Swimming with sharks

October 30th, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, cosmetics, express | 4 Comments »

Swimming with sharks

Ben Goldacre
Thursday October 30, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· Dolphins will save us all, according to the International Journal of Bad Science – sorry, I mean the Express. “Swimming with dolphins is increasingly recognised as a therapy for clinical depression, autism, and other neurological conditions,” it says, before regaling us with tales of autistic children speaking their first words. All sounds jolly nice, if a bit sentimental. No bad science there. Although no evidence on Medline. I was just wondering, how does it work? Over to Dr Horace Dobbs: “One theory is that the sounds they make coming through the water interact with our central nervous systems and produce tiny holes which can boost energy and stimulate the immune system,” he tells the Express.

· Tiny holes? A bunch of holes might well stimulate the immune system, but who says that’s a good thing? In the past week, it’s been reported that echinacea, Geranium Egypt aromatherapy and aspartame are all immune system stimulators. But could stimulating the immune system, if such a thing is possible, actually be bad for you? Holistic Vets spammed me last week trying to get me to feed my cat “immune stimulating” mushrooms, weirdly, I swear, on the actual day the cat died from leukaemia, a disease of an overactive immune system.

· Do these things come with a health warning? Clearly not. Although best-selling author Andrew Weil says: “I advise people with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus to avoid long-term use of any of the immune-enhancing botanicals. But I think it’s perfectly fine for them to take echinacea or astragalus short-term (up to 10 days or so) to treat colds and other minor infections.” Based on what exactly? Well, he is a doctor. And Dr Dobbs is, it turns out, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, no less. You can buy his book, Dolphin Healing, on Amazon at the moment for 1p.

· Which is a lot cheaper than the bottle of “Organics” conditioner with collagen and amino acids (your hair is dead, I repeat, your hair is dead) that I have before me. May I point out, before I go, that the ingredients of this conditioner are as follows: Aqua, Cetearyl Alcohol, Dimethiconol, Cetrimonium Chloride, C11-15 Pareth-7, C11-15 Pareth-5, Parfum, Tocopheryl Acetate, Citric Acid, Amodimethicone, Cetyl Hydroxyethylcellulose, TEA-Dodecylbenzenesulfonate, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Hydroxide, Isoleucine, Lysine, CI 47005, CI 4700, CI 42051, and Collagen Amino Acids.

Attack of the killer tomatoes?

October 23rd, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, nutritionists, space, very basic science | 3 Comments »

Attack of the killer tomatoes?

Ben Goldacre
Thursday October 23, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· I was excited to hear about the Chinese space programme’s exotic sounding “space breeding” project. In most other nations this means studying how plants grow in space, and producing food for orbiting astronauts: but in China, it means using radiation to breed giant space tomatoes. Seriously. According to Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, China’s Shenzhou manned capsule, launched last November, carried seeds of various vegetables and 30 types of herbal medicine. Scientists from the Space Breeding Research Centre claim that rice seeds returned from space have a 10-15% greater yield but, most excitingly, report on a new strain of tomato, called “Space Tomato No 1″, which can grow to be as heavy as 800 grams. That’s 800 grams each. And China Today says that “in Daxing, a suburban county of Beijing, many farmers have become interested in a new kind of large pepper, which they call “space pepper”. Each space pepper weighs 350 to 500 grams, and has a high vitamin C content. Its yield has increased by some 30% over ordinary peppers, and it has proved to have good marketability. The space pepper was shown on TV not long ago as a symbol of changing Chinese society.

· Chinese scientists, it is reported, explain that these comic book mutations take place because of the radiation in space and the decreased gravity. Meanwhile, western commentators have expressed surprise at all the fuss since you can easily stick a radioactive source next to your seeds without going into space, and, much like nuclear fallout, the vast majority of mutations would be harmful anyway.

· The American Physical Society claim that when they contacted Xinhua they were assured that “in China the radiation effect is always positive, leading to bigger and better vegetables that will revolutionise agriculture”. So maybe if I tip a load of radioactive material on to my testicles in China, I’ll impregnate my girlfriend with giant space babies.

· Meanwhile, more peddlers of the obvious: researchers at Harvard University have found that when beer is cheaper, and readily available in large quantities, students drink more…

Anyone up for a challenge?

October 9th, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, hate mail, homeopathy | 2 Comments »

Anyone up for a challenge?

Thursday October 9, 2003
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· I’ve been invited to put my money where my sarcastic little mouth is. Soroush Ebrahimi, “a professional and licensed homeopath”, is angered by my dismissive attitude towards expensive therapies not backed up by systematic reviews of the research data. He has written in offering to prove the efficacy of homeopathic remedies – by making me very unwell with them. First I have to have a checkup from a doctor and a licensed homeopath to make sure I am “well and fit for the ordeal”, and then he will feed me homeopathic remedies diluted 1:100 exactly 30 times. “When you have had enough and can no longer endure, we will list the symptoms you report and can be observed. We get you and your witness to sign them as being correct and then will compare it with the symptoms listed in [a] sealed envelope.” Then he’ll make me better again. With homeopathy. Apparently I can’t just stick his water on my cornflakes, but instead have to sit around in a room containing the sealed envelope, witnesses, video recorders and, I fear, Mr Ebrahimi making funny faces at me. If anyone thinks they have the time to spare, email me.

· In a week when I’ve had more hate mail than usual (“your stance has all the hallmarks of being an ideological rather than a scientific one”, being the most rational), it was a relief to see the bad science still coming in strong. Reader Jenny Haxell writes: “The packaging of Ecover’s squirty surface cleaner SquirtEco sports the legend: ‘Safe around food: plant based ingredients.’ So I guess Socrates couldn’t have died from drinking hemlock then, and we’ve nothing to fear from ricin…”

· Our collective joy at winning the Nobel prize for MRI scanners is only slightly tempered by the shameful lack of recognition for other great British inventions also taking advantage of the peculiar properties of paramagnetic substances. The Tecno AO, available – I suspect exclusively – from the Healthy House catalogue I have been sent by Andrew Currie, allegedly produces magnetic radiation in the 8-12Hz range to induce alpha waves in your brain. This, they say, will relax you as you sit at a computer, and it counteracts the dangerous effects of high- frequency energy on your “bioenergetic field”. If it were true it would have worrying implications, not just because alpha waves are incompatible with concentration and work. Still, apparently, it works because it contains a paramagnetic substance: the most common of which are water and air.

The homeopaths strike back

October 2nd, 2003 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, celebs, dna, homeopathy, magnets, placebo, very basic science | 5 Comments »

The homeopaths strike back

Ben Goldacre
Thursday October 2, 2003
The Guardian

· You probably don’t have to be a physics expert like bad science spotter Professor Donald Simanek to spot that the new £2 coin, celebrating our scientific heritage, has an odd number of gears interlocking around the edge, creating a system that could not possibly turn.

· Down at Tower Bridge, illusionist David Blaine has genetically modified supermen working on his security team. They only got worried about people shining laser pointers at Blaine because, as one of them told the Daily Mirror: “In America a dot of light means someone’s aiming a gun at you using an infrared sight.” That’s “infrared” as in below the range of human vision.

· Meanwhile, according to Jack Straw, speaking in parliament last week, Iraq is a difficult place to find weapons of mass destruction in because it’s twice the size of France. That’s presumably the same Iraq that is 437,072 sq km, as opposed to France, which is (according to the, er, CIA World Factbook) 547,030 sq km.

· But there’s more. Writing about the unbelievably excellent Henry Wellcome artefacts exhibition at the British Museum, Time Out tells us about “a lock of George III’s hair that is undergoing DNA analysis to determine whether the king was, in fact, mad”. Looks like psychiatrists are out of a job, then: perhaps his DNA could tell us if he was bad and dangerous to know too?

· And just in case you thought I was going to give complementary therapy bashing a rest this week, may I proudly offer you the fantastic randomised control study from this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association which shows that magnet therapy does not work for heel pain. That’s one quack cure down, only 5,363,672 to go.

· One last thing. I have received, from the director of the Society of Homeopaths, what is possibly the longest letter ever written to any newspaper on any subject. How any alternative therapist who has ever read a newspaper in Britain could possibly claim that they get a bad deal, considering that dark ages superstition has now become the contractually-enforced journalistic norm, baffles me, but in the spirit in which this epic letter was clearly intended I present it here diluted one part in one hundred thousand, in the vain hope that it has more impact on you than it does on me: “Placeb…”