Briefly: An Example Of Why We Need An Ethical Language of Bullshit

In September last year, blogger Nicholas Marsh posted an article discussing the need for a Language of Bullshit and I was reminded of this at the weekend when reading a comment from a poster on the Hpathy forum. In response to a statement to the effect that “homeopathy is an elaborate placebo and its practitioners are either fooling themselves or fooling their customers”, the poster wrote:

but I just wonder why do you not want to leave these deluded fools alone? Why all this fuss of “exposing” them? Do you feel somehow threatened by them? But it’s just plain sugar pills, what’s in all this to you? It’s mean to make fun of deranged, where are your morals?

The reply to this point was as follows:

I absolutely agree that it is wrong to make fun of people who are deranged and it was not my intention to do so. I said that practitioners were either fooling themselves or their clients - I didn’t claim anyone was deranged, nor did I intend to imply that because someone fools themself into thinking homeopathy works that they must be deranged. As Richard Feynman said, when speaking of scientific integrity: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. And we do fool ourselves quite often. There’s an article in the New Scientist titled “Fooling yourself is an ancient and useful trait” here (unfortunately, it is behind a paywall). It refers to cognitive dissonance. There’s also some interesting stuff [out there] on people’s tendency to see patterns in random sequences. This is all about how we fool ourselves - all of us. It doesn’t necessarily make us deluded or deranged.

I always thought Nicholas Marsh’s piece A Language of Bullshit was interesting. Not just interesting, but important too. Here are a couple of brief quotes from Nicholas’s piece:

The problem is that when people resolutely deny the relevance of evidence or logic, or insist that what ever theory they believe in has replaced all we know about physics, chemistry, biology etc. we will ultimately be left with a choice between relativism, or criticising their integrity or mental faculties.

We can try to limit criticism to ideas and not the person. Most academics are used to rarefied discussions, but even their discussions (especially in the blogosphere) can get very personal and abusive. More importantly, the identities of the practitioners and ardent believers of the extraordinary are often tied strongly to their beliefs - in the same way that many people’s identities are closely linked to their jobs. If someone criticises the ideas behind their belief, they are going to take it personally. Moreover, one can’t really separate the idea from the person. It was the person that created and nurtured the belief. If we say that their cherished idea is based on gobbledygook and shoddy research, we are directly criticising their competence.

To read the whole piece, click here: Extraordinary Claims.

I should certainly be mobbed

I was reading a book on Porton Down called From Biological Warfare to Healthcare when I came across a letter written by Sir Paul Gordon Fildes (OBE, MB, Hon. ScD Cantab, Reading, FRS). Fildes was head of the Biology Department from 1940-1946 and according to the book Fildes’s team at Porton Down “made a huge leap in the understanding of the behaviour of pathogenic microorganisms in the environment, notably the air”. Fildes had agreed to become involved in wartime work at Porton Down on the condition that his involvement remain secret. Fildes’s link to Porton was made public through an obituary in The Times and he was again linked by a booklet handed out at public open days at Porton Down that revealed Fildes had let the wartime team at Porton Down. Fildes was furious and wrote to the then Director of Biological and Chemical Defence, Gerald Heath. From the book:

Fildes complained of his name being mentioned in The Times and felt most uncomfortable about accepting the invitation sent to all members of BRAB [Biological Research Advisory Board] to attend the open days. He wrote “of 1800 visitors I am liable to meet 600, many of them unwashed … I should certainly be mobbed.” He continued his letter with a section warning against what he perceived to be the dangers of giving unfettered access to MRE [Microbiological Research Establishment] by the public, concluding:”I don’t think I can accept the invitation to attend. I can’t come in disguise.” In view of this response, it is likely that his anger would have been provokedd the previous year had he seen the article on MRE in Chemistry and Industry by Dr C.E. Gordon Smith which also noted Fildes’s contribution!

The first thing this passage made me think of was Mourinho leaving Chelsea and saying that he could not go back because he would be smothered by the fans (”I would love to gather all the fans together to say goodbye but they would crush me with their love”) - but I’m not sure whether Fildes was worried about being mobbed by well-wishers or ill-wishers. To be honest, I’m just a little bit disappointed that more of the letter wasn’t revealed to us by the authors Peter M Hammond and Gradon B Carter - the two lines they did include were fantastic.

More on Paul Fildes:
In Time in 1942, Fildes discovery of the mechanism of sulfa therapy is discussed.
Wikipedia has a brief bio here: Paul Fildes.
Speculation on Fildes’s and Porton Down’s involvement with the death of ‘top Nazi’ Reinhard Heydrich is here.
More here at PBS: Bio.

And a bit more about the former Director of Biological and Chemical Defence, Gerald Heath here: Hampton Residents.

The Embryo Research Bill (and a little bit about Murphy-O’Connor’s ‘Evil Atheists’ Comments) [UPDATED]

On Monday, there will be a show of support for the Embryo Research Bill outside Parliament. There are concerns that sense may not prevail and the Bill may be defeated by religious objectors. The likely reason for these concerns is the fuss being made in the press by people such as Cardinal Keith O’Brien and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor*. The Times covered O’Brien’s remarks and the Guardian printed a piece with some clarifications. The Guardian piece and two letters to the Independent were published on the Black Triangle blog. One of my favourite opinion pieces on the Embryo Research Bill was written by George Galloway in the Daily Record:

The Bill contains the literally monstrous idea to allow boffins to insert human DNA into animal eggs creating hybrid human-animal embryos. This Frankenstinian proposal allegedly has some Christian ministers parading their double standard consciences

If you want to read more about the Bill, there is some discussion here, taken from the minutes of the Joint Committee on the Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill - the report is indexed here: First Report. There was some discussion of the O’Brien comments at the Richard Dawkins Forum here and the Telegraph had a ‘For and Against‘ article. The Times also has some poll results here on PDF.

UPDATE 1: Weirdly, the MRC (Medical Research Council) don’t seem to want researchers to turn up on Monday - they think it would be counter-productive for scientists to come to Parliament and explain their research. Dr Minger has said that he has been encouraged by the MRC’s note - rather than just turn up to the show of support alone, he will be encouraging colleagues to join him. Evan Harris described the MRC note as “rather absurd and paranoid“. Ben Goldacre’s Miniblog had this summary: “Run away, hide, do not engage, do not speak, do not have feelings, do not have opinions, and if you it must let them only be expressed by The Singular Official Voice.”

UPDATE 2: Teek attended the show of support and has blogged it. Part one is here: Embryos and Parliament. Keep an eye out for part two!

*Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (the Archbishop of Westminster) also said some stupid things about atheists recently. In defence of his comments he later claimed on the Today programme that societies ruled only by reason were like those created by Hitler and Stalin - ripe for terror and oppression. As I wrote last week, my view is that repudiation of liberal ideas rather than repudiation of religious ideas leads to despotism (although I used Lenin and Hitler as my examples).  I think Murphy-O’Connor has made a mistake invoking Hitler and Stalin as examples of the evils of reason, as I don’t think either man was particularly influenced by reason - in my view they were a pair of murderous, power-hungry bastards (and Hitler had some very strange beliefs indeed - well Google seems to think so anyway). There’s a bit more about Hitler the Atheist here on the Richard Dawkins site [according to the BBC's online report, Dawkins was on Radio 4 earlier discussing Murphy-O'Connor's remarks] and some discussion of Murphy O’Connor’s comments on the Bad Science Forum.

UPDATE 3: See my comment below for links to more religion/science stupidity where Hawk-Handsaw is looking at some comments made by Nadine Dorries.

The Dawkins Delusion - Introduction

Alister and Joanna Collicut McGrath wrote The Dawkins Delusion in 2007 and I’ve just borrowed a copy from my library. Here’s a couple of snippets from the introduction:

IANT write terrible response to Cochrane - and block comments

The Irish Association of Nutritional Therapy have written a response to the Cochrane review of antioxidant pills. It’s not very impressive. Holford Watch have posted on it here: IANT and have also attempted to leave a comment (or comments) on the IANT piece. Unfortunately, the IANT appears to be blocking these comments and I haven’t been able to comment either. The following comment was stuck in moderation:

I’m afraid that not everything you have written in this response is true. For example, this: “The final exclusion involves the trials with selenium with no reason as to why. Selenium trials generally show a positive result on the disease in question when supplemented.” is simply untrue - as can be seen if you follow this link: http://holfordwatch.info/2008/04/26/irish-association-of-nutritional-therapy-giving-the-facts-about-the-cochrane-review-of-antioxidant-supplements/

When this comment failed to appear, I fired off a very brief email pointing out just one or two of the mistakes in the IANT piece:

Unfortunately, this piece: http://www.iant.ie/2008/04/18/response-to-the-recent-media-coverage-regarding-antioxidants/ contains several errors. I know that, as nutritional therapists, you will feel compelled to give the public the facts of this case and I am sure that you will amend any errors in your response to Cochrane. I look forward to reading the revised article.
 
Regards,
jdc.
 
“Many of the studies are with dosages that far exceed what is in most vitamin products.” - this has been covered by Dr Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science column in the Guardian. (1)
 
“The authors have excluded over 400 trials many of which have a positive outcome and have no deaths so if these were included the findings would be different.” - the study was on mortality. How exactly would those studies that do not report mortality be useful in studying mortality?
 
“There are no adverse risks with taking vitamin and mineral supplements that are available at the current levels.” - the levels of vitamins and minerals available at many ‘health food’ stores do have associated risks. (See again Ben Goldacre’s comments on available supplements)

“Research in the UK shows that many people are deficient in various nutrients. (4) It also shows that large parts of the population come nowhere near consuming 5 portions of fruit and vegetables especially in the younger populations. There is ample research to show that at least a third of all cancer is linked to diet.” Yes, cancer is linked to diet (i.e., the food we eat - not the vitamin pills we take). However - the evidence in respect of diet and health is for fruit and vegetables, not isolated nutrients sold in pill form.

See Holford Watch [sorry for the previously broken link] and Bad Science for more on the responses to Cochrane.

Here’s a picture of a Nutritional Therapist engaging with the evidence: