Is Oprah Winfrey giving us bad medicine?

 
David Gorski is a physician who blogs at Science-Based Medicine. One of his recent postings has been published in today's issue of The Toronto star as: Is Oprah Winfrey giving us bad medicine?.

Unfortunately, Oprah displays as close to no critical-thinking skills when it comes to science and medicine as I've ever seen, and uses the vast influence her TV show and media empire give her in order to subject the world to her special brand of mystical New Age thinking and belief in various forms of what can only be characterized as dubious medical therapies at best and quackery at worst.

Naturally, Oprah doesn't see it that way, and likely no one could ever convince her of the malign effect she has on the national zeitgeist with respect to science and medicine.

Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that's why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the "Oprah-fication" of medicine.

There's an interesting background to this story ans David Gorski recounts in the blog [“The Oprah-fication of Medicine” in The Toronto Star].

No one was more shocked than I was when the editor of Sunday Insight section of The Toronto Star contacted me earlier this week to ask if he could adapt my post to a newspaper editorial.

This is a really good sign. A newspaper realizes that blogging and publishing newspapers are not necessarily in competition.

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Psychology and Finger Length

There was a lot of interesting stuff going on at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference held recently at California State University, Fullerton (USA).

You can check out HBES.com and read the abstracts of the papers presented. It gives you a real flavor for the kind of "science" being done in the name of evolutionary psychology.

There was a session on "Digit Ratio." Apparently this is a new field of research in evolutionary psychology. It attempts to correlate the lengths of your fingers with various behaviors. The most relevant parameter appears to be the ratio of the length of your index finger and your ring finger (2D:4D). In women these two fingers are the same length while in men the fourth finger tends to be slightly longer.

Two of the papers at the HBES meeting were from Gad Saad, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He's the author of a book called The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption.

Gad Saad recently posted on the Psychology Today blog [Can the Length of Your Fingers Affect Your Consumption?]. He said ...

Some have argued that the 2D:4D is nothing more than a "sophisticated" form of palmistry. Others have ventured that it belongs with astrology and phrenology, former scientific fields that are now completely discredited. The reality is that the sheer number of papers that have yielded robust 2D:4D effects in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals suggests that it is going to take more than a flippant dismissal, as the means of critiquing this thriving research stream.

That's an interesting argument. It doesn't address the real issue; namely, whether those papers are scientifically valid or not. It merely states that because they are reviewed and accepted by other evolutionary psychologists they must be true. This is, unfortunately, becoming a common excuse these days.

What if peer review is failing to distinguish good science from bad science? I think this is what's happening in most disciplines these days.

Here's the abstract of the presentation given by Gad Saad's group at the HBES meeting.

Finger length ratio and attitudes towards several product categories
Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno, Gad Saad, Eric Stenstrom, Zack Mendenhall

The second-to-fourth finger length ratio (2D:4D), a sexually dimorphic trait, is affected by androgen exposure in utero. It has been linked to a wide range of human phenomena including economic outcomes, personality, sexuality, athletic and musical abilities, health status, and occupational interests to name but a few examples. Surprisingly, it has yet to be investigated in the consumption context. Using a sample of 555 university students, we examined if finger length ratio was negatively correlated with products with a male penchant and positively correlated with products preferred by females. Participants responded to several items, which assessed their attitude towards several product categories namely: cosmetics, electronics, pornography, clothing, movies genres (drama, action, science fiction, romance, animation and war), sports (hockey, boxing, synchronized swimming and gymnastics) and genres of video-games (First-person Shooter, Real-time Strategy, Party-game, Platformer and Life Simulator). Two key findings were obtained. First, the length of the index finger relative to the sum of the lengths of all four fingers (2rel) was generally a better predictor of product attitudes than 2D:4D, given that it yielded a greater number of significant effects. Second, we found significant (p<.05) or marginally significant (p<.10) correlations, in the predicted directions, between 2rel and attitudes towards four out of the nine product categories preferred by males and towards five out of the ten product categories preferred by females. The remaining product categories were not significantly correlated to 2rel. This constitutes the first study to demonstrate a link between a morphological trait and attitudes toward specific products.

Could this be scientific evidence that palm reading actually works?

Does this have anything to do with evolution or is the evolution of consumption a separate study?

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Why Won't Your Daughter Call Home?

 
The Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) is meeting at California State University, Fullerton. There are 450 evolutionary psychologists in attendance [Notes from an evolutionary psychology conference]. I don't think I could be happy there.

One of the attendees is a graduate student named Elizabeth Pillsworth. She studies the evolution of adaptations for avoiding incest. You'll be surprised at what she reports.

The researchers' hypothesis on incest avoidance was that near ovulation, women are motivated to avoid affiliation with male kin (fathers) but not mothers, to avoid the potential costs of inbreeding. Their predictions were that relative to low-fertility days, on high-fertility days women would initiate fewer calls and engage in shorter conversations with fathers, compared to mothers.

They had 51 normally-ovulating women (mean age 19.1 years old) provide complete cell phone bills from one month, along with their menstrual cycle information and details about individuals on their phone bill. It turned out that the subjects called their fathers significantly less than their mothers during high fertility days, and when both mothers and fathers called them during high fertility days they spent less time on the phone with their dads than with their moms.

Conclusion: "this is the first evidence of adaptation in human females to avoid affiliation with male kin when fertility is at its highest."

Isn't that amazing? I can't possibly think of any other explanation. There must be a gene for not talking to your father when you're fertile. I wonder what chromosome it's on?

I wonder if there were any controls—like how often the women spoke to their boyfriends, or when mothers called their sons?

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Laughter Evolved but Is It Adaptive?

 
Jerry Coyne wrote an interesting article about the evolution of laughter. He closes with ..

So laughter, at least when being tickled, appears to be an evolved, innate phenomenon. As I emphasized above, this says nothing about whether it was selected for directly, whether it was a byproduct of something else that was selected, or is simply a nonadaptive epiphenomenon. But as I write, evolutionary psychologists are working on why evolution may have promoted laughter.

Of course evolutionary psychologists are busy working on an adaptive just-so story. That's what they do. You won't catch them explaining anything as an accident or an epiphenomenon.

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Is There a Problem?

 
Fr. Alphonse de Valk writes in Catholic Insight: Atheism: a threat to civilization

Christian belief in Canada

Today the Christian belief in God is under tremendous attack. It began in the 1960’s with the overthrow of the age–old condom nation of contraceptives, divorce, abortion, and homosexual activism (1967-1969). Today in Canada, the leaders of three out of four political parties are agnostics or aetheists. The print and visual media are overwhelmingly agnostic atheist, with the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC in the lead. Catholic Insight’s March article, “The Frankfurt School” indicates the prevailing ideas now dominant in educational circles. The world-wide elitist hostility towards the Pope for contradicting the folly of the condom is good example of atheists at work. (see above).

So, what's the problem? Sounds like Canadians are on the right track if they condemn the Pope for advocating abstinence instead of condoms.

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[Photo Credit: The Interim]

[Hat Tip: John Pieret of Thoughts in a Haystack]

The Selective Advantages of Hairlessness, Baldness, and Gray Hair

 
Denyse O'Leary collects silly Darwinian tales of the sort usually referred to as "just-so" stories. She alerted me to some real live ones on her blog Uncommon Descent [Darwinian fairy tales: Why middle-aged men have shiny scalps].

It's embarrassing that the creationists have such easy targets.

The just-so stories are written by Terence Kealey who bills himself as vice-chancellor of Buckingham University. (He's also a clinical biochemist.) The stories were published on Times Online as: Guys, be glad to be grey or thinning on top.

Here's are the funny parts ....

We human beings, too, are highly selected sexually, but in our case it is women who are the peacocks: the more beautiful they are, the greater the number and quality of the men who court them. This is why, some 75,000 years ago, we made our last two evolutionary advances: we lost our body hair and we invented art.

...

Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children - even the males, though to a lesser degree - lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.

This was all supposed to happen about 75,000 years ago, according to Terence Kealey. It's interesting to speculate on what must have happened.

Small groups of hunter-gatherers met from time to time. Almost all the females probably had sexual partners when they were all hairy. It's unlikely that there were many females who couldn't find a mate.

All of a sudden, there were some new girls on the block. They had less hair and they covered their body with paint and tattoos. These mutants were so attractive to men that they were preferentially chosen as mates and, more importantly, their hairy sisters were ignored. The hairy women didn't have offspring so there must have been quite a few men who were celibate as well. (Unless the mutants had multiple mates.)

That's why hairlessness was rapidly selected.¹

In order to understand the next just-so story you have to know that the article begins with an explanation of why Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, had a hair transplant.

Which brings us back to Mr Berlusconi. Hair plays a social signalling role in many older mammals. It goes grey - which can be a good thing. It is only the silverback gorilla(so-called named for obvious reasons) who can corral a harem of females, in part because gorillas of both sexes revere older males. We have retained our head hair so enabling that social signalling: grey hair on men can reinforce an alpha message of chiefdom. As can baldness.

Men have evolved to attract women. Because only some men go bald, we must assume that different women are attracted differently. Some women will be attracted to young men, but young men are untried and therefore risky, so some women will seek sugar daddies instead. Mating with sugar daddies invokes a different set of risks but the trophy wife is nonetheless making a rational choice - one that may well have been rewarded preferentially in the Stone Age - to which she is in part guided by baldness in her man.

Now, what sort of girl will fancy Mr Berlusconi? Clearly the sugar daddy type. But such a girl will subconsciously be looking for baldness in her beau and she may be put off by the mixed messages Silvio's head is transmitting.

The biology of baldness is complex. Some theorists believe that it renders older men so unattractive that - rather than sowing additional wild oats - they are forced to spend more time with their families and so help their children to survive. But the myriad Becky Sharps in literature and history help to disprove that theory.

Now let's imagine that we are back in the stone age. There are a bunch of men who, for undisclosed reasons, have reached the age of fifty and don't have a mate.² There are a number of young women who want an older man for a mate instead of the young men who are probably available.

Most of the fifty year olds have hair that's the same color it has always been. All of a sudden a few mutants appear who have white hair or (gasp!) no hair at all. These older men become so sexually attractive to the young women that they get to reproduce while their hairy friends are spurned. Maybe they painted or tattooed their bald heads. Yes, that would work. I think I'll try it.

That's how the alleles for baldness and white hair get selected in ancient hunter-gatherer societies.

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1. It's a good thing that razors hadn't been invented, otherwise the hairy women could have fooled the men into thinking they were a hairless mutant.

2. I'm assuming monogamy as the default option. As far as I know, this is generally accepted.

Science Literacy and the New Atheist Ideology

 
Matt Nisbet is at it again. Here's something from his latest posting [Science Literacy and the New Atheist Ideology: Rethinking Definitions and Relevance].

Next week there will be big news on the science communication front. In anticipation, I was just going back over some things that I have written on the topic over the past decade. I ran across an essay I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer from 2003, which I posted below the fold. The essay puts into context an interesting debate that took place in the pages of The Guardian between eminent UK scientist Susan Greenfield and science communication professor Jon Turney.

Greenfield's side of the debate reflects a continued dominant line of thinking referred to as the "deficit model," the assumption that public controversies over science are a product of ignorance and that improving the public's knowledge of the technical facts of science--or filling in the deficit--will make the public view science-related issues as scientists do.

Six years on, we still see these deficit model assumptions at play. In fact, as I write in a forthcoming book chapter, the deficit model remains a cornerstone of the New Atheist ideology and movement.

Well-framed, Matt!

Here's my opinion, which I imagine is not that much different from Susan Greenfield's or that of the "New Atheists."

Most public debates about science issues are not really about science at all. They're about religion, morality, ideology, politics etc.

To the extent that natural science is involved, it is beneficial for everyone to understand the facts and concepts correctly. Nothing is more frustrating than when these debates degenerate into disputes about the science. To that end, scientists have a role to play. When it comes to issues like evolution or global climate change, the idea is that everyone should be on the same playing field when it comes to the science.

Is that too much to ask?

No scientist that I know, thinks that's the end of the story. Getting the science right is just one step in the right direction. Communists & capitalists, atheists & theists, vegetarians & omnivores, and quacks & doctors can all have raging debates about science-related issues as long as they all agree on the correct scientific interpretation of the facts.

Read Matt's blog to see why he opposes that point of view.

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Chris Mooney Changed His Mind

 
Chris Mooney and Jerry Coyne are having a discussion about whether religion and science are compatible. Coyne says they are not and I agree with him. We don't know what Chris really thinks on this issue but we do know that he's opposed to debating it in public.

Chris supports the accommodationist position, which means that even if you think science and religion are incompatible you should not voice that opinion in public.

Chris didn't always think that way. Back in 2001 he wrote an article in Slate that mentioned how accepting evolution challenges most religious beliefs. He addresses this in his latest posting [Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself].

…indeed, I find my work from 2001 on this topic pretty unsatisfying. I guess you could say I’ve changed my view; certainly I’ve changed my emphasis. A lot more reading in philosophy and history has moved me toward a more accomodationist position. So has simple pragmatism; I don’t see what is to be gained by flailing indiscriminately against religion, other than a continuation of the culture wars. That’s especially so when those who flail against religion do so in philosophically or historically unsophisticated ways, or (worse still) with the bile, negativity, and even occasional intolerance that I have encountered in such discussions.

This last part is ... how shall we put it ... disingenuous. Mooney and Coyne are having a polite (so far) and intellectual discussion about the compatibility of science and religion. Why do the accommodationists always have to bring up the worst examples of atheists in support of their arguments? Who's "flailing," Chris?

Isn't it strange that they never mention the bile, negativity, and intolerance of the worst religious fundamentalists? Shouldn't that be just as relevant for an accommodationist? I always wonder why people like Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet don't tell Ken Miller and Francis Collins to shut the heck up because of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?

And I'm not even going to discuss the backhanded slap about the "unsophistication" of those who think that science and religion are (mostly) incompatible. That's just childish ... and somewhat intolerant.

I am as much an atheist as I have ever been–and I have been one essentially since birth. But I am also much more interested in liberal tolerance (in the classical sense) and in finding common solutions than I am in eradicating religion (if that’s even possible) or in making other people think like I do. I’ll have more on all of this soon as I respond to Coyne.

This is the heart of the issue. Mooney admits that he is not interested in the debate over the truth of religion. In other words, the compatibility of science and religion is just not an issue that concerns him. Fine. Stay out of it. Don't try and argue that others should think like you. Some of us are interested in whether God exists.

Oh, and by the way, Chris, the words "liberal tolerance" don't mean what you think they mean. They are not synonyms for "don't ever discuss the existence of God because it might upset believers."

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The law has no place in scientific disputes

 
Simon Singh has decided to appeal the decision of a British court. That court ruled that his article on chiropractic in The Guardian contained "the plainest allegation of dishonesty and indeed it accuses them (the BCA) of thoroughly disreputable conduct." The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) brought the libel action because Singh's article pointed out the truth; namely, that there is no evidence to support the claim that most chiropractic procedures actually work.

You can read Sing's summary of the events, including his decision to appeal the judge's ruling at BCA v Singh The Story So Far 3 June 2009.

Many prominent scientists and journalist have rallied to Singh's side. Read about this development on Sense About Science and The Independent: Silenced, the writer who dared to say chiropractice is bogus.

Here's the statement. You can sign it on Sense About Science.

We the undersigned believe that it is inappropriate to use the English libel laws to silence critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence.

The British Chiropractic Association has sued Simon Singh for libel. The scientific community would have preferred that it had defended its position about chiropractic for various children's ailments through an open discussion of the peer reviewed medical literature or through debate in the mainstream media.

Singh holds that chiropractic treatments for asthma, ear infections and other infant conditions are not evidence-based. Where medical claims to cure or treat do not appear to be supported by evidence, we should be able to criticise assertions robustly and the public should have access to these views.

English libel law, though, can serve to punish this kind of scrutiny and can severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest. It is already widely recognised that the law is weighted heavily against writers: among other things, the costs are so high that few defendants can afford to make their case. The ease and success of bringing cases under the English law, including against overseas writers, has led to London being viewed as the "libel capital" of the world.

Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.

The English law of libel has no place in scientific disputes about evidence; the BCA should discuss the evidence outside of a courtroom. Moreover, the BCA v Singh case shows a wider problem: we urgently need a full review of the way that English libel law affects discussions about scientific and medical evidence.

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[Photo Credit: Rex Features]

Plants Are not Alive, Says PETA

 

From The Wichita Eagle Kansas (USA): George Tiller shooting prompts PETA ad campaign in Wichita.

A national animal rights group plans to erect billboards in Wichita urging people on both sides of the abortion debate to go vegetarian.

One version of the billboard says, "Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian." The other says, "Pro-Choice? Choose Vegetarian." Both feature a photo of three baby chicks.

Lindsay Rajt, campaign manager for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the billboards were prompted by the recent shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday at his church.

"The discussion of the value of life is front and center right now in the public conversation," Rajt said.

"We think we would be irresponsible if we don't talk about how we're all guilty of extreme cruelty to animals every time we sit down to a meal that includes meat."

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[Hat Tip: Pharyngula]

No Competing Interests

 
The Darwinius affair continues. Let's recap the events.

As Atlantic Productions puts it on their website ..

THE LINK is a major multi-platform event including a landmark documentary, book, and interactive website to coincide with the publication of scientific paper describing one of the most significant discoveries ever made.

The scientific paper was published in PLoS ONE at the same time the book went on sale and the TV showed was hyped. Here's the paper.

Franzen, J.L., Gingerich, P.D., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J.H., von Koenigswald, W., and Smith, B.H. (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723]

Here's the TV show produced by Atlantic Productions. The book is on sale. The flashy website is active.

The first page of the article has the standard disclaimer ...

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Read what Earle Holland has to say about the definition of "competing interest." Carl Zimmer is on the case, waiting to hear back from PLoS ONE.

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Monday's Molecule #124: Winners

 
This week's winner is Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto. (Yeah, Canada!) Here's what he wrote,

The molecule is the Na+/K+ ATPase ('sodium-potassium pump'). The stoichiometry is 3Na+ out for 2K+ into the cell. In the process, ATP is converted to ADP + Pi (inorganic phosphate).

The Nobelist is Jens Skou, Chemistry 1997.

The Undergraduate winner is Jason Oakley of the University of Toronto.

The fastest correct answer was from an ineligible American but the next four correct answers were from Canadians. Maybe I should extend the ineligible delay even more!!!

Europeans and the rest of the world weren't even in the top ten.

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Name this molecule. Be as specific as possible. You must also identify the missing products and reactants. Be sure to get the stoichiometry correct or it doesn't count!

Identify the Nobel Laureate who discovered this molecule.

The first person to identify the molecule plus its reactants and products and identify the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize. Please note the change in the length of time you are ineligible. The idea is to give more more people a chance to win.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Laura Gerth of the University of Notre Dame, Stefan Tarnawsky of the University of Toronto, Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Adam Santoro of the University of Toronto., Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, and Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto.

The rest of the world has pulled ahead of the Canadians. If it wasn't for the special free lunch for people who can actually collect it, there would be no Canadian winners at all!! What's happened?

I still have one extra free lunch donated by a previous winner to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

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The Debut of Science Nation

 

Science Nation is an online magazine produced by the National Science Foundation (USA). The first "issue" was published yesterday.

Before looking at it, let's see why this is happening.

In the National Science Foundation's Science Nation online magazine, we examine the breakthroughs, and the possibilities for new discoveries about our planet, our universe and ourselves: An artifical retina that can help the blind to see; new materials to build things bigger, better, lighter, and stronger; new ways to make our lives better without making the environment worse; and what we can learn from organisms that can live and thrive in frozen deserts or steaming-hot volcanic vents. Each week, Science Nation takes a dynamic, entertaining look at the research--and the researchers-- that will change our lives.

That's not very helpful. The motivation seems to be to promote NSF by reaching out directly to the general public—"The online magazine that's all about science for the people." I guess NSF wants to publicize work that it's funding. Maybe it wants to contribute to science education?

The first video is called Extremophile Hunter. It highlights the work of Richard Hoover who looks for bacteria that live in extremely cold environments. Hoover also believes that life may have originated in other planets and was brought to Earth on meteorites.

To test that theory, he cracks open so-called carbonaceous meteorites, which are the remains of cometary debris or water-bearing asteroids that have hit the Earth. Being careful to avoid contamination, he examines their insides with an electron microscope.

"They are older than the planet Earth, which is accepted at being 4.5 billion years old," said Hoover. "So I like to say these carbonaceous meteorites are actually older than dirt!"

Some of the structures he has imaged from these meteorites are intriguing, bearing striking similarities to bacteria here on Earth. Could these be the fossilized remains of extraterrestial life?

"I am convinced that what I am finding in the carbonaceous meteorites are in many cases biological in nature, and I think they are indigenous and not terrestrial contaminants," said Hoover.

It is a highly controversial interpretation.

"We have for a long time thought that all life, as we know it, originated on Earth. And there isn't any life anywhere else," he said. "That's an idea, it's a hypothesis, it's a totally unproven hypothesis."

Hoover hopes his work will help get at the truth, whatever that may be. And as interplanetary probes become more sophisticated, scientists may eventually turn up a biological sample for examination. Then we'll know if life out there looks anything like it does here.

The National Science Foundation goes on record supporting the idea that traces of extraterrestrial life have been detected in "so-called carbonaceous" meteorites that are older than the Earth. Yes, they admit that the idea is "controversial" but what message is being conveyed to the general public? Is it the message that the vast majority of scientists dismiss these "imaged structures" as artifacts?

I've been critical of science journalism for not doing a good job of reporting science. I've also been critical of scientists for not doing a good job of doing science properly—making the job of science journalists that much harder. Now we have a scientific funding agency taking on the role of science journalism. One might expect that the number one criterion of science journalism; namely, scientific accuracy, would be ensured. It's disappointing to see that scientific accuracy is the first casualty in the first episode of Science Nation. It was sacrificed on the alter of media hype.

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The Truth About Chiropractic

 
Fifteen years ago, my faculty association (union) negotiated some increased coverage to our health plan. They added visits to the chiropractor and increased the rates that we all pay for this extra coverage. At the meeting where this addition was ratified, every single scientist on our Governing Council opposed the extension on the grounds that most visits to the chiropractor were ineffective. What this means is that we are paying for our non-scientific colleagues to support quacks.

The general public seems completely unaware of the fact that chiropractic is "alternative medicine." In other words it is not evidence-based medicine.

Read "What you should know about chiropractic" in this week's issue of New Scientist to learn more.

FOR many people, chiropractic appears almost mainstream. Some chiropractors even call themselves "doctor". In the UK, chiropractors are regulated by statute, and in the US they like to be seen as primary care physicians. It is therefore understandable if people hardly ever question the evidential basis on which this profession rests.

The origins of chiropractic are surprising and rather spectacular. On 18 September 1895 Daniel Palmer, a "magnetic healer" practising in the American Midwest, manipulated the spine of Harvey Lillard, a janitor who had been partially deaf since feeling "something give in his back". The manipulation apparently cured Lillard of his deafness. Palmer's second patient suffered from heart disease, and again spinal manipulation is said to have effected a cure. Within a year or so, Palmer had opened a school, the first of many, and the term he coined, "chiropractic", was well on its way to becoming a household name.

The only true cure

Palmer convinced himself he had discovered something fundamental about human illness and its treatment. According to Palmer, a vital force - he called it the "Innate" - enables our body to heal itself. If our vertebrae are not perfectly aligned, the flow of the Innate is blocked and we fall ill. Chiropractors speak of these misalignments as "subluxations" (in conventional medicine, a subluxation means merely a partial dislocation). The only true cure is to realign the vertebrae by manipulating the spine, and in the logic of chiropractic it follows that all human illness must be treated with spinal manipulations. Many chiropractors also assert that we need regular "maintenance care" even when we are not ill so that subluxations can be realigned before they cause a disease. In the words of Palmer "95 per cent of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae, the remainder by luxations of other joints".

It's true that there are some chiropractors who don't believe all this nonsense. They concentrate on relieving back pain and stay away from all the quackery associated with most chiropractic. Those chiropractors exist, but you'll have a hard time finding them.

So, the key question is whether chiropractic works. Is there any evidence to support the claims of chiropractors? The short answer is no. There's some evidence that chiropractic helps relieve back pain but that's it. Here's how Edzard Ernst describes it in his New Scientist article.

In the book I co-wrote with Simon Singh, Trick or Treatment? Alternative medicine on trial, we dedicate a chapter to chiropractic. After weighing all the evidence, our conclusions were not flattering: "Warning: this treatment carries the risk of stroke and death if spinal manipulation is applied to the neck. Elsewhere on the spine, therapy is relatively safe. It has shown some evidence of benefit in the treatment of back pain, but conventional treatments are usually equally effective and much cheaper. In the treatment of all other conditions chiropractic therapy is ineffective except that it might act as a placebo."

It's nice to hear a voice of reason from time to time.

As you might expect, the chiropractors aren't happy. In fact, they are so unhappy that they're using the British legal system to silence their critics.

Simon later wrote an article in The Guardian newspaper about chiropractic. In it, he quoted from the website of the British Chiropractic Association which, at the time, made fairly clear claims that chiropractors can effectively treat a whole range of childhood diseases, including asthma. The evidence for treatment of this condition is less than weak: no fewer than three controlled trials have found that chiropractic spinal manipulation has no beneficial effect. The best of these studies, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that "the addition of chiropractic spinal manipulation to usual medical care provided no benefit".

Not supported

For alerting the public to all of this, and possibly preventing harm to unsuspecting children, Simon deserves much credit. Instead, he is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. I think this is a serious issue that raises two crucial questions. Is it acceptable that scientists and journalists are restricted in their criticism by the legal muscle of those who are being criticised? And is it acceptable that professional bodies, such as the British Chiropractic Association - or indeed any other organisation - are able to make therapeutic claims that are not supported by scientific data? I leave it to the reader to decide.

The preliminary judgment has gone against Singh as reported in New Scientist a few weeks ago [Chiropractic critic loses first round in libel fight].

IF YOU have ever been tempted to call alternative medicine "bogus", choose your words with care. You could be sued for defamation. That's the message from a ruling in the High Court in London that censured science writer Simon Singh for claiming that the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) promoted "bogus" treatments.

Chiropractic is a system of alternative and complementary medicine that treats illnesses by manipulating the spine. Singh made the comment in an article in London newspaper The Guardian in April 2008. The BCA asked him to retract the statement, which it said was wrong and damaging to its reputation. Singh refused, so the BCA sued him for libel.

In a pre-trial hearing last week, the judge ruled that Singh was saying the BCA had knowingly made false claims. He rejected Singh's defence that it was fair comment. "The judge has given us a meaning [of bogus] that is very extreme and that I never intended," Singh told New Scientist.

You know we're in trouble when the courts stifle science in favor of quackery.

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What Should Scientific Organizations Say about Religion?

 
The poll has closed and here are the results.


A slight majority say that organizations like AAAS (amd NAS) should say nothing about the compatibility of science and religion. I think that's the correct choice.

What's surprising (to me) is that 31% of you said these organizations should say that science and religion are incompatible. I believe this is true but I still think that scientific organizations should not say anything. They don't speak for their members on this topic.

I'm glad to see that only 14% of Sandwalk readers support the unsupportable statement that science and religion are compatible.

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