Dara O’Briain on homeopathy from Derren Brown Blog

Great stand-up bit about homeopathy, new age "thinking," and other follies. (Salty language ahoy) (Via Derren Brown)

[#1 posted by voiceofreason, August 11, 2009 12:58 PM]

Awesome!

[#2 posted by phisrow, August 11, 2009 1:03 PM]

In before fuzzy-headed "What's the harm?" wingeing...

[#3 posted by SKR, August 11, 2009 1:18 PM]

LOL!!!!1111!

[#4 posted by Apreche, August 11, 2009 1:24 PM]

Huh, Mark seems to have changed his tune. A few years ago he believed that Zicam was the real deal.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/01/cold-cure-zicam-on-t.html

Glad to see he's come to his senses as opposed to having lost his sense (of smell).

[#5 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 11, 2009 1:28 PM]

Dara O'Briain is a comedic legend, and a champion of science and reason to boot. It's well worth chasing up his various standup and tv appearances.

(and: YAY!)

[#6 posted by Mark Frauenfelder, August 11, 2009 1:29 PM]

Zicam is not homeopathic. Since when does plain water (which is what homeopathic medicine is) cause a person to lose his or her sense of smell?

The company just claimed it was homepathic in order to skirt some kind of stupid medical labeling regulations.

[#7 posted by SkullHyphy, August 11, 2009 1:38 PM]

Once my mom took me on a whale-watching boat trip for my birthday. I get sea sick really easily and she decided to bring some homeopathic motion sickness remedy instead of the real stuff because that would make me "drowsy." Coffee works fine to combat drowsiness, btw; I don't think I would've been in danger of passing out and falling over the side of the boat. As it turned I did spend quite a lot of time at the side of the boat in the frigid drizzle surrounding the Farallones. Now, if this stuff were marketed as a homeopathic weight loss method I would not argue its effectiveness. If whales are repelled by the scent of human vomit, or whatever I had for breakfast, that could explain why we didn't see any that day.

[#8 posted by Three Pistols, August 11, 2009 1:53 PM]

New Scientist article on chiropractors.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227101.100-what-you-should-know-about-chiropractic.html?full=true

[#9 posted by Dr jayus, August 11, 2009 2:00 PM]

And this after Ben Goldacre doing stand-up on The Now Show last week:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/fricomedy/fricomedy_20090807-1855a.mp3

[#10 posted by error404, August 11, 2009 2:03 PM]

@ Dr JAYUS

That link won't work for peeps outside the UK, which is a rotten shame as Ben Goldacre's bit on The Now Show was hilarious and righteous.

Dara O'Briain, bless the big, lad he's a fecking riot.

[#11 posted by knodi, August 11, 2009 2:05 PM]

Can someone explain his last joke? Who's Noddy?

PS - homeopathy is tragic. I know some elderly people who have no savings and live paycheck-to-paycheck, and I really worry about what they're going to do a decade from now... and when I think of the enormous amount they've spent on homeopathy over the years.... Ugh.

[#12 posted by scottunder, August 11, 2009 2:07 PM]

Noddy is a children's show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjc8Iq2JuEY

[#13 posted by KeithIrwin, August 11, 2009 2:09 PM]

Mark is completely correct about Zicam not being homeopathic. It wasn't labeling laws they wanted to skirt, though, it was safety laws. The FDA laws were written in 1938, back at a time when homeopathy was quite popular in the US. To make it easier to get them passed, they made a special exception for homeopathic remedies. The laws say that either medicines must be tested and approved by the FDA or they must be based on ingredients from the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, which is a book organized by a non-profit homeopathic council.

Somehow the makers of Zicam got their active ingredient, zinc gluconate, added to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia despite the fact that it is not an ingredient used by homeopathic practitioners.

Homeopathic ingredients are diluted to form the "medicine". The most popular and common rate of dilution is 30C, which is to say 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Zicam was diluted at 1C, which is to say 1:100. (The link Mark provided says 1X, which is 1:10, but Zicam's website and package say 1C, which is 1:100.)

Considering these things, it is very clear that Zicam is not anything which would really be consider homeopathic, but it's labeled that way anyway.

The reason they did this was simple: they wanted to avoid the FDA approval process because they could not prove their ingredients safe (because it isn't and then knew from previous studies of similar zinc compounds that it wasn't likely to be safe). Because they used an ingredient which was in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, diluted it, and labeled the package as homeopathic and with the ingredient and dilution rate, they counted as homeopathic under the law and avoided the FDA's safety requirements.

This is a loophole which should be closed to avoid this sort of problem. Specifically, FDA rules should require a minimum level of dilution in order to qualify as homeopathic. Specifically, I would recommend at least 24X or 12C, which would limit the dose to one or two molecules of the original substance, thus insuring it's status as a placebo.

[#14 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 2:12 PM]

ThreePistols, chiropractic is not homeopathy.

If you don't believe aligning your spine will make you feel better, there's not much I can say to that. Please, believe whatever you want!

Personally, though, my back and neck feel better when they are physically positioned in the way nature intended, where the structure functions optimally. It's not magical, it's engineering.

Homeopathy is a way to provoke the placebo effect. It does not change your body physically, your mind is doing that all by itself.

[#15 posted by Rindan, August 11, 2009 2:12 PM]

That link won't work for peeps outside the UK, which is a rotten shame as Ben Goldacre's bit on The Now Show was hilarious and righteous.

Not true... unless I have craftily fooled the intertubes into thinking I in the UK by living in Cambridge Massachusetts in the USA. I can hear it fine.

[#16 posted by Merlin Silk, August 11, 2009 2:18 PM]

Always a good idea to ridicule what you don't understand, right?

What an idiot, this Galileo, to think whatever he thought - everybody knows that the earth is flat and that you fall off the edge when you go too far out - duh!

Science - a self-fulfilling prophecy - when staying within it's religious boundaries everything is true within its limits, this is how it is set up.

What's the three stages of new discoveries again?
1. they ridicule
2. they fight
3. it was always obvious

Compare taking some water that might not work to the 50,000 yearly 'accidental' deaths in the medical temples called hospitals, or the million dollar donation checks received by the UCLA cancer center to do - what - voodoo - called chemo therapy which tries to dose the poison so the patient just does not die.

medicine, a science - give me a break!

[#17 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 11, 2009 2:19 PM]

Tangentially related (because I found it after perusing the Derren Brown blog) and wholly off-topic.. but funny:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/hard-drive-weight-increasing/

[#18 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 11, 2009 2:27 PM]

Original here, better comments:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistahardware/thread/720108ee-0a9c-4090-b62d-bbd5cb1a7605

[#19 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 2:31 PM]

Is there room for a technical stock market analyst in his sack?

[#20 posted by Moriarty, August 11, 2009 2:35 PM]

Merkin Silk,

1) I won't apologize for ridiculing something so ridiculous. If I didn't understand what it was, I wouldn't be ridiculing it.

2) Comparing oneself to Galileo is the universal call of the crackpot. You would be amazed how often and in what contexts the poor guy is invoked. Second only to Hitler, I'd guess.

3) The educated world knew the world was round and roughly how big it was for millenia before Galileo. (Hooray empiricism!) Galileo's deal, among other things, was supporting Copernicus, who provided the evidence against geocentrism. (Hooray for empiricism again!)

4) Calling chemo therapy "voodoo" while angrily defending homeopathy is more irony than should be handled without proper protective gear.

5) "Accidental?" So, the implication is that doctors aren't just conspiring to lie to you and rob you, but murder you as well?

[#21 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 11, 2009 2:47 PM]

MerlinSilk, brilliant!

How long can you keep it going?

Thisisgonnabehilarious!

[#22 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 2:48 PM]

Merkin Silk:

When a chemotherapy treatment is found to have no more benefit than a questionable placebo, it is struck off.

When homeopathy is found to have no more benefit than a questionable placebo, it is sold vigorously.

I hope you can now tell the difference.

[#23 posted by automaton_be, August 11, 2009 2:51 PM]

@16: Not every crackpot pseudoscience that is originally ridiculed gets redeemed later on. A very very tiny minority turn out not to be pseudoscience after all. But generally speaking, the 'scientific establishment' is usually correct.

[#24 posted by Bugs, August 11, 2009 2:54 PM]

Merlin Silk:
For every brilliant visionary that is ridiculed then eventually proved right, there are countless ideas that are ridiculed and then forgotten because they're bullshit.

I invite you to watch the clip and pay special heed to the bit about herbal medicines. Paraphrasing: "herbal medicines have been around for thousands of years. We tested them and the ones that worked are now just called "medicine"; the rest are now just a nice soup and some pot pourri".

The same applies to homeopathy, accupuncture and piles of other crap. It's not that scientists just choose to ignore them: they've been extensively tested and found to be no better than placebo. Never mind that we think the underlying logic is crap (and that all evidence so far supports the idea that it's crap), if there was a function it would've been spotted by now. It's a simple choice: faith verses evidence. I know which one I'm going to pick.

If nothing else, if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think we'd be using it?

As for the cancer medicine stuff, I work in medical research and can assure you that the logic behind medicine is very much a science. Like most complaints from the witchdoctor fraternity, your comment about cancer medicines can be easily answered if you look for actual evidence-based information instead of just hysteria on the internet. Put simply, a cancer cell is a human cell that has acquired faults in the systems that would normally prevent it from dividing when the body tells it to stop. Basically the only differences in a typical cancer cell are:
1) It keeps the "dividing" programme on even when not receiving signals from the rest of the body telling it to divide.
2) Its "stop dividing" signals have been lost
3) Its "there's something wrong; commit cellular suicide" programme is lost.

That's it. There's no magical difference; they're just ordinary cells got out of control. So designing drugs to kill a cancer cell but leave healthy cells alone is very, very hard. Since the only real difference is that cancer cells divide faster, most modern treatments are designed to kill cells that are dividing quickly. As you'd imagine, there's a lot of "friendly fire" here, as perfectly healthy cells often need to divide too, and so make themselves targets for the drugs.

The way you describe it makes it clear that you don't understand the treatments you're talking about and certainly don't understand the underlying molecular biology that we've spent decades and enormous resources on unravelling. So now who's mocking something they don't understand? The difference is that science is built on solid evidence, open review and critical analysis, as opposed to "I have a good feeling about this".

Finally, a more personal note: The assertion that we could cure cancer (or other diseases) but don't because it'll damage our egos or pocketbooks is sick and deeply offensive. Scientists are not faceless automatons or far-off beings; we're people too. A lot of us in cancer research have ended up here because we've lost loved ones to forms of the disease and want to contribute to a cure in their memories. And yet every day we get accused of deliberate callousness just short of genocide by fuckwads on the internet. Thanks for that.

[#25 posted by gbv23, August 11, 2009 3:00 PM]

Acupuncture works and is accepted by "the committee" so thats not a good example of quackery. In general, we're moving towards an understanding of the subjective and the role of thoughts, beliefs and expectations in the creation of our own experience. In other words, the old paradigm is finally dying,

[#26 posted by Bugs, August 11, 2009 3:10 PM]

GBV23
What has accupuncture been proven to treat? The only big, randomised, blinded trial that I'm aware of is this one.

Patients with chronic lower back pain were given physiotherapy, real acupuncture or "sham acupuncture", i.e. "sticking the needles in at random". You can read the abstract but the key quote is their conclusion, here:

We found a significant improvement by traditional acupuncture in chronic LBP compared to routine care (physiotherapy) but not compared to sham-acupuncture. The trial demonstrated a placebo effect of traditional acupuncture in chronic LBP.

(my emphasis).
So traditional, highly precise acupuncture was no better than jabbing the patients at random. And, if you read the study, the effects followed exactly the same pattern that you'd expect from a placebo treatment for this condition.

A quick leaf through pubmed brings up a small heap of papers describing different experiments that produced similar results. I'm not sold on acupuncture.

[#27 posted by libelle, August 11, 2009 3:47 PM]

@26 Bugs:
Interesting. The study you mention indicates a significant improvement over routine care. It might show that the "meridians" and qi points and other aspects of acupuncture are bogus, but it doesn't prove a placebo effect. In the absence of more extensive evidence, it might actually indicate there is some physiological benefit to (randomly) sticking needles into oneself.

There are some unexpected yet documented pathways for nerve signal disruption (like topical application of capsaicin to treat muscle spasms), so there could be some similar mechanism at work...

Just for reference (and to explain my True Believer tone), I suffered a shoulder injury (adhesive capsulitis) a few years ago. There are no medical treatments for that that net out as being better than doing nothing. Even so, we tried most of the things in the literature. Painkillers, physical therapy, and anti-inflammatories of various sorts did nothing. It's one of those things where the pain is ceaseless, and at a level prevents sleep.
I was going crazy. Acupuncture, tried in desperation, worked for me.

Now, anecdotes like this prove nothing. I had a Christian Scientist grandmother who could effectively pray away her colds, so I know the power of psychosomatic healing. And frankly, I don't care if that's what it was. It does lead me to be hesitant about outright rejecting acupuncture, though.

[#28 posted by knodi, August 11, 2009 4:09 PM]

The Anti-Homeopathy crowd needs to get our acts together. Don't let them steer the debate to "science doesn't know everything" and reply with "yeah, but you don't either", and get into all the memory of water bullshit...

If we stick to the talking point "Look, straight up, we've tried it on people, and it doesn't work better than a placebo", we might have a chance of swaying skeptics. Explaining scientific reasoning to people who don't know or care what science is, is a fool's errand.

[#29 posted by ianm, August 11, 2009 4:53 PM]

To Anonymous:

If you don't believe aligning your spine will make you feel better, there's not much I can say to that. Please, believe whatever you want!

It's called yoga. There are many more beneficial ways to adjust your spinal alignment, posture and the surrounding muscles in far safer and more effective ways then through the violence of a chiropractic adjustment. Physiotherapy based on anatomy and study, and yoga, which combines the alignment of the spine, with the hips and the supporting muscles, are both manifestly superior to a sham practise invented by some religious nut in the US in the 1800's.

Chiropractic is like drug addiction - your spine will be great, just keep coming back for adjustments - whereas with something like yoga, you can do it yourself (for free even) and it has the added benefit of cardiovascular health, flexibility, proper posture and the muscle development required for all of those. None of these benefits are available in chiropractic, neither is the scientific rigour nor medical best practices.

There are good reasons why chiropractics, despite their best efforts, are not able to affiliate themselves with medical schools - the medical schools know a failed methodology when they see one.

[#30 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 5:23 PM]

Bugs @ 24

if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think we'd be using it?

if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think the medical/pharmacology industrial complex would be trying to keep you off it?

Not defending homeopathy here, just stating a basic fact of capitalism as applied to health.

[#31 posted by JoshuaTerrell, August 11, 2009 5:42 PM]

@21

Merlin Silk wins Troll of The Month.

1000 Internets to you!

You would think that people would figure these things out sooner.

[#32 posted by ghostpoint, August 11, 2009 5:48 PM]

There are occasions to group things like contemporary medicine, homeopathy, crystals, acupuncture, chiropractic adjustment, and so forth together, or apart.
The basic comparison between standard western medicine and 'alternative medicine' is valid when one or the other fails. As a cancer survivor I would say that modern medical interventions are developing at an astounding rate. I would rate hospital medicine very highly for cancer, surgery and traumatic interventions. For chronic pain and well-being, not so much.
I think homeopathy is harmless as an inexpensive self-treatment placebo- maybe in England it has a different role so go at it.
Acupuncture I give much higher credence to for use as complementary medicine for functional ailments. You just have to understand its place. There are huge holes in treatment under the Western model. For instance if you are suffering from insomnia or stomach problems or menstrual problems and your doctor checks you out and throws his or her hands up and gives you some opiate or other non-targeted medicine, and didn't miss anything, you probably would do much better with acupuncture, provided your practitioner has any talent. Many low-level ailments are basically caused by stress, which too often can be grossly habituated.
It is definitely not the case that someone did a study once and found acupuncture ineffective. There are a gazillion studies to wade through if that is your thing- my take on it is that study design needs reevaluation as to the concept of 'sham acupuncture'. The studies typically aren't meant to review acupuncture styles, and there are many, as it is meant to evaluate acupuncture on the whole. Sham acupuncture is too much acupuncture itself to suffice as a study control.
Sure- I agree that often people are influenced by their sense of identity with or resentment of modernity in their choice of medicines.
I say go with efficacy. If you polled me, I would say acupuncture is more than a placebo for functional, not structural issues.

[#33 posted by Antinous / Moderator, August 11, 2009 5:58 PM]

Um, I went from frequent, severe back and neck pain to rare, mild back and neck pain after six months or so of chiropractic. You can see the difference on my x-rays. And the result has lasted for 20 years.

[#34 posted by W. James Au, August 11, 2009 7:18 PM]

To play devil's advocate for a bit, actual licensed doctors commonly prescribe placebos to their patients, even though they know them to have no medical efficacy, because they often seem to yield positive results, even though scientists haven't figured out exactly how. So the bright line this dude is trying to describe doesn't actually exist. And if a homeopath charges patients less than a placebo-prescribing medical doctor and doesn't make any life-endangering claims, and it seems to be at least as useful as placebos, where's the harm? Or for that matter, the moral high horse?

[#35 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 7:23 PM]

The problem with chiropractic is not so much with the claims that it relieves neck and back pain, it's with the true believer practitioners who think it can cure - almost literally - anything, which is obviously bullshit.

Loved the video. Where can I purchase one of those sacks and hittiin' sticks he mentioned?

[#36 posted by sabik, August 11, 2009 7:33 PM]

@anonymous #30

if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think the medical/pharmacology industrial complex would be trying to keep you off it?

Trying? Possibly, though not very likely. Nobody wants a death every 10 seconds on their conscience while they sit on a cancer cure.

Even if they tried, though, they could never succeed: (a) internally, their own workers would rebel, break NDAs, publish under pseudonyms; (b) in competition with other pharmaceutical firms, the cure would come out; and (c) there are universities and other schools and research groups that are not beholden to the industrial complex.

[#37 posted by Takuan, August 11, 2009 7:55 PM]

just legislate that people who espouse homoeopathy may legally only use it , and it alone, when sick. The problem will be solved in two generations.

[#38 posted by jaytkay, August 11, 2009 8:07 PM]

Um, I went from frequent, severe back and neck pain to rare, mild back and neck pain after six months or so of chiropractic. You can see the difference on my x-rays. And the result has lasted for 20 years.

Is pain darker or lighter than not-pain on an x-ray?

[#39 posted by decultured, August 11, 2009 8:39 PM]

@ anonymous #30

if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think the medical/pharmacology industrial complex would be trying to keep you off it?

I HATE this argument. If the medical industry was run by a panel of 5 guys, I might buy it, but with hundreds of thousands of doctors, researchers, schools, non-profits and others working in the industry there is no possible way that sheer capitalism could keep a cure or better treatment secret. In fact, capitalism supports finding a cure. Don't you think the biggest competitor to a company selling a drug wold want to release a cure to knock down their competition and make a buck?

As long as there is healthy competition and opportunity, capitalism will always trend towards progress. It is only when consolidation and monopolization occur that it stops.

[#40 posted by peterbruells, August 11, 2009 9:24 PM]

@20 and lets not forget that Galileo didn't have that good data. It was not just a case of handing someone a telescope and look for themselves - one had to be trained on these hopscotch optical systems scientists used, making results hard to reproduce by others. And his notion of circular paths introduced a lot of errors when applied to the actual data, which was better explained by the old system. (Wrong as it was.) Plus,actively trying to piss on the pope and ridiculing everyone who disagreed with him didn't he either.

[#41 posted by noen, August 11, 2009 9:29 PM]

No no no Takuan, the supply of stupid and gullible is infinite. It doesn't even obey the 2nd law, the more you use it, the more there is.

[#42 posted by Brettspiel, August 11, 2009 9:58 PM]

IANM: Wasn't yoga also invented by some religious nuts?

Also, which yogi are affiliated with medical schools?

[#43 posted by Jonathan Badger, August 11, 2009 10:31 PM]

@Antinous

Can't you understand that you cannot conclude anything significant from a sample size of N=1? Your personal experience is irrelevant because it can be just as easily argued that the pain would have gone away without any treatment and it is simply a coincidence that it went away after seeing a chiropractor. You need actual controlled trials of thousands of people to determine if there is any actual effect.

This is why Simon Singh correctly called chiropractic "bogus"; unlike in real medicine there are no such trials -- it tells you everything you need to know that rather than presenting any evidence in their support, the chiropractors sued Singh. Just like the Church of Scientology would do. Actually, maybe that's what the chiropractors should do; start a Church of Chiropractic and claim that those mean scientists are infringing on their religion.

[#44 posted by JEM, August 11, 2009 10:37 PM]

Now, I wouldn't use homeopathy for anything serious, but it worked to "cure" warts for me and several other people in my family when no other over the counter method would. We probably could have cured them with buttercups and frog slime too, if such things came in convincing little pill bottles.

[#45 posted by Antinous / Moderator, August 11, 2009 10:41 PM]

Your personal experience is irrelevant because it can be just as easily argued that the pain would have gone away without any treatment and it is simply a coincidence that it went away after seeing a chiropractor.

And the fact that I had significant improvement in spinal lordosis and kaiphosis on x-ray? Coincidence is about as likely as magical intervention. But then skepticism is a religion, isn't it?

[#46 posted by Antinous / Moderator, August 11, 2009 10:45 PM]

Also, which yogi are affiliated with medical schools?

Well, the anatomy portion of my yoga teacher training was taught by a practicing neurologist.

[#47 posted by Jonathan Badger, August 11, 2009 10:53 PM]

@Antinous
The fact is bodies can and do heal themselves all the time. You have to show evidence *beyond* random variation to show efficacy of a treatment. That's the whole point of doing studies. And no, skepticism isn't a religion. Religion is all about *not* requiring evidence for one's beliefs.

[#48 posted by robulus, August 11, 2009 11:15 PM]

Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it would stop.

WIN!

[#49 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 11:26 PM]

Dara O'Briain attended college in University College, Dublin, where he studied maths and theoretical physics!! Not the typical background for a standup comedian.

[#50 posted by Cornan, August 11, 2009 11:30 PM]

One thing to keep in mind is that there are two kinds of chiropractors.

One kind is the extreme quack. There are a fair amount of these. These are the chiroparctors who claim that chiropractic treatments can cure collic, malaria, the flue, or what have you. This is absolute horse shite and any good chiropractor will tell you so.

The second kind is actually beneficial. They recognize that chiropractic is akin to physical therapy and simply attempt to make sure that there isn't undue muscle strain in your back and limbs and attempt to resolve what strain or unbalance there may be.

For the record I've been treated for my bad back and chronic neck problems by a chiropractor and by a regular doctor. Both helped, but the chiropractic helped more and for longer. That said, I didn't stop going to the doctor for x-rays and checkups (until my health insurance went away that is, but that's a whole different issue).

[#51 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 11:48 PM]

I'm going to recommend this clip from That Mitchell and Web look as a compliment(ary therapy?) to this.

Homeopathic A+E.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

[#52 posted by apoxia, August 12, 2009 12:15 AM]

@45

Well it depends what you mean by "significant". Surely with an N=1 you couldn't say statistically significant. I wonder if your x-rays could be affected by standing slightly differently now that you expect the curves to be smaller?

Having significant scoliosis myself (25 degree and 45 degree curves) I have often wondered whether the scoliosis treatment "cures" I've seen on various websites are displaying x-rays that have "changed" due to people standing differently. I know when my spinal x-rays are taken I have to stand in very particular postures which are then double-checked to make sure the angles are correct.

Also, I have noted that each time I have been awaiting either x-ray results or an appointment with the orthopedic specialist my perceived pain increases for a few weeks beforehand, and drops rapidly once I've been told I don't need surgery. My partner works as an intern psychologist in a chronic pain management service, so I also know how readily pain is affected by social and emotional aspects.

Since I have not found any peer-reviewed studies that show chiropractors can correct scoliosis, I wouldn't go near them.

[#53 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 1:22 AM]

"If the medical industry was run by a panel of 5 guys, I might buy it, but with hundreds of thousands of doctors, researchers, schools, non-profits and others working in the industry there is no possible way that sheer capitalism could keep a cure or better treatment secret."

You have obviously never heard of intellectual property laws, which have indeed the effect of introducing monopolies to otherwise healthy markets.

http://www.eatg.org/eatg/Global-HIV-News/EU-Policy/Drug-seizures-in-Frankfurt-spark-fears-of-EU-wide-pattern

[#54 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 2:05 AM]

Since homeopathy is just water being sold in smaller doses than evian can someone actually go and buy a few bottles of the highest "power" or strongest dose homepathic remedy.
Drink them all.
Video the entire thing for youtube and let's see if you really "shouldn't repeat the dosage for eight hours, at least".

[#55 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 2:05 AM]

To quote Tim Minchin (who it appears is thinking along very much the same lines as Dara) "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_htqDCP-s

[#56 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 2:45 AM]

What do people think about osteopaths here? I like to raise them above the level of chiros and say that the muscle manipulation and spine cracking they've done on me did make me feel better... and they don't insist you have two sessions a week for the rest of your life, nor claim to cure anything other than my busted muscles! They just manipulate and cure whatever muscular complaint you have and send you on your way...
I need my spine cracked soon.

[#57 posted by Bugs, August 12, 2009 6:07 AM]

Libelle,
"The study you mention indicates a significant improvement over routine care. It might show that the "meridians" and qi points and other aspects of acupuncture are bogus, but it doesn't prove a placebo effect."
You're right that that study didn't solidly show a placebo affect. Chronic lower back pain is very susceptable to placebo, and the effect they observed in the paper matches the pattern seen for placebo in numerous other studies, so they made that assumption. I think it's a valid assumption: an ideal experiment would've included a "true" placebo group, although they'd know they're not being poked with needles so it would no longer be a blind trial.

If nothing else, it showed nicely that the acupuncturists' claims that controlling energy flows and precise placement on meridians are hokum, at least for the lower back.

Knodi, 28
"The Anti-Homeopathy crowd needs to get our acts together... stick to the talking point "Look, straight up, we've tried it on people, and it doesn't work better than a placebo"... Explaining scientific reasoning to people who don't know or care what science is, is a fool's errand."

That's very appealing and could be a powerful argument. But the obvious response is then "scientists say it doesn't work but my homeopath/aunt/vet says it does"; the argument just comes down to who people have more faith in.

It's only by getting people to understand the importance of blinded trials, statistical significance, etc. that we can demonstrate why scientific evidence is more powerful than anecdotes.

Unfortunately these concepts are both more difficult to grasp and and much less emotionally satisfying than just believing that a simple, "natural" cure is within your grasp. For almost everyone who isn't a science geek, the complex truth is never as appealing as a simple lie.

Anon (30)
"if there really was a provable cure for countless diseases available basically for free, don't you think the medical/pharmacology industrial complex would be trying to keep you off it?"
Decultured (30) answered this well. Medical research doesn't just come from a small handful of companies. There are countless university labs, research institutes, small startup companies, etc. all doing research in a huge variety of areas. I work in a very typical institute, with most of my money coming from a charity that exists to fund research into a particular disease, topped up by the government via mostly-autonomous "research councils". If I or any other of the many thousands of researchers worldwide discovered something promising, we'd be shouting it from the rooftops. Mostly because it's cool and could help save lives. But if you think it's all about "simple capitalism", it's also in our professional and financial interests to make sure everyone knows what cool stuff we're working on.

Even if "big pharma" wanted to bribe me not to release my wonderful, cheap new cancer cure, there's no amount of money that'd stop me from saving thousands (millions?) of lives, accepting my knighthood, Nobel prize, well-paying job for life, place in history and constant offers of nookie from starstruck women scientists (hey, a guy can dream).

"Big Pharma" have their pitfalls and do get up to some very questionable stuff. But they simply dont have the power to do stuff that a lot of people attribute to them, even if they had the inclination.

[#58 posted by David Carroll, August 12, 2009 6:14 AM]

Arkizzle/Moderator @ #18 Linked too an an MS Answers question:

I've noticed that as I copy data/install programs on my Laptop, the weight of the Laptop increases....My ask, what is the weight/file ratio? So for example, how many GB's = 6oz?

Of course everyone answered without checking that "Data does not weigh anything!".

Please read:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh

After two pages of reasoned well referenced argument, the result is:

Taking Holliday’s 40-petabyte figure and plugging it into the same formula that we worked out for our 50-kilobyte e-mail results in a grand total of 1.3 x 10-8 pound. At last, after much scribbling (and perhaps a little cursing), we had our answer: The weight of the Internet adds up to just about 0.2 millionths of an ounce.

Arkizzle, you stated that your links in #17 and #18 are "tangental" and "wholly off-topic". Probably, but that is one of the charms of BB comments is it not?

[#59 posted by Lester, August 12, 2009 6:22 AM]

It is amazing that homeopathy and chiropractic are still somewhat mainstream, considering that they're 19th century non-scientific nonsense.

Ben Goldacre has this neat bit explaining homeopathy and how such notions can be (and are) scientifically tested. http://www.vimeo.com/4770157

Chiropractic, I'm sure, can have benefit as a risky form of massage. It cannot, however, cure illnesses by "freeing up the immune system" or "correcting blockages in the nervous system." There

Back in '98, NEJM published a study comparing the effects on back pain of chiropractic, physical therapy (massage) and an educational pamphlet on how to take care of your posture. Chiro and physical therapy "had similar effects and costs, and patients receiving these treatments had only marginally better outcomes than those receiving the minimal intervention of an educational booklet."

I hear complaints about "Big Pharma" all the time, some probably deserved, but CAM is $34B a year industry in the US, with none of the R&D overhead.

[#60 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 12, 2009 7:06 AM]

David, I did and it is :)

But it is surely the height of politeness to at least acknowledge the off-the-beaten-track direction one's very OT comments may lead the conversation :)
__

Separately, in my first link, commenter Phillip Parr suggested an answer similar to the link you've provided (complete with maths!). He was quickly shot down for mixing up how RAM/CPUs work (actual muliple electrons, and therefore variable weights) and the hard drive in question (magnetic domains, polarised, no weight change).

So, while your link is interesting and relevant to the internet (pushing electrons about), it doesn't relate to hard drives (no actively variable electrons).

[#61 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 7:14 AM]

Funny thing about back pain - approximately 80% of ALL new back pain will get better within 3 months. So pretty much of what chiropracty does is offer a nice massage while the body heals itself, and then claim a "cure" of the pain.

There have never been any demonstrated changes in spinal alignment/readjusting the vertebrae, other than just simple postural changes.
I have seen several people paralyzed! by chiropracters manipulating necks though.

[#62 posted by Ito Kagehisa, August 12, 2009 8:18 AM]

I have had problems with the medical establishment. Physicians dislike my tendency to self-diagnose, and many of them are irritated by my unwillingness to accept any human agent as infallible.

I had to see four doctors before I found one who would agree to biopsy my cancer - and even that one confidently said it was not cancer, until the biopsy came back positive.

I would be dead today if I had worshipped "modern medicine" in the way that others in this thread do - untreated melanoma is 100% fatal and I had it cut out nearly a decade ago.

When I was a child, I grew warts on my hands and feet. I had them cut off, burned off with hot irons and chemical reagants, frozen off, you name it. They grew back over and over again, sometimes in the same places.

When I was a teenager I read a journal article in which a pediatrician documented his use of "magic wart tape" to cure warts in children. He simply took plain white adhesive tape, stuck it on the warts, and told the children they would crumble away - and they did! We now know that warts require air to flourish, and that his treatment had a mechanical potency, but at the time it was believed to be a purposeful invocation of the placebo effect.

I became somewhat enraged at the idea that my body could cure itself, and that all the painful surgical intervention had been unneccessary. I decided that I would have no more warts, and that the five or six I had on my knuckles would go away. I hated them, and hatred is powerful; anger and hatred feed the will.

My warts were reabsorbed into my body in a few months and I have had no recurrences in the last 35 years.

Now, some may scoff and say that my sample size is n=1; this sounds very nice. I could as easily say it's 100% of my sample base, and that sample base is 100% assured. Sounds nice too. But in both cases it's pseudo-scientific bullshit.

Science enshrines skepticism; if you repeat someone else's assertions without performing experimentation design to false their results, you are not doing science, you are acting on faith. Logic and reasoning have very little to do with it - without experimentation, you have no way of assuring that the axioms on which you base your logic and reason are applicable.

Rolfing (twice) and chiropractic at regular intervals enable my scarred and battered body to function almost painlessly. I would be crippled and probably institutionalized by now without them; this is not an exaggeration. Half a dozen doctors tried to cure me with pills, all failed and one of them actually harmed me.

You folks that are lumping together chiropractry and homeopathy are arguing from ignorance - it doesn't make sense to you so therefore it is nonsense. Your objections are nearly all based on hearsay and faith in the dogmas of conventional medicine; where are the results of the tests you have participated in?

I do not practice homeopathy because I tested it and it didn't work for me. I go to a chiropracter because I tested him and his techniques work for me. In my simple mind, this makes homeopathy and chiropractry fundamentally different.

[#63 posted by Moriarty, August 12, 2009 8:29 AM]

It's not just taking an assertion at face value because it comes from a man in a white coat. It's saying it's at least probably correct because it has been thoroughly tested and retested independently. Science IS about skepticism, but it is NOT about every individual person re-doing every test for themselves. That quickly leads to absurdity, as I'm sure you can see.

You also don't have to think anyone who is a doctor is infallible to think that modern medicine is "what actually works." I know lots of people who became doctors in whom I would definitely not put absolute trust. You don't even have to think that the PROCESS of scientifically-based medicine is infallible. Obviously it isn't. What it is, is much, much better than anything else. And it improves when something better is found.

[#64 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 12, 2009 8:49 AM]

Ito, in fairness, I think the people glooming about chiropractors are more likely refering to their (the chiropractors') claims of fixing things unrelated to posture and the skeletal system.

[#65 posted by Ito Kagehisa, August 12, 2009 9:09 AM]

Moriarty, this statement cannot be proven:

What it is, is much, much better than anything else.

Do you believe conventional medicine is scientific? The process tends to be so in very long terms - centuries, generally, perhaps due to Darwinistic selection - but in the short run physicians are generally dogmatic and resist alternative treatments. The PDR is a grimoire. Barry Marshall had to actually drink Helicobacter Pylori and make himself sick before the medical establishment would even consider his perfectly good science.

Faith is necessary; you cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, but if you have no faith that it will, you will not make plans for the morrow, and may suffer for it. I will not contest the usefulness of blind faith.

You get to choose where to place your faith, though. I choose to place my faith in my ability to test my own subjective reality. Because of this, I am alive today.

[#66 posted by Ito Kagehisa, August 12, 2009 9:23 AM]

I am sure you are right, Arkizzle.

My chiropractor makes very few such claims - he does believe that a properly aligned skeleton allows your body's healing capacities and resources to be directed against other health problems (such as infection or chemical imbalances) instead of being occupied in remediation of stresses caused by poor alignment. He also says that people are healthier when they are happier, and happier when they are not suffering back and joint pain, and can quote myriad studies to this effect, including some that say you are less likely to catch a cold or flu if you are happy.

I have seen no direct evidence of this although it seems reasonable.

[#67 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 12, 2009 9:33 AM]

Yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable. Does s/he offer a happy ending to ensure the continuing health of his/her patients? :D

[#68 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 9:54 AM]

Listen to your doctor. Do the what the pharmaceutical company tells you. There is no alternative. They know all. There is nothing to learn.

[#69 posted by Ito Kagehisa, August 12, 2009 10:01 AM]

No, but I hear the Oriental Massage place over by the bridge does.

[#70 posted by Moriarty, August 12, 2009 10:16 AM]

"Moriarty, this statement cannot be proven:"

What I'm arguing for, basically, is claims backed up by rigorous empiricism. That is "proven" to be superior, but again only by rigorous empiricism itself. This, as it must be, is based on personal observation. But unlike your observations of yourself, I base it on broader observation of the world, i.e. I see that science works, and, because of my reasoning faculty and my training, I understand why it works.

I'm not disparaging empricism on the personal scale, btw, just saying that I have come to trust the methods of science more than anecdotes. So yes, it IS better, if you live in and are aware of the world. Failures to behave scientifically on the individual scale by people who ought to know better doesn't change that - in fact, it reinforces it.

[#71 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, August 12, 2009 10:17 AM]

Can you get me that address?

:p

[#72 posted by wylkyn, August 12, 2009 10:44 AM]

Merlin Silk said, "What an idiot, this Galileo, to think whatever he thought - everybody knows that the earth is flat and that you fall off the edge when you go too far out - duh!"

You do realize that scientists knew the earth was round since the time of the ancient Greeks, right? The people laughing at Galileo (or threatening his life) were the credulous quacks who supported the faith-based beliefs that his scientific proofs were threatening...the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe. Nice self-pwnage there, and perfect proof of how faith-based medicine finds a following.

[#73 posted by larshoel, August 12, 2009 10:57 AM]

Back to Noddy ... found this over at LP Cover Lover:

http://lpcoverlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/scan0014-500x514.jpg

Kind of explains the look on Dara's face, there at the end ...

[#74 posted by Antinous / Moderator, August 12, 2009 11:08 AM]

Ah, the zealots are restless tonight.

In medicine, the plural of anecdote is very frequently data. Do you know how pain is assessed? You ask the person in pain to say how bad it is on a scale of one to ten, or you compare their facial expression to a series of smiley-face to grimace-face drawings. Many clinical trials involve either trusting that the subject has followed a regimen or logging their anecdotal experiences as data. I worked for several decades in one of the best hospitals in the world (3 Nobel laureates in house) and most of the medical staff freely admitted that modern medicine still has an enormous voodoo component. But that's not good enough for you.

If my sacrum is subluxated, I go to the chiropractor or the osteopath, who pops it back in. I go there because it doesn't fix itself. I go there on the recommendation of my physician. But that's not good enough for you.

You can see a noticeable improvement in long term kaiphosis and lordosis on my x-rays from chiropractic. You can see a noticeable reduction in the C-curve of my scoliosis after two years of yoga practice. But that's not good enough for you.

It's not good enough because you are zealots. Your worldview is the antithesis of scientific thinking. You believe that anything that has not been proven in a double-blind study cannot possibly exist.

[#75 posted by skye, August 12, 2009 11:16 AM]

If homeopathy works for you, use it!
If homeopathy doesn't work for you, don't use it!

[#76 posted by tin robot, August 12, 2009 12:19 PM]

Antinous - absolutely, modern medicine has an enormous voodoo component, and I quite agree that medical practitioners will often readily admit it. That's partly the point isn't it? That many alternative practitioners don't admit that what they're doing is "voodoo".

Your chiropracter helps re-align your spine. Fine. Personally I have no argument with that statement. There is indeed evidence out there to show that manipulation, whether carried out by chiropracter, osteopath, physiotherapist, masseuse or anyone else with some idea of what they're doing can be effective. (There's also evidence that for some forms of back pain it's actively dangerous as well...)

The issue with chiropracters is that they don't leave it at that. The vast majority claim that this manipulation is a remedy for problems that have absolutely no relation to the spine. Some of which (like asthma for instance) are actively life threatening if not treated properly. That's when it starts to become an issue.

The "voodoo" element of medicine is belief. Belief in the doctor, belief in their techniques, belief in science whatever. The more pure bullshit that gets propagated as "medicine" by alternative practitioners, the weaker that belief comes, and hence less effective. People who need it go elsewhere. I've seen people die because they've gone to homeopaths for medical treatment, I've seen people needing neurosurgery because their chiropracter didn't know what the hell he was doing.

If you keep just the voodoo, and drop the science, you're a dangerous quack, whether you sometimes make people better or not. And that's the problem with much alternative medicine.

[#77 posted by decultured, August 12, 2009 12:38 PM]

@#53 posted by ANONYMOUS

You have obviously never heard of intellectual property laws, which have indeed the effect of introducing monopolies to otherwise healthy markets.

Agreed that intellectual property laws foster monopolies, and as I mentioned in my post, monopolization hurts the ideas of capitalism.

However, that is a separate issue than we have here. The argument is not about one company having ownership of a single form of medicine, and preventing competitors from producing that same medicine, it is about companies widely asserting some global conspiracy to keep down cures that no-one owns.

Advocates of homeopathy and other fringe medicine argue that the reason that the medical community claims their cures don't work is because of a conspiracy to hide valid cures in favor of expensive treatments. However, with the massive medical community that exists, especially with non-profits and public research groups, and the competition in the marketplace, there is no good argument as to why these cures would not be known. The simple fact is that homeopathy has been tested, it has been scrutinized, and it has been shown to be ineffective and that is not because of some global capitalist conspiracy to keep the public sick.

[#78 posted by Moriarty, August 12, 2009 12:56 PM]

"You believe that anything that has not been proven in a double-blind study cannot possibly exist."

I don't know if I'm one of the ones you're talking to, but I don't think that. Everything known was once unknown. What I do think is that if the double-blind study is performed and proves it doesn't work, then that should be accepted with almost complete certainty, with the caveat that I'll change my mind if another study comes along, contradicts it, and shows why the previous one was flawed. Skepticism towards the untested plus willingness to alter one's view upon new evidence puts science-based medicine at a tremendous advantage that only grows with time.

[#79 posted by Thalia, August 12, 2009 1:20 PM]

A lot of Western medicine doesn't work any better than the placebo. Prozac comes to mind. And some of it is actively harmful (hormone replacement therapy for example, and stacks of drugs that have been withdrawn after being prescribed often for decades). At least homeopathy cannot hurt you. And for the person who sees some poor older person spend too much on homeopathy, I call bullshit. The average bottle of pills costs $6, and will last you a decade. Compare that to the $6/pill medicine prescribed by the doctor to lower cholesterol which you're supposed to take three times a day.

[#80 posted by Ito Kagehisa, August 12, 2009 2:06 PM]

I see these claims of myriads of people being maimed by chiropractery, yet I see no scientific proof that it is more dangerous than the treatments espoused by conventional medicine.

Conventional medicine kills people all the time, so that's setting the bar pretty low. Still, I find it difficult to believe that there is a global chiropractic conspiracy secretly burying thousands of bodies somewhere and paying off all the witnesses.

[#81 posted by Antinous / Moderator, August 12, 2009 2:28 PM]

tin robot,

Chiropractic in the US (me) and chiropractic in the UK (presumably you) seem to be quite different. I've been to a half dozen chiropractors here. The services which I received were: 1) spinal adjustments, which were demonstrably effective on x-ray as well as anecdotally effective for pain relief; 2) popping my sacrum into place or de-torquing my pelvis, also both demonstrably effective; 3) gait training; 4) ergonomic analysis and recommendations for sitting, sleep position, etc. and 5) referring me for x-rays to assess scoliosis, lordosis and kaiphosis. None of them tried to cleanse my aura or promised to cure my spattergroit.

If I had been referred to an orthopedic surgeon instead of a chiropractor, there's a high likelihood that I would have had multiple unnecessary back surgeries. Modern medicine has plenty of woo-woo of its own. Once again, maybe it's different in the UK, but unnecessary surgery and unnecessary medication are vastly bigger problems than chiropractic here in the US.

[#82 posted by dpbbie606, August 15, 2009 10:48 AM]

1- FOLOW the MONEY
- homeopatic remedies aren't Patented
& drugs are= simple economics

'As shown in the following table, the estimated total number of iatrogenic deaths—that is, deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures— in the US annually is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is itself the leading cause of death and injury in the US . By comparison, approximately 699,697 Americans died of heart in 2001, while 553,251 died of cancer'
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_02.htm

2- Mexico City's Doctors CURE
2009 Swine Flu with Homeopathy

'flu epidemic of 1918...the mortality rate of people treated with traditional medicine and drugs was 30 percent,
those treated by homeopathic physicians had mortality rate of 1.05 percent.'

http://www.naturalnews.com/z026839_homeopathy_homeopathic_doctors.html

3- Medical Mafia apologists: Do you feel lucky?

[#83 posted by web_tasarimi, August 18, 2009 9:52 AM]

Huh, Mark seems to have changed his tune