“The law has no place in scientific disputes” Simon Singh is to appeal the absurd and astonishingly illiberal ruling made by Sir David Eady in the libel case brought about by the British Chiropractic Association. This is a brave decision by Simon, but an important one as there are issues at stake that go well beyond one case. Today, the charity Sense about Science is launching a campaign to [read more…]
Apologies… There were two doctors in a bar, spending the evening moaning about the current state of the NHS, government interference, hospital managers, crap IT, abusive patients, litigious patients, rotas, paperwork, overwork, lack of time with patients who need it – you get the picture. The first says, “You know what? It has got to the state where I want to jack it all in and get into [read more…]
One of the side effects of the BCA vs Chiropractic libel case is that there are a growing number of people who now realise that Chiropractic is bogus*. Even though Simon Singh may well have suffered a set back from a judge who according to the law can define words as he sees fit, we are now seeing increasing exposure to the bogus* practices of the chiropractic trade. One way [read more…]
The University of Oxford recent completed a report into the comparative costs of defamation proceedings across Europe. Its conclusions were that the costs of libel proceedings in England and Wales are about 140 times higher on average than those found across Europe. The reasons for this boil down the large number of lawyers that get involved, the length of the proceedings, the adversarial nature of English law, and the [read more…]
Last night we held the first evening of the Oxford branch of Skeptics in the Pub. Come 6.15 and the bar we had booked was already filling up. By Seven o’clock it was packed and unfortunately not everyone could see or hear. And what had people come to hear? A talk by Ben Goldacre about medical statistics. Yes. Let’s be clear. Over a hundred people, sat through several hours of [read more…]
Prince Charles’ company, Duchy Originals, has today been told by the Advertising Standards Authority to stop making misleading and untruthful claims in its advertising and to not make claims for its detox products that it cannot substantiate. Earlier in the year, Duchy Originals launched three new herbal tinctures. The launch was met with derision, and claims that the Prince’s company was misleading people into thinking that the products actually [read more…]
Last night, a friend who I have not seen for a little while, asked me an important question. She was well aware of my blogging activities as my blog rss feed pipes through delicious and then twitter and onto my facebook account, or something. Why my fascination with criticising alternative medicine? A difficult question – and after a few pints and the energy for a one word answer, I responded [read more…]
The Cochrane Library has published a new review of the effects of homeopathy on cancer patients**. Its conclusion is that “there is limited evidence that homeopathic remedies ease the side effects of cancer treatments, but they at least seem to cause no serious adverse effects or drug interactions.” The Quackometer’s response is “No shit, Sherlock!” Homeopathy is the application of nothing.* It is therefore rather likely that pills with nothing [read more…]
Some of the quackometer functionality has not been working too well over the past few months. The Am I a Quack or Not? function was very poorly and only working for a few searches per day. The reason being that the operation depended on some very old and unsupported Google technology that was about to be unplugged. So, I have now done the work to convert over to Yahoo search. [read more…]
Chinese Herbal Medicine could be seen as the acceptable side of alternative medicine. It does not suffer from the utter implausibility of homeopathy, nor does it appear to rely on supernatural mechanisms such as with Reiki. Indeed, herbal medicine appears to be nothing but a primitive form of pharmacology with the practitioner diagnosing disease and then prescribing the right chemicals: the Chinese method is through herbs; the ‘western’ method through [read more…]
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