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Where science and the media collide...
Martin Robbins
34 posts
Casey Rentz
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- September 19, 2008
- 08:43 AM
- 1,931 views
The Great Global Cooling Swindle
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
You've heard it before, at dinner parties, from taxi drivers, from commenters on the intertubes: "Global warming? Pah! I remember they were talking about global cooling when I was a lad." As Peterson, Connolley, and Fleckthe, the authors of "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus" [1] explain: "the following pervasive myth arose: there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent." But was it true? No.
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Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, & John Fleck. (2008) The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, preprint(2008), 1. DOI: 10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
D SAREWITZ. (2004) How science makes environmental controversies worse. Environmental Science , 7(5), 385-403. DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2004.06.001
- September 19, 2008
- 10:16 AM
- 1,734 views
WARNING: Ejaculation as a Treatment for Nasal Congestion is Inconvenient, Unreliable and Potentially Hazardous!
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
Awesome fellow blogger Scicurious delved into the Journal of Medical Hypotheses today and showed us the recently published hypothesis of one doctor who believes that the answer to nasal congestion could be... masturbation. Go and read her brilliant blog post on this moment of medical genius, but then come back here, because the journal has now published a letter by Mohammad Fakhree angrily rejecting the claims, in the prelude to what could be the biggest medical controversy since MMR.
read more... Read more »
M FAKHREE. (2008) Ejaculation as a treatment for nasal congestion in men is inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous. Medical Hypotheses. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.07.022
- August 15, 2008
- 06:14 AM
- 1,599 views
The Birth of Maggot Therapy
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
In 1917, at the height of the Great War, William Baer made a chance, startling discovery. The result was his exploration of a novel form of treatment, one that - while somewhat grim to contemplate, is still used today. His experiences and early experiments are described in this paper, "The Treatment of Chronic Osteomyelitis with the Maggot (Larva of the Blow Fly)" [1].
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William Baer. (1931) The Treatment of Chronic Osteomyelitis with the Maggot (Larva of the Blow Fly). Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 438-475. http://www.ejbjs.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/438
- November 26, 2008
- 08:12 AM
- 1,498 views
NHS Takes Aim at Daily Mail over Baby Buggy Bollocks
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
... Read more »
- June 17, 2008
- 10:09 AM
- 1,441 views
Into the Cuckoo's Nest: The Rosenhan Experiment
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
The most important papers published tend to start with a deceptively simple question. When David Rosenhan sat down to write "On Being Sane in Insane Places" in 1972, his simple question was: "If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?" [1]. In order to investigate, he planted a number of perfectly sane patients in mental hospitals to see if staff would notice. The shocking results of his experiment sparked a fierce debate that continues to this day.
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David Rosenhan. (1973) Rosenhan, D.L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 70, pp. 250-8. Science, 179(70), 250-258. http://psychrights.org/articles/Rosenham.htm
- December 18, 2008
- 08:51 AM
- 1,401 views
Catching Snowflakes: The Media and Public Perceptions of Disease
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
It's repeated so often that it has long been regarded as a cliche, but we live in an increasing information-intensive world, bombarded by facts and figures from an endless queue of media outlets, websites, television shows and Windsor-based science bloggers. This abundance of information often comes with a cost. If my grandfather wanted to learn something about his health - and of course like many men of his generation he didn't - he would have seen a doctor or read a reputable book.
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Meredith E. Young, Geoffrey R. Norman, & Karin R. Humphreys. (2008) Medicine in the Popular Press: The Influence of the Media on Perceptions of Disease. PLoS ONE, 3(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003552
Ahern J, Galea S, Resnick H, Kilpatrick D, Bucuvalas M, et al. (2002) Television images and psychological symptoms after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Psychiatry, 289-300.
- July 24, 2008
- 10:06 PM
- 1,368 views
MMR: The Roles of Education and the Media in Vaccine Uptake
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
The controversy over MMR that Andrew Wakefield managed to trigger in the U.K. with his botched Lancet study, has given researchers the opportunity to study the dynamics of a public health scare. Their report, "Anatomy of a Health Scare: Education, Income and the MMR Controversy in the UK" studies the relationship between the media, certain family attributes, and uptake of the MMR vaccine. Their findings call into question conventional wisdom regarding the positive role of parent education in vaccine uptake.
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Dan Anderberg, Arnaud Chevalier, & Jonathon Wadsworth. (2008) Anatomy of a Health Scare: Education, Income and the MMR Controversy in the UK. IZA Discussion Paper Series, n/a(3590), 1-58. http://ftp.iza.org/dp3590.pdf
C Gellin, E Maibach, & E Marcuse. (2000) Do Parents Understand Immunization? A National Telephone Survey. Pediatrics, 1097-1102.
M Pareek, & H Pattison. (2000) The Two-Dose Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) Immunization Schedule: Factors Affecting Maternal Intention to Vaccinate . British Journal of General Practice, 969-971.
K Viscusi, & . (19977) Alarmist Decisions with Divergent Risk Information. Economic Journal, 1657-1670.
- November 26, 2008
- 08:12 AM
- 1,342 views
NHS Takes Aim at Daily Mail over Baby Buggy Bollocks
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
[BPSDB] It started off as a simple observational study [1] that showed that babies facing forwards in their buggies have slightly higher heart rates, a phenomenon that could be attributable to stress, or perhaps simply to the increased amount of stimuli the babies received. Then the papers got a hold of it.
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Dr. M. Suzanne Zeedyk. (2008) What's life in a baby buggy like? The impact of buggy orientation on parent-infant interaction and infant stress . University of Dundee Research Report. DOI: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/Buggy_research.pdf
- June 9, 2008
- 10:05 PM
- 1,337 views
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
There's no denying that conspiracies occur around the world on a daily basis. From Watergate to the epic tale of BCCI's "full service" bank, plotters and plotting are a fundamental part of human history, and are regularly investigated by researchers, journalists and other parties.
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Ted Goertzel. (1994) Belief in Conspiracy Theories . Political Psychology, 15(4), 731-742. http://www.jstor.org/pss/3791630
- March 9, 2008
- 09:09 PM
- 1,313 views
Not just for Hitler: Reviewing a Review of the Annals of Eugenics
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
In a 1926 article in American Anthropologist, E.A. Hooten reviews the brand new journal Annals of Eugenics, a publication devoted to "racial problems" that "every anthropologist will welcome". As scientists, it's important to recognize our history and air some of our skeletons, if only to prevent anybody making these kinds of mistakes again.
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E Hooten. (1926) Review: Annals of Eugenics. A Journal for the Scientific Study of Racial Problems by Karl Pearson. . American Anthropologist, 28(3), 551-553.
- March 14, 2008
- 04:16 PM
- 1,289 views
Do Sexy Shoes cause Schizophrenia?
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
”Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia?” [1]. The human mind has an almost infinite capacity to come up with unlikely ideas and connections. From the Department of Lateral Thinking in Sweden, comes a hypothesis by Jarl Flensmark that’s so crazy, it could just be true… can high heels cause schizophrenia?
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Jarl Flensmark. (2004) Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia?. Medical Hypotheses , 63(1), 740-747. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2004.05.014
- June 24, 2008
- 10:06 PM
- 1,279 views
The "Racism" Game: Our Natural Tendency to Discriminate
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
In a recent post on the Rosenhan Experiment, I mentioned that some of the most interesting research comes from very simple ideas or premises. A few years ago, a team at the University of Virginia decided to try out a classroom game that saw university students arbitrarily labeled with a colour, green or purple. The results make for some uncomfortable reading for those of us who think we're above discriminatory behaviour.
read more... Read more »
Roland Fryer, Jacob Goeree, & Charles Holt. (2005) Experience-Based Discrimination: Classroom Games. The Journal of Economic Education, 36(2), 160-170. DOI: 10.3200/JECE.36.2.160-170
- March 11, 2008
- 08:07 AM
- 1,268 views
This isn't Science, it's a Shampoo Advert (Inventing "Science 2.0" in Science)
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
Clearly standards at Science are falling, judging by the vaporology published in the latest edition. Not content with creating the big blast of hot air that is the tiresome "Web 2.0" meme, computer scientists are now attemption to define "Science 2.0".
read more... Read more »
Ben Schneiderman. (2008) Science 2.0. Science, 319(5868), 1349-1350.
- May 19, 2009
- 07:27 PM
- 1,222 views
Dismantling the chiropractic claims of the BCA, GCC and others
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
[bpsdb] Guest blogger "Blue Wode" has produced a definitive review of the science and evidence (or lack of) behind claims made by the BCA, GCC and other chiropractic advocates. [Written by Blue Wode, edited by Martin Robbins]
- - - - - - - - - - -
It has become apparent that the Achilles’ heel of chiropractic - promoted as an effective, cost-effective, and safe alternative to drugs and surgery for a range of health conditions - is negative publicity. One wonders whether this insecurity is behind the chiropractic industry’s frequent failure to cite the more robust, but unfavourable, scientific research on its interventions.
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For example, not only do the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), and the College of Chiropractors (currently seeking a Royal Charter) omit some of the better scientific evidence from their websites; the UK statutory regulatory body, the General Chiropractic Council (GCC) (created to protect patients and set standards of chiropractic education, conduct and practise), does also. It presently claims that:
"The main treatments of chiropractic have been shown consistently in reviews to be more effective than the treatments to which they have been compared."
...and that chiropractic intervention, including manipulation, is:
"Safe, effective and cost-effective in reducing referral to secondary care."
However, that appears to be a misrepresentation of the facts. As Professor David Colquhoun wrote in a letter to The Times last August, recent research has shown chiropractic to be less safe and no more effective than conventional treatments that are much cheaper [1,2].
It is important at this point to understand that spinal manipulative therapy is not chiropractic, but rather a technique that chiropractors have adopted. Real chiropractic involves the detection of imaginary ‘subluxations’ which chiropractors supposedly correct by administering ‘specific spinal adjustments’ which they allege will enhance a person’s health. Often chiropractors resort to confusing the two approaches in order to give all their practices an air of legitimacy, but many others will admit outright that traditional chiropractic beliefs are central to their interventions.
The GCC, and others, continue to stand by their claims for the evidence for chiropractic despite controversy surrounding the studies they promote, such as the 2004 UK BEAM Trial, and the 1990 Meade report and its follow-up [3,4,5]. The GCC also promotes the European guidelines for the management of low back pain which, although the GCC implies that they recommend chiropractic, only briefly mention spinal manipulation. On top of that, the Royal College of General Practitioners withdrew chiropractic spinal manipulation from its guidelines in 2005, although some chiropractic websites continue to mention them.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, is that the GCC is adamant that chiropractic neck manipulation is safe. Oddly, it claims this even though, by virtue of its statutory empowerment, it doesn’t seem to have a duty to care for patients by regulating the safety of chiropractic treatments (nor, for that matter, does it seem to have a legal obligation to define the scope of practice for its registrants).
So just how safe is chiropractic neck manipulation? A responsible risk/benefit assessment suggests, very strongly, that it is an unacceptable technique when there are equally effective, but safer, options available such as exercise or massage. Other assessments have reached similar conclusions [6]. Indeed, Fig. 2 in this paper (reproduced below) serves to demonstrate why it would probably be wise to avoid neck manipulation by chiropractors [7].
Practitioners providing manipulation of the cervical spine that resulted in injury.
Interestingly, these criticisms also suggest that chiropractors may not be able to provide a risk/benefit ratio for manipulative treatment of the cervical spine. As a consequence, patients would not be able to be fully informed of the risks and benefits of their proposed treatment despite chiropractors being required to do so by section B2.7 of their Code of Practice.
In spite of the above concerns, last year, following the publication of a dubious multi-centre research study in Canada, the GCC decided to declare publicly that the there was no evidence that manipulation of the neck (by any health professional) caused stroke, and went on to say that it could extrapolate from that study that:
"Some people suffering the symptoms of the onset of a stroke consult primary healthcare practitioners – not that the health practitioners cause the stroke."
Those claims are disturbing for a number of reasons:
1. They appear to negate chiropractors’ legal burden of disclosure of risk (at least for neck manipulation).
2. Chiropractors should know from their training that neck manipulation is contraindicated if a patient has, or is suspected to have, a stroke in progress.
3. The impact of the GCC’s views could easily see UK chiropractors becoming even more disinclined to use the Chiropractic Reporting and Learning System' (CRLS) which the BCA attempted to implement nationally in 2005, and which, since then, according to a study published in July 2008 [8], has been very much under-utilised. This finding in itself indicates that the GCC’s recommendations on patient safety, which were made clear in Item 7 of the minutes of its 2nd March 2006 meeting, are not being fully met.
4. The GCC’s views on the study will undoubtedly be seen by many chiropractors as confirming the results of a prospective national survey into the safety of chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine which were published in Spine in October 2007, and which found that the risk of a serious adverse event, immediately or up to 7 days after treatment, was low to very low.
Regarding point 4, last year Professor Edzard Ernst questioned the integrity of the methodology used in that survey, and highlighted the very real problem of
"Having to rely on the honesty of participating therapists [chiropractors] who could have a very strong interest in generating a reassuring yet unreliable picture about the safety of their intervention."
Interestingly, in their response, two of the survey’s authors, JE Bolton and HW Thiel, claimed that, in the UK alone, there were an estimated four million manipulations of the neck carried out by chiropractors each year. Yet, six months earlier, in October 2007, in a letter to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, they claimed that the figure was "estimated to be well over two million cervical spine manipulations". How that estimate could double in under 6 months is anyone’s guess, bu... Read more »
Assendelft WJJ, Morton SC, Yu EI, Suttorp MJ, & Shekelle PG. (2004) Spinal manipulative therapy for low-back pain. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000447.pub2
Canter, P., Coon, J., & Ernst, E. (2006) Cost-Effectiveness of Complementary Therapies in the United Kingdom--A Systematic Review . Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 3(4), 425-432. DOI: 10.1093/ecam/nel044
, . (2004) United Kingdom back pain exercise and manipulation (UK BEAM) randomised trial: effectiveness of physical treatments for back pain in primary care. BMJ, 329(7479), 1377. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38282.669225.AE
Assendelft WJ, Bouter LM, & Kessels AG. (1991) Effectiveness of chiropractic and physiotherapy in the treatment of low back pain: a critical discussion of the British Randomized Clinical Trial. J Manipulative Physiol Ther, 14(5), 281-286.
Meade TW, Dyer S, Browne W, & Frank AO. (1995) Randomised comparison of chiropractic and hospital outpatient management for low back pain: results from extended follow up . BMJ, 349-351.
Ernst, E. (2006) A systematic review of systematic reviews of spinal manipulation. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 99(4), 192-196. DOI: 10.1258/jrsm.99.4.192
Di Fabio RP. (1999) Manipulation of the cervical spine: risks and benefits. . Phys Ther, 50-65.
GUNN, S., THIEL, H., & BOLTON, J. (2008) British Chiropractic Association members’ attitudes towards the Chiropractic Reporting and Learning System: A qualitative study. Clinical Chiropractic, 11(2), 63-69. DOI: 10.1016/j.clch.2008.04.003
Hughes, S. (2002) Is chiropractic an effective treatment in infantile colic?. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 86(5), 382-384. DOI: 10.1136/adc.86.5.382
Vohra, S., Johnston, B., Cramer, K., & Humphreys, K. (2007) Adverse Events Associated With Pediatric Spinal Manipulation: A Systematic Review. PEDIATRICS, 119(1). DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-1392
Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2005, Canter PH, & Ernst E. (2005) Sources of bias in reviews of spinal manipulation for back pain. Wien Klin Wochenschr., 333-341.
- May 6, 2008
- 05:05 AM
- 1,220 views
War and Mental Health in Lebanon (or "Still Happier than Americans")
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
In writing this blog I want to try and cover some of the stories that are missed by other science blogs, and also to reinforce the link between science and the wider world, to show that research affects our day-to-day policies. In that spirit, I thought I'd share with you a paper just published in PLoS, that looks at the effect of the Arab-Israeli conflict on an Arab population - "Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Lebanon: First Onset, Treatment, and Exposure to War" [1].
read more... Read more »
Elie Karam, Zeina N Mneimneh, Hani Dimassi, John A Fayyad, Aimee N Karam, Soumana C Nasser, Somnath Chatterji, Ronald C Kessler, & R Srinivasa Murthy. (2008) Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Lebanon: First Onset, Treatment, and Exposure to War . PLoS Medicine, 5(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050061
Lisa Cosgrove, Sheldon Krimsky, Manisha Vijayaraghavan, & Lisa Schneider. (2006) Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the Pharmaceutical Industry. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 75(3), 154-160. DOI: 10.1159/000091772
- March 2, 2008
- 10:04 PM
- 1,218 views
Antidepressant Meta-Study: A Formerly-Depressed Scientist's Perspective
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
What with having a job, and some science of my own to be doing, it's taken me some time to get around to blogging on media claims that antidepressants are ineffective for two reasons: firstly, it's a complex subject worth doing justice - something the media have failed to do; secondly, I have a personal interest in this study myself, having been diagnosed with clinical depression during my doctorate. Here's my attempt to make sense of it all.
The Hype:
read more... Read more »
I Kirsch. (2008) Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. PLoS Medicine, 5(2), 260-268. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request
- May 20, 2008
- 08:06 AM
- 1,217 views
16% of U.S. Science Teachers are Creationists
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
In a worrying new paper appearing in PLoS Biology, "Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait", Michael B. Berkman and his colleagues have published the results of a national survey of High School biology teachers, and the findings don't make pleasant reading [1].
read more... Read more »
Michael Berkman, Julianna Sandell Pacheco, & Eric Plutzer. (2008) Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait. PLoS Biology, 6(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124
- June 18, 2009
- 08:24 AM
- 1,201 views
A Review of The BCA's Evidence for Chiropractic
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
Well over a year after Simon Singh's 'libelous' article on Chiropractic was published; with Singh preparing to launch an appeal against Eady's ruling in the preliminary hearing of the result trial; and with the chiropractic profession under siege from a PR nightmare; the British Chiropractic Association have finally decided to release the evidence that they claim backs up their promotion of Chiropractic treatments.
In doing so, they appear to have been deliberately dishonest in their presentation of the evidence for the effectiveness of chiropractic in treating bed-wetting.
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"In the spirit of wider scientific debate, and having taken appropriate professional advice, the BCA has decided that free speech would be best facilitated by releasing details of research that exists to support the claims which Dr. Singh stated were bogus"
So states the BCA press release. The research consists of 29 references. I have access to most of them, so I'll cover them here. Other bloggers will be covering various papers themselves in more detail, and I'll provide links to them all in this article - if you're a blogger and you've written about this, please let me know so I can link to you.
To avoid any accusations of shifting goalposts, here is the evidence that I want the BCA to present - a comprehensive selection of randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials producing significant results in favour of chiropractic being producing a clinical effect beyond that of a placebo.
I've discussed the conflict between alternative medicine and scientific research before, and when alt-med types cite a list research papers, they tend to fall into the same sort of pattern: papers will be cherry picked; even so a number of papers won't in fact be relevant; some papers will not actually support the position the quack thinks they do; and others will be of poor quality that the quack is unable to distinguish due to a lack of understanding about e.g. clinical trials. I highlighted a good case study regarding acupuncture recently.
The same pattern is evident in the BCA's list. Of the 29 references, 1 is just the GCC's code of practice; 6 is an irrelevent paper about medical ethics; 8, 9, 10 and 17 are about osteopathy; 26 is a description of evidence-based medicine; 27, 28 and 29 are about NSAIDs. That's 10 down straight away, but what's interesting about these is that 6 of them are just attacks on conventional medicine. In other words, this is not a particularly comprehensive or focused review of the literature. It is far from the 'plethora' of evidence promised.
A further three papers, (12, 13 and 14) cover the safety of chiropractic, which has come under considerable criticism. Curiously, this brief selection ignores the numerous studies showing an increased risk from chiropractic. 14 isn't a study at all, 12 is considerably less bullish than the BCA suggest it is pointing to a significant number of side-effects "with a possible neurologic involvement", and 13 provided stronger support ("We found no evidence of excess risk of VBA stroke associated chiropractic care compared to primary care."), but should be taken in the context of the wider range of studies finding the opposite.
That brings us down to just sixteen papers remaining to deal with the efficacy of chiropractic. Even before we look at them, it's worth noting that it's a miserably small number. Of those 16 papers, 9 cover infantile colic, 1 looks at asthma, 2 study ear infections, 3 look at bed-wetting and 1 at a variety of conditions.
Professor David Colquhoun has reviewed the 9 infantile colic papers on his own blog, and the results are, well, poor. 2 had no control group, with the authors simply following 300 babies and finding that most eventually got better (as you would expect even without treatment), ditto 3 and 25. 4 compares chiropractic with the use of dimethicone. Apparently, this is an ingredient in some over the counter remedies for colic, which are themselves unproven, so hardly the greatest control to compare with. Meanwhile, 5 brilliantly states that:
"The observed improvements are unlikely as a result of the specific effects of chiropractic spinal manipulation alone."
18 and 20 are both reports on two case studies, and therefore simply anecdote rather than evidence. 19 simply compares one chiropractic treatment against another, and as Professor Colquhuon puts it, "shows that both are equally effective, or equally plausibly, both are equally ineffective." 24 isn't actually a study at all. In summary then, as Colquhuon says:
"The nine papers they cite for colic are truly pathetic. Not a single one of them amounts to anything that would be recognised as evidence in the real world."
So that leaves us with just seven papers remaining for the BCA to show that they can present some sort of coherent, clinical evidence: 1 on asthma, 2 on ear infections, 3 on bed-wetting and 1 on 'various'. 7, the asthma paper, is simply a letter to the editor and contains no actual evidence, so we're down to six.
Of the ear infection papers, 15 is an uncontrolled study that simply reports that children with ear infections tend to eventually get better but can't say if that's down to chiropractic. Unfortunately I can't get hold of 23 at the moment - if anyone else can I'd be grateful, but from the BCA description it looks rather like the same sort of thing again.
So on to bed-wetting then, and at last the BCA are able to cite a proper study! 22 is a study of one person (an anecdote), and 21 is another uncontrolled "they eventually got better" study, but 16 is a meta-study by the Cochrane Collaboration no less, the gold-standard in medical research. The BCA quote this study as saying: "There was weak evidence to support the use of [chiropractic]." Could this be the evidence we're looking for?
No. Here's the quote in full, unedited by the BCA - I've underlined the bits the BCA quote-mined:
"There was weak evidence to support the use of hypnosis, psychotherapy, acupuncture and chiropractic but it was provided in each case by single small trials, some of dubious methodological rigour."
So the BCA appear to have been deliberately dishonest in their quote-mining of the Cochrane review. The review clearly states that, "each of these findings came from small single trials, and need to be verified in further trials," suggesting that the results are inconclusive, yet the BCA falsely suggest the trial supports their position. I make the accusation of dishonesty because I simply cannot see how you can extract the quote the BCA took from that without being aware that you were seriously misrepresenting the research, cutting off the qualifying clause of the sentence. If this was a genuine mistake, I expect the BCA to correct it.
In short then, the 'plethora' of evidence provided by the BCA is pathetically inadequate. How much of this is due to ignorance, delusion or dishonesty is hard to say; my experiences dealing with other alternative medicine practitioners in the past suggests that they often genuinely believe that evidence supports their case even when it clearly doesn't, and that there's a element of misunderstanding about that. I've no doubt that in their presentation of this 'evidence' the BCA are the same. However, when they quote a Cochrane review in such a way that they remove the part of a sentence that qualifies the claim they present, for me that is strongly suggests dishonesty. I just don't see how they could make such a convenient error by accident.
With numerous bloggers gearing up to provide their own, detailed analyses of the research presented, it will be interesting to see how the BCA respond.
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Further Reading from Others:
Jack of Kent - General commentary and legal background.
Prof. Colquhuon - Detailed look at the nine colic papers.
Ministry of Truth - General review focusing on three of the colic papers.
Cochrane Refere... Read more »
Cathryn MA Glazener, Jonathan HC Evans, & Daniel KL Cheuk. (2009) Complementary and miscellaneous interventions for nocturnal enuresis in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
- July 9, 2008
- 11:09 AM
- 1,183 views
The Drug Dealers in Your Living Room
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
According to research by the National Center on Addictive Substance Abuse at Colombia University, reported in the New York Times, hundreds of online stores are selling controlled prescription drugs freely to anyone with a debit card. It's a fascinating (and worrying) piece of research, but one I think is seriously flawed in a few places.
read more... Read more »
Joseph Califano. (2008) You’ve Got Drugs!” V: Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet. Colombia University White Paper. http://www.casacolumbia.org/articlefiles/531-2008 You\'ve Got Drugs V.pdf
- July 10, 2008
- 07:07 AM
- 1,179 views
The Eerie Symphony of the Icebergs
by Martin Robbins in The Lay Scientist
This is pretty special and interesting, especially as I work in an Antarctic research group (or will until my funding is killed soon, pah). A paper by Doug MacAyeal (reported in New Scientist today) has been published that suggests an explanation for mysterious "songs" coming from icebergs, and picked up by hydrophones in the world's oceans [1].
read more... Read more »
D MacAyeal, E A Okal, R C Aster, & J N Bassi. (2008) Seismic and Hydro-Acoustic Tremor Generated by Colliding Icebergs JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. ???, XXXX, DOI:10.1029/, Seismic and Hydro-Acoustic Tremor Generated by Colliding Icebergs D. R. MacAyeal,1 E. A. Okal,2 R. C. Aster,3 and J. N. . Journal of Geophysical Research, ??(XX). http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/jf/2008JF001005-pip.pdf
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