meaningful coincidences that are not connected in a cause and effect relationship, but are somehow more than mere chance. In relation to the I Ching, Jung says, “…synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events…as well as the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.”[2]

Unfortunately, the only real proof that synchronicity is behind the appearance of two coincidental events is simply that one finds the occurrence of those events significant. The problem is that in life we’re exposed to so many events that the probability is quite high that some coincidences will seem dramatic.[3]

Even Jung himself is not clear about how synchronicity works. At one point he maintains that the outer event and the mental state are simultaneous.[4] Later he maintains that a mental state coincides with a “(more or less simultaneous) external event,” or with a “future event that is distant in time.”[5] The writer Arthur Koestler, a popularizer of much of Jung’s work, found Jung confusing on the matter of synchronicity, writing “One wonders why Jung created these unnecessary complications by coining a term which implies simultaneity, and then explaining that it does not mean what it means.”[6] As is often the hallmark of many pseudoscientific claims, Jung’s synchronicity principle is a “nonrefutable or irrefutable hypothesis.”[7]

----------
Notes:
1. Wilhelm, Richard. (1931, 1969). The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, p. 142.
2. Jung. C. G. (1950, 1979). “Forward to the I Ching.” The I Ching or Book of Changes. Trans. from the Chinese by Richard Wilhelm. Trans. from the German by Cary F. Baynes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. xxiv.
3. Dean, Geoffrey; Loptson, Peter; Kelly, Ivan; et al. (2005). “Theories of Astrology: A Comprehensive Survey.” Correlation 1996, 15(1): 17-52, p.7.
4. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p. 441 (paragraph 850).
5. Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p. 526 (paragraph 984).
6. Koestler, Arthur (1972, 1974). The Roots of Coincidence. London: Pan Books Ltd., p. 95.
7. McGowan, Don (1994). What Is Wrong with Jung. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, p. 137.

Aliens over Texas

Aliens over Texas

Apparently over two dozen people saw some strange lights in the night sky above the small town of Stephenville, Texas a few days ago, but no one took a photo or a video. In this day and age when almost every cell phone has a camera, why were there no photos, especially when the lights were visible for nearly five minutes?

It's enough to make you suspicious. Without photos or video there's nothing that can be examined by impartial scientists.

Perhaps Stephenville needs an economic boost. This will certainly bring in the tourists. A new Roswell perhaps?

As Carl Sagan once said about UFO sightings, they could be: "unconventional aircraft, conventional aircraft with unusual lighting patterns, high-altitude balloons, luminescent insects, planets seen under unusual atmospheric conditions, optical mirages and loomings, lenticular clouds, ball lightning, sundogs, meteors including green fireballs, and satellites, nosecones, and rocket boosters spectacularly reentering the atmosphere."

------------
Quotation from: Sagan, Carl. (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, pp.70-71.

Flying Saucers: Discovered or Invented?

Flying Saucers: Discovered or Invented?

On June 24, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State when he saw nine shiny objects quickly moving across the sky like "geese in formation." After a few minutes they were gone. Arnold described the objects themselves as "crescent shaped," and that they "moved like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." The Associated Press misquoted Arnold, describing what he saw as "flying saucers." Later, Arnold complained about being misquoted, saying, "They said that I'd said they were saucer-like. I said they flew in saucer-like fashion" (Clancy 2005, pp. 91-92).

Arnold's misquoted statement about flying saucers was published in 150 newspapers, and soon afterwards hundreds of reports of flying saucers began to surface. What's strange is that hardly anyone seems to have reported seeing crescent-shaped or boomerang-shaped objects as Arnold had reported. It's not hard to see the suggestive power of the media in all these reports of flying saucers. And just a few years later Hollywood made its first contribution to the flying saucer craze with the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, firmly embedding the iconic image of the flying saucer in the American psyche. Some UFO sightings have included variations on the saucer theme, with some objects described as cylindrical or spherical, but by and large the most common shape is the saucer. This should certainly give us pause, serious pause.
--------------
Quote from: Clancy, Susan A. (2005). Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Abducted by Aliens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 91-92.

Homeopathy Mixup in France

The equivalent of the FDA in France (the AFFSAPS) revealed startling news this past November about a mislabeling of homeopathic remedies. Here are two short exerpts:

"AFSSAPS has been informed by Laboratoires Boiron of an inversion of the labelling of two homeopathic medicaments, The bottles labelled 'mother tincture of Gingko biloba' contain mother tincture of Equisetum arvense and vice versa."

"AFSSAPS has said that this mix-up does not pose any particular risk . . ."

Why does this mixup pose no risk, you might ask? Unlike mislabeling real drugs, homeopathic remedies are nothing but water (read following blog for details).

Consider this bit from the exchange between Lord Broers and Ms. Kate Chatfield of the Society of Homeopaths in England from the minutes of evidence to the Select Committee on Science and Technology.

Lord Broers: I have a simple, technical question about homeopathy and drugs. Is it possible to distinguish between homeopathic drugs after they have been diluted? Is there any means of distinguishing one from the other?

Ms. Chatfield: Only by the label.

Well, there you have it. There's no way to distinguish them because (I'll say it again) they're nothing but water!

Thanks to DC's Improbable Science for this gem.

Homeopathy: Bogus Medicine

Homeopathy, that most bogus of medical practices, is based on two basic principles:

1. Like cures like.

At first blush this might seem like something akin to a vaccination, where one receives a small dose of a virus (often a dead virus) to help prevent one from falling ill with the viral infection. But a vaccination works by triggering the immune response so that your body will fight against that viral infection when it's encountered in the environment.

Homeopathy is nothing like this. If you have a skin infection whose symptoms might vaguely resemble poison ivy, then ingesting a small dose of poison ivy would be the cure for you. Do you have seizures? Ingesting large quantities of plants from the nightshade family can also cause seizures. Therefore, the cure for you is to ingest small quantities of plants from the nightshade family.

2. The smallest effective dose.

According to homeopathy, you want to ingest a very diluted quantity of the "medicine." In fact, the more diluted the substance the better it is. Most homeopathic remedies are so diluted that not even one molecule of the active ingredient remains in the "medicine." It's nothing but water. But this is special water. This water somehow has a memory of the active ingredient, and it is this memory in the water that acts as a cure. That's right, the memory of the water. Or as a homeopath might describe it: An imprint of the substance has been retained in the water.

Is there any scientific evidence for such an imprint or memory in water? None. But that doesn't stop homeopaths. Science, they say, hasn't figured out how to identify or measure this imprint yet. Homeopaths don't require observational evidence of imprints or memories in water. They just know that these imprints exist. But how they know is anyone's guess.

This sounds like it was made up by some 18th century quack, before the rise of modern medicine. And in fact that's the case. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) came up with homeopathy. And while scientific medicine has improved over the years through research, studies and evidence, homeopathy hasn't changed one drop since the day of Hahnemann.

What's more disturbing is that homeopaths claim that their "cures" actually work. But every properly designed scientific test of homeopathy has shown that it works no better than a placebo. All experiments of homeopathy that show otherwise have been proven to use flawed methodologies in their experiments.

Save your time and money. Don't waste it on homeopathy. It's only water.