The Beacon

The Need For Scrutiny

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:35:00 +0000

The 30-Second Skinny There's little better evidence for an intervention than the double blind randomized placebo controlled trial, but these trials still need to be properly scrutinized. In one double blind trial on acupuncture as a treatment for smoking cessation, the drop-outs were distributed across the three groups in a way that suggested that the blinding simply hadn't worked, making the resulting evidence all but worthless.

The holy grail of proof for medical interventions is the large scale double bind randomized placebo controlled trial. However, a positive result from such a trial can't be treated as a watershed of proof for any particular intervention. More importantly, a positive result should invite a greater scrutiny, especially if the result suggests a massive shift in our understand of the way that bodies work.

I recently encountered such a trial in the form of Low level laser for the stimulation of acupoints for smoking cessation: a double blind, placebo controlled randomised trial and semi structured interviews by Catherine M. Kerr, Paul B. Lowe and Neil I. Spielholz. It is a belief of acupuncture and acupressure that chi points on the ear trigger endorphin releases that can benefit someone in their attempts to give up smoking. Put simply it is said to bypass cigarette cravings by giving them another kind of hit.

Kerr and co decided to test this hypothesis using laser acupuncture. They gathered 387 volunteers together, each regular smokers who wanted to quit. They were randomized into three groups. Group A received three genuine treatments and one sham treatment. Group B received four genuine treatments. Group C received four sham treatments. This randomization was carried out in such a way that neither researchers or subjects knew which group they had been assigned to. The sham treatment involved using a laser unit that was identical in appearance and weight to the genuine handsets, and application of the unit was also identical in experience. After the four treatment sessions there was a 3 month and a 6 month follow up to establish whether or not subjects were smoking. The results seem impressive and unequivocal.

Not only does the 4 treatment group outperform the control group by some distance, the 3 treatment / 1 sham group outperforms the control group to a lesser extent. So we have a decent sized sample, a control group, proper blinding and randomization, and a demonstration that the number of treatments have an incremental effect. Is it time to allow acupuncture into the fold of proven medicine; it is time to work towards establishing the nature and make-up of chi?

No. And here's why.

I've kept a little piece of information back. The trial had 47 drop-outs of the 387 volunteers. Here's how the paper puts it:

Three hundred and eighty seven persons were initially accepted on to the study. At the start of the treatment time 6% (n=23) of persons did not attend for the treatment which had been scheduled after the initial screening and acceptance. A further 7% (n=24) withdrew after receiving either one or two treatments. The remaining 87% (n=340) went on to complete their respective treatment schedule. The number of participants in each group was now Group A (3 laser and 1 sham treatments) 121, Group B (4 laser treatments) 130, Group C (4 sham treatments) 89.

This means that if the 387 had been randomized equally, each group would have had 129 participants in each. Therefore we see that the drop outs came mostly from the control group, with a few dropping out of group A. Here's how the paper discusses this odd drop-out distribution.

However the largest number of persons failing to complete the treatment (n = 38) occurred from within the control Group C, reducing its participant number to 89. This was a considerable reduction in comparison to the remaining participant numbers in Group A (n = 117) and Group B (n = 125) and there was a concern that this could be having the pseudo-effect of enhancing the effectiveness of the laser acupoint stimulation treatment. Steiner and Geddes (2001) suggest that one way of dealing with missing data is to assume the worst case scenario and accept that the significant outcome that was achieved was the result of so many persons leaving the control group. Applied to this study, their suggestion would be to record all the dropouts in Control Group C as having been successful in ceasing smoking.

So in the minds of the researchers the worst case scenario was that everyone who dropped out of the study did so because they had given up smoking. Their concern, and perhaps this is understandable given that they had invested greatly in an eighteen-month study, was how the drop-outs may have affected the data. What their concern ought to have been was the distribution itself. We'd expect to see, under normal circumstances, a roughly equal number of drop-outs in each group, about 16. What we have instead is a distribution of drop-outs that matches the level of sham treatments each group gets. If you had to imagine the distribution of drop-outs in a non-blinded trial, chances are you'd give them a similar distribution. People are going to be more inclined to drop out of a study if they know they are receiving sham treatment; this is even more likely if they understand that the only point of having the sham treatment is if they don't know.

The worst case scenario, then, is not that the drop-outs all went on to quit smoking, skewing the data. The worst, and here most likely, case scenario is that the blinding had failed across all three groups, rendering the study as a whole useless. The researchers could, perhaps, be forgiven for not realising this, but any peer-reviewed journal worth its salt should have picked up on this flaw. The evidence says more about the editorial quality of the Journal of Chinese Medicine than it does about the ability of laser stimulation of the ear to aid in people kicking the habit.

Narconon London - Fun With Paperwork

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:28:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The 30 Second Skinny The Church of Scientology will often change its story to best suit its audience. By comparing publicly available reports these "economies of truth" can be placed under the spotlight. Narconon London for instance has suggested to regulators that they do not offer a residential rehab service but suggest to the public and to the Charity Commission that they do.

The Church of Scientology is often accused of saying whatever suits its purpose from one moment to the next. For instance it will distance itself from the work of its Way To Happiness Foundation, declaring to schools and government bodies that it is a completely independent organisation that just happened to have been set up by some scientologists, yet during its New Year celebrations takes on any of WTHF's successes as its own. These kinds of deceptions tend to be deemed allowable by Scientology dogma due to the "ends justify the means" basis of its ethics.

How far this disconnection from the truth goes can be quite breathtaking, and nowhere more so than the paper trail that lies in the wake of the UK arm of its drug rehabilitation program, Narconon London.

At St Leonards on Sea, Narconon London have a facility that, according to its website, provides space for 40 students.

This Tudor mansion provides the perfect distraction free environment for students to progress through the programme. In the relaxed and comfortable atmosphere many friendships are built between students.

Facilities include a small gym, pool room, sun lounge, TV and video room, all based in beautifully kept gardens.

The facility was opened to the usual level of pomp and ceremony in March 2005. They got the Mayor of Bexhill to cut the ribbon. But did the facility hit the ground running? This is a controversial drug rehab program, after all. Its demanding exercise regime, use of potentially damaging overdoses of vitamins, and its incorporation of Scientology doctrine and pseudoscience all give cause for worry. You can add to that a growing list of people who feel they have been conned by the organisation; stories of students who have paid several thousand dollars to participate in the program being dumped in multi storey car parks with just a few dollars in their pockets.

Whether or not Narconon London has had any impact is a difficult thing to find out. Luckily, because Narconon London is a registered charity and limited company we can check its publicly available accounts. Here are some choice clippings that paint the picture that Narconon London is hard at work changing the lives of addicts for the better:

It was a progressive year. We were successful in getting students through the Narconon programme who thereafter had drug-free lives to the benefit of themselves and the community.

...we expanded resources to facilitate the delivery of services over the long-term.

Our desire to expand and improve facilities placed a strain on our financial budget. We were materially helped by Narconon International who donated £197,077.

...the reason most often given by staff and volunteers for their dedication was "Narconon is immensely valuable, it is needed and wanted, and we can see for ourselves that it very definitely works."

...We have embarked on a new outreach programme successfully implemented by other Narconon Centres abroad. This is a "first step" programme for those who cannot fit residential addiction recovery training into their availability of time and/or finance. Assistance is given to support students unable to totally fund themselves.

...As previously reported, analysis has shown that the pricing policy was inadequate and steps were taken at the end of 2007 to rectify this point.

These words were signed off by Sheila Maclean in 2009. Like many Scientology organisations, they are a little slow in getting their paperwork in order. The period covered is some two years after the facility opened, and was signed off two years after. If the above is taken at face value then Narconon is thriving, albeit not without resistance. Its concerns here are that they don't price correctly for their programme, and that it needs to resource an outreach programme for those addicts who cannot afford the course.

Now here's the niggle.

Because Narconon London offers residencies to people undergoing a specific rehabilitation treatment it falls within the scope of the Care Quality Commission. That means the facility has to be registered, and becomes vulnerable to surprise inspections. The accounts previously quoted run up to December 2007. Here's what the CQC had to say about the facility some two months later when one of its inspectors came acalling.

Under conditions of registration we learn that the facility serves a maximum of three people. Three. It was not offering these three residencies as of February 2008, and had no plans to do so. But a look at the testimonials provided in the facility's newsletters suggest that people are staying there. Students speak of "arriving at Narconon" of being kept busy, of being at Narconon for months, of looking forward to getting back out into the real world. Here's a quote from a January newsletter:

I arrived on 1st April 2007. I met Dale, we had a chat and I decided to stay. At least here I would be learning and dealing with my addiction and yes I could smoke. I spent 23 hours in withdrawals and I was drink and drug free. It was here I met my twin, Fiona. I came down from withdrawals the next day and was introduced to the mad house and I moved into the dormitory with a great bunch of individuals.

So is the website right, or is the inspection report right? Does Narconon

The inspection report says the following:

The Centre is located in St Leonards-on-Sea near Hastings, East Sussex. The registered unit is set in the grounds of an already established residential drug rehabilitation centre (though this part of the endeavour is not registered with the CSCI [CQC]) and provides accommodation and support with personal care for 3 resident students.

Could the answer to the disparity lie here? It seems clear that Narconon are offering a residential rehabilitation program and that it was active, and should be registered with the CQC. Was the inspector hoodwinked into thinking that the "already established" centre was not residential? And if so, why? Does Narconon not cut the regulatory mustard? And what of the accounts? How is it that Narconon can rack up £223,994 in accommodation costs as a direct result of running their courses? Do they book their students into the local Stakis? And how is it that they can describe their provision of courses as charitable activities when their main "activities for raising funds" involves charging the students for the courses they're taking.

It seems to be in the interests of Narconon to present the impression to regulators that their residential course is not even fully staffed, let alone up and running; and to present to the Charity Commission the impression that they are a vibrant and vital resource for recovering drug addicts. But they can't be ill and go to the party.

What's True For You

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Image by mandiberg via Flickr

The Twitter account @scientology is currently posting through links to the Scientology.org site. Interestingly the website is being more open about some of their more fringey beliefs, such as an affirmative response to "Does Scientology believe in mind over matter." The site also places on each page the following quote from L Ron Hubbard:

"What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything."

It's a troubling quote because it ultimately puts personal truth above objective truth. This is not some accident of Hubbard's. The pursuit of personal truth at the expense of reality underlines many aspects of tech, from touch assists (which you're supposed to do until they work) to... well... mind over matter. Scientology takes this so seriously that they view anyone trying to "put in data" where it isn't wanted as an act of violence. This is somewhat ironic considering the amount of time they spend trying to put in their own data where it, too, isn't wanted.

But Scientology is supposed to be "the science of knowingness". What the above quote basically implies, is that Scientologists should avoid data that contradicts their own beliefs. In other words, if someone tries homeopathy and gets better, they should avoid trying to confirm their belief that the homeopathy cured them. This is not the science of knowningess, but the very opposite. It is a formalised turning away from reality. There is nothing to be lost by taking in more data, other than one's errors and delusions.

There Is No Doctrine Of Exchange

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 13:19:00 +0000

Image by seangraham via Flickr

The 30 Second Skinny Many people join Scientology on the promise that it will help them achieve their goals, but over time these personal goals fall away to be replaced by Scientology's own goals. The Church fails to fulfil its part of the deal and tends to behave as if it is the injured party whenever a parishioner or staff member calls them out on it.

One of the things that continues to fascinate me is what leads people to Scientology in the first place. Given its reputation, what is it about the organisation that allows it, in spite of everything, to recruit new members and, more critically, staff. I know many people rationalise their association with Scientology by describing their early wins, but they do so specifically within the context of Scientology itself.

People will typically say that they got into Scientology because of those early wins. They may talk of vagueries, of becoming a better person, of finding freedom from whatever mental prisons they find themselves in, but ultimately there is a dilemma. These desires are all secondary.

Someone does not generally want to become a better communicator because they want to be a better communicator. They want to become a better communicator in order to achieve their primary goals. Scientology offers them a toolset (whether it works or not) that they hope will help them on their way to their own personal achievements.

But that's not where the people who hand out the Stress newsletters and Dianetics cards are. They will seem cheery enough, and be willing to engage with people, but I'm pretty sure that they didn't get into Scientology to become pamphleteers.

To discuss this further, I want to put it in the framework of the first four of the eight dynamics. The first four dynamics in Scientology are:

the self;
the family (partners and offspring);
the group;
mankind.

The reason most people cross the doors of an Org is because they have First Dynamic goals. They want to sing, or write, or run their own company, and they believe that Scientology might be able to help with that.

But two years later they find themselves freezing their proverbials off on Tottenham Court Road giving out leaflets. Their First Dynamic goals have been totally supplanted by the Third Dynamic, and it's not even their original Third Dynamic. In a sense, the deal has been broken. Scientology has offered an individual a path to their 1D goals, but instead forces on them a set of goals that aren't 3D goals in any real sense, but 1D goals of the Church of Scientology. Staff members cease to get anything out of the Church of Scientology. They suffer poor working conditions and pay in order to achieve something that really has very little to do with them and their ambitions.

I think this is one of the reasons why the wins get fewer and farther between (that and only the early courses do have much of an effect); during the initial courses they are able to relate what they are learning to what they want to achieve, but as they continue up the bridge, their wins have less and less to do with the reality of their life and goals and more and more to do with the abstract fantasies of the high church. The Third Dynamic, as presented by the Church of Scientology, supplants the First Dynamic entirely. But any group is made up of individuals; the group drive needs to negotiate, and accommodate the needs of the individual. In most cases the group has been formed with the very purpose of fulfilling the needs of the individual. Where things go wrong is when the group reaches a point where it only serves itself, which is very much the problem with the Church of Scientology. It works its staff to the point where little or no time is made available for personal development, just so that it can open the next building no-one needs, or book donation no-one wants.

If there is one outreach action it is this; to encourage Scientologists to recognise what it was that they wanted from Scientology and judge whether or not Scientology has delivered. If it hasn't then they are well within their rights to demand the Church of Scientology does better, whichever side of the threshold the parishioner finds themselves standing.

The Unkempt Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:20:00 +0000

In Clay Shirky's book Cognitive Surplus he draws an analogy between website designs and kitchens. Looking at sites that promote user interaction (and specifically Grobanites For Charity) he noted that they tended to be more amateurish than the professionally produced corporate websites interested in acting as billboards for products, services and brands (http://www.joshgroban.com say). Shirky makes the point that if you walk into a designer kitchen, with marble tops and meticulous design, where everything is layed out with surgical precision and everything has its place, you may admire it but you will not feel comfortable assisting anyone who happens to be working in it. Were you to walk into a kitchen small and cluttered, then you are more likely to feel confident in beating a few eggs if required.

If skepticism is about engagement then that is a lesson we need to take on board. Many of the homeopathic sites fall very much into the latter category; many (though admittedly not all) skeptic and science sites fall into the former. It's not hard to see why; there is likely a good deal of overlapping between those who are itnerested in rational discourse, science and activism and the kind of skills that will allow one to create an all singing all dancing website.

Swain made the point that you should be posing arguments in a way that would convince, or at least inform, your mother. This goes far beyond just the words we use, but how we present both ourselves and the skeptic movement as a whole. Websites and blogs should be places where people who are not dyed in the wool skeptics should feel comfortable enough to discuss their ideas without fear of being browbeaten. The first step of that ought to be in web design; not necessarily to create deliberately poorly designed sites, but to at least look at the aesthetics of CAM sites, understand what they are achieving in their marketing by having their sites designed that way, and feed that into your own site design.

Prevention or Cure?

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:42:00 +0000

When Narconon school lectures came under the scrutiny of the Californian State Department, a point was made that is quite far reaching. They stated that, along with a lot of misinformation about drugs, the curriculum spoke of the incredible results Narconon alleges its controversial Purification Rundown gets. This, it was argued, was not a good message to impart to children to dissuade them from ever trying drugs. Put simply, if it is easy to become drug free, then there is less of a barrier to trying drugs. If someone gets hooked, they can always do the rundown, so why not do drugs?

The other dimension to that, of course, is that if you suggest that it's not possible to get off drugs, then people who are already on drugs will simply not try. The challenge of drugs control is to warn off non-users while at the same time offering hope to addicts.

Listening to a recording of Frank Swain's talk at Westminster Skeptic, I was struck that the same sort of problem exists with skepticism. Swain believes that the Skeptic movement, of which he counts himself a member, is beset by aggression and an unwillingness to properly engage; a situation that is making it largely impotent. Whereas Swain's view of the skeptic movement is somewhat contested as a reality, it is certainly the view many people have of the movement, and it is a view that is growing. Michael Marsh made the point on Twitter that, for instance, the 10:23 campaign alerted many people who otherwise would not have known that homeopathic remedies do not contain any physical ingredient. You can add to that Singh's spat with the BCA, which did much to publicise the fact that chiropractic was not, as many thought, conventional medicine.

Such publicity may do much to inoculate those uninvested, but it genuinely does little to those who have already mucked in with the ideas under scrutiny. Those in the movement are probably already aware of the arguments made against, for instance, the use of Randomised Double Blind Placebo Controlled Trials for homeopathy, say. These kind of arguments are borne out of a need to explain away negative results. If the science negates the outcome, then science must be at fault because "I know I'm right!". People who are of this mindset are hard enough to reach at the best of times, but the sight of a group of people en masse swigging down homeopathic remedies (incorrectly!), is certainly not going to convince them that they at least need to revisit their thinking.

I think that's the real problem with the Skeptic movement - that it is focused too much on prevention and not enough on cure. It is easy to think up stunts that show up ridiculous ideas; it is easy to use existing legislation to ensure that practitioners stick to the rules with regards trading and advertising. It's much harder to take a homeopathy user and make them change their mind. It's easier to dismiss a treatment for being no better than placebo, much harder to argue that placebo-only treatment is a bad thing when no other treatment is available. It is easy and maybe even fun to watch a Scientologist run for cover when you call out "Xenu" but having them run into an org, when you really would prefer them to run out of one is clearly a result made of fail.

If these ideas are ridiculous, then the ridicule will speak for itself, and that should be enough to inoculate - the truth, just like in drug abuse prevention, is clearly the way forward. We can be honest about what the ideas are without sticking our tongues out, which ought to leave us with enough bridges left to engage with those who hold to them.

Stupid Scientology

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:13:00 +0000

None of what follows is big or clever.

Last year, Cardiff councillor John Dixon found himself in London shopping for a wedding ring for his future wife. While wandering down Tottenham Court Road he passed the Dianetics Centre. Embracing social networking, he made the following tweet:

I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.

Now, this is perhaps not the greatest move in the world, if we're fair, but John Dixon has a right to his opinion as much as anyone else does. However that hasn't stopped the Church of Scientology from lodging a complaint, as reported here on Wales Online. This too is not a good move. The current level of scrutiny under which the church finds itself has stemmed from a long-running campaign to quell free speech. They have been left with protocols authored by Hubbard, who died in 1986. His "tech" was not prepared for the online world, perhaps ironic for a science fiction author.

Freedom of speech, which itself has been threatened by its own real liberation through the internet (the difference between handing out crank leaflets on street corners to setting up a website), defends itself. If someone attempts to quash it, then it simply speaks more loudly. Students of the modern age might like to make a guess as to what happened next.

That's right. The transgression, if transgression it was, occured on Twitter. An overly litigious religion/cult/business decides it has a problem with someone saying it is stupid and gets legal, so those who would defend freedom of speech repeat the tweet, create the #stupidscientology hashtag, and see it almost instantly go to the top ten trending topics for the UK. The tweet that sparked off the episode picks up far more readership than it would have otherwise.

I shall not bore you with an explanation of the Streisand effect. If you are outside Scientology you know what it is; if you are in Scientology you will ignore it exists. I will say, though, that for a Church that claims to be the go to place for improving communication skills, they're skills are getting increasingly dusty.

That Individualisation Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:02:00 +0000

The 30 Second Skinny Advocates of Homeopathy point to the way remedies are individualised to a client to explain why the blanket approach of clinical trials fail to show positive results. There have been some trials that take individualisation into account, and they don't show positive results either. Also, even with the blanket prescriptions in clinical trials you would expect remedies to outperform placeboes as some patients would get the correct remedy by chance alone.

Following a recent discussion on Twitter, I've been thinking about one of the regular criticisms that homeopath advocates make of the evidence base, and specifically the double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial. Homeopathy, they argue, is based on individualised treatment. The DBPCRTs diagnose people with a particular condition, asthma say, and then gives them either a homeopathic remedy for asthma or a placebo. This does not represent the way in which homeopathic remedies are administered, and so therefore the information that such trials provide, that treatments are no better than placebo, is useless.

To some extent, they are right. The majority of DBPCRTs into homeopathy do follow this structure. But not all. The assumption seems to be that creating a DBPCRT that incorporates individualised treatment is impossible, but PubMed says differently. Here's one on homeopathy for eczema. Here's another that looks at individualised treatments for asthma. Neither showed an effect that was greater than placebo. It would be illogical to take these two studies and extend them to homeopathic treatment for any condition, but it does illustrate that not only are robust clinical trials possible for individualised treatment, but that such trials do take place.

It's worth noting at this stage that although such trials should be the holy grail for homeopaths, homeopaths themselves show little or no interest in running them. This is an industry worth €1.05 billion yet shows little or no interest in providing its customers with robust clinical evidence. PubMed links through to studies and articles published in the journal Homeopathy; 398 of them. Searching within these 398 for the terms "individualised randomised placebo controlled" returns two articles, neither of which are DBPCRTs in themselves. More troubling than this is that a search for "individualised" only returns 8 results, and here not all of them trials. We are told that there is no budget within that €1.05 billion for research into treatment, yet when research is done, it is, following the advocates' own logic, not homeopathy. It is always hard to take seriously the idea that homeopathy is being oppressed by a Big Pharma conspiracy, but surely these advocates must question how far-reaching their conspiracy theory needs to go if it ensures that homeopaths, researching and publishing in their own journal, do not do the necessary research to provide a solid evidence base for their treatments.

But the search for individualised trials is something of a red herring. Homeopaths explain that the reason no effect over placebo is recorded is because there was no individualisation, but what is the implication of this stance? The treatments are not selected at random; a match is sought between a particular condition and a particular remedy. The trials resulting show no effect over placebo. What homeopaths are suggesting is explicitly that patients in the treatment arm will not get a relevent treatment. What we would expect to happen in non-individualised trials is not that the homeopathic response is wiped out all together, only that it be diminished. Some people would get relevant treatment by chance alone.

Lastly and, for me, most damningly, this position casts serious doubts on the proving process. It is only natural, when faced with a treatment that has no plausible mechanism, to question how individual treatments are arrived at. Homeopathic remedies are established by a process called proving. This involves giving a remedy to a number of healthy people, while they keep journals and note any unusual responses. These journals are then examined, and common responses are noted. This essentially means that provings will only ever deal with symptoms, rather than address underlying conditions. In clinical trials, people are treating symptoms either with a placebo or a homeopathic remedy. There is, therefore, no logical reason why someone having such-and-such a symptom shouldn't respond to treatment unless that treatment is ineffective. If the treatments do not have an effect, then, at best, the proving is wrong. Given how widespread null results are in robust homeopathic research, it seems clear that the proving process itself does not work.

In summary, then, and despite fears of repeating myself, it is not enough to point at the evidence, declare it wrong, and keep going. Sooner or later, homeopaths have to realised that faith, and faith alone, drives them, because if their treatment has no plausible mechanism, has no evidence of efficacy, and if its research process is questionable, then there is nothing left but blind faith. By all means present it as such, but don't arrogantly assume that there is some truth here that science is incapable of reaching. The science is based on nothing more than a systemised treatment. If homeopathy's efficacy is fickle enough to vanish as soon as someone looks at the figures, then it's simply not a treatment worth dealing with.

Sea Org and Coerced Abortions

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:45:00 +0000

The 30 Second Skinny The Church of Scientology runs a quasi-military group called Sea Org that it describes as like a monastic order. Accusations have been made that Sea Org members are coerced into having abortions. This is denied by the Church, but there is undoubtedly a great deal of pressure for Sea Org women to comply to get an abortion, because leaving Sea Org, and possibly their family or even the Church itself, would be too great a price to pay. This pressuring needn't be verbal (although it is claimed that it is), it is systemic of the organisation.

Tampa Bay have published a report and a number of interviews with former Sea Org members who are claiming that the Church of Scientology coerced them into getting abortions. This is a thorny issue, a more emotive area touching on similar problems that the minimum wage plaintiffs faced. In essence the Sea Org is explained away by the Church of Scientology as being akin to a monastic order. It would be as inappropriate for a Sea Org member to become pregnant as it would a nun to become pregnant, immaculate conceptions allowing. This, if we sidestep the issue of whether or not the Church of Scientology constitutes a genuine religion, is fair enough, up to a point.

However that is not how the Sea Org is presented to Scientologists. It sells the Sea Org as the military, as a sci-fi Navy.

Image appears under fair-use

The Sea Org is supposed to be battling the evil forces at work throughout the galaxy. It's work isn't about an individual's path to enlightenment (in fact joining Sea Org will generally slow a Scientologist's progress along the bridge), nor is it even about writing baudy songs and making beer, or offering counselling, or sanctuary, or religious insight. It is about fighting the good fight with that most favourite of Scientology weapons, paperwork.

The military qualities of the Sea Org extends far beyond its uniforms. Its hierarchy and discipline are all based on the military too.

The SO is only a religious order when CoS needs to defend its poor treratment of its staff to critics and the law.

And now we have a growing number of women coming forward saying that while in the Sea Org they became pregnant and were coerced into having abortions. The Church's view on this is simple. You cannot stay in Sea Org and remain pregnant. The Church does not view this as coercive behaviour. But here's why it is...

In most cases it appears that the father of the child is also a member of Sea Org. Sea Org members can be posted anywhere at a moment's notice around the globe. This is a threat of separation. If a woman leaves the Sea Org in order to raise her child, her husband may end up being posted to Croatia.

Leaving Sea Org for any reason is strictly taboo. They may be put on Rehabilitation Project Force, the Sea Org's disciplinary arm, and face periods of forced labour (though, of course, the RPF is "voluntary"). On leaving the Sea Org they may yet be declared a Suppressive Person, which would lead to them being ostracised by their family and friends.

Some former SO members have reported facing Freeloader Bills, an unenforceable order to pay for any auditing and training taken while working for the Church.

For many SO members, there's is the only way of life they know. They are, to borrow an analogy from Christman, like Truman, staring at the door that will lead him out of his Show and into reality.

Tommy Davis says there is "no policy" for enforced abortions, but the way that the Church of Scientology operates, there doesn't need to be. The policy is that you can't have kids in the SO. This becomes coercion purely because of the way in which CoS works.

The last cry of defense is that these people did not go into the Sea Org blindly. They were aware of the no kids rule. However, I doubt very much that Scientologists ever know what they're getting themselves into. In this case we are talking about women who joined the SO when they were as young as 12 and before Miscavige introduced the "no kids" rule in 1996. I don't think an incomplete agreement made by a child should be used to enforce infertility on them in later life. Is that unreasonable of me?

Davis might like to suggest that if anyone was coerced to have an abortion they were acting on their own impulses. If you really believe that then what is to be done about them, Tommy? Because if you are telling the truth, and these people acted counter to church policy, then to stand by and do nothing means you are condoning it through negligence. It's on a par with the Catholic Church playing "see no evil" over their pedophile priests.

Or is it really the case that it suits the purpose of the Church of Scientology to have this criminal element in the organisation, coercing Sea Org members into destroying the children they desperately want, so there is no real impulse to do anything about it? As ever, the Church's response to criticism says as much as the criticism did in the first place.

Dear Grahame

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:20:00 +0000

That small handful of ex-members included people very high up in the church. Have you been reading "Ask the Scientologist"? He raises some very important questions about the Church of Scientology's response to the claims of violence; questions that have yet to be answered.

The way I see it we have a group of people talking about violence at the top of the church, and that violence being denied by people still in the church. Now it could be that this is just malice from appostates, as you say, or it could be that these are genuine and well-meaning whistle-blowers. Do we listen to the ex-wives who claim their husband beat them, or the current wife who claims her husband doesn't?

The only way to settle this dispute would be to abandon the game of "who has the most affidavits" and have the church provide independent evidence that these claims are not true - ex-members who were present at the meetings talked about, and are free of the influence of the church, yet nevertheless deny that violence took place.

You might ask why it should be down to the Church to prove its case. It is an unfortunate necessity. That Miscavige remains silent on the matter does him or his church no favours. If, as Tommy Davies suggests, Miscavige is simply too busy running the church, then he either underestimates the crisis the church is in right now, has miscalculated where his priorities are at present, or is so short of management that he really is rushing all over the planet trying to run his operation. It would explain why he looked so old and tired at the recent Hubbard birthday bash.

Lastly I have some trouble dealing logically with the idea of someone claiming they remember the meeting at which the violence didn't happen, yet this is the basis of the "it's not true" affidavit's the church are providing - I remember that meeting, nothing happened?

Church of Scientology and Joined-Up Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:20:00 +0000

Just a brief observation before the Easter break.

The revelations of the CNN AC360 reports on the culture of violence at the top of the Church of Scientology are, in the main, old news. These are, after all, the same allegations that have already been levelled at Miscavige in earlier reports. What is interesting, though, is that having told the press that listening to Rathbun et al is like trying to get an honest opinion about someone's character by talking to their ex-spouse, the Church of Scientology is using that exact strategy to dissuade CNN viewers of the whistle-blowers' stories. CoS chose the defectors' ex-wives to come in and claim that their former husbands were all liars. Would it be okay, then, if we use Scientology's wisdom and ignore such dubious stories from obviously disgruntled former lovers?

Stephen Green is Not The Voice of Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:12:00 +0000

So.

Classic FM runs an ad and promotional competition for Not The Messiah, a spoof of Handel's Messiah based on The Life of Brian.

This erks Stephen Green, whose "organisation" shall not be named.

Green posts a story to his website, and sends an email out to his contacts.

Some time later the ad disappears from Classic FM. Why we do not know.

However, Green posts another story to his site, claiming victory:

Faced with hundreds of distraught emails sent over the weekend, and bombarded with so many telephone calls they stopped taking them, managing director Darren Henley ditched 'Not the Messiah' quicker than you can say 'Whose bright idea was that?'

Which makes one wonder how Green knew they had stopped taking calls.

If Green is right, and Classic FM did a reverse ferret on their promotion of this screening, then Classic FM has bowed down to an organisation that actively promotes such wonderful items as:

The Sexual Dead-End (on homosexuality); The Pink Swastika (Exposes the deep roots of homosexuality in the Nazi party(seemingly missing the point that the Nazis gassed homosexuals)); The Poisoned Stream ("Gay" influence in human history); A Generation Betrayed - "The Reality of Safer Sex"; Understanding Islam: (... How do we win Muslims for Christ?); and Diwali - A Parents' Guide; October 2003 (The truth about Hinduism, its 'gods' and its social consequences).

Green is driven by homophobia and intolerance; a friend of mine cannot view his organisations website because it filters it out as "hate speech"; we must question the importance we attach to his views, and the opinions of those happy to ascribe to the values of his organisation.

EDIT

I've received an email from someone at Arts Alliance Media who has this to say:

Thank you for your email, there isn't any truth to this I'm afraid, the campaign we ran with Classic FM was always scheduled to finish on Sunday night (to allow us to gather names for competition winners before the screenings on Thursday), so the fact it's no longer live has nothing to do with Christian Voice or anyone else.

EDIT 2

The thick plottens. Pepper Harow over at the BHA replied to a query I made following their call for people to write to Classic FM asking them not to take notice from what is, after all, a self-appointed, marginal pressure group.

Thank you for your email. The BHA checked with Classic FM before we put the story up and asked people to take action. They confirmed over the phone that the reason they took the promotions down were because of the complaints.

Classic FM themselves have yet to respond to my email.

60% Again

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:13:00 +0000

Following some information the UK IPS released in response to a FOIA request, I can now revise the figures of my earlier post on the Greater Manchester National ID Scheme pilot. You can find the post here.

The Apple Test

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:47:00 +0000

Thanks to @iszi_lawrence and @SkepticBarista for pointing me towards this bit of nonsense. You cut an apple in half, bung one in a bottle marked "love" and the other in a bottle marked "hate". You then love the one half however you see fit, and hate the other. As the Daily Mail's photo dramatically shows, the hate half will rot faster than the love half. Let's see how we might put it to the test properly.

We need to run the experiment on more than one apple. If we only do this once, it's not going to tell us very much. We're expecting a binary result, that each apple will have a marked difference in quality by the end of the week. We'll only get meaningful data, then, through repeated experimentation.

Blinding - we're going to use bottles that are identical, but each has a collar, with "love" or "hate" attached. The tops of the bottles will feature a randomly assigned number. The randomly assigned numbers are in pairs that are already randomly assigned as either "love" or "hate". This will become very important later.

We fill the bottles with water. As long as it's the same kind of water in both bottles, whatever we use ought not make much impact on the test. We then cut the apple in half. It may be worthwhile examining ways in which we can ensure that an identical procedure is used for this, so that comparisons can be made across different apples. However, for the purposes of comparing the "love" and "hate" halves against each other, as long as the apple is cut more or less into two equal sections, it oughtn't affect the test due to the randomisation. We would expect any biases in cutting to be spread out.

The apple halves are placed into the bottles and sealed. It is at this stage that we discover which bottle is to be "love" and which "hate", by checking the number on the bottle cap. This process can be kept secure by giving this job over to a particular individual, rather than allowing each "apple host" to have access to the codes for their bottles. We only establish the love/hate bottles after the apples have been sealed into the bottles because we do not want to introduce a possible bias. We don't want experimenters to decide based on any kind of aesthetic reasons, or through the early browning of the apple half prior to it being introduced into the bottle, as this will skew the results - we will no longer be comparing like with like.

The collars are placed on the correct bottles. Next we need to isolate the thing that we are looking to examine, which is the application of "love" and "hate" to the apple halves. This means that the only thing different between the treatment of both halves will need to be the emotional attachment created by the experimenter. Therefore, the halves need to be kept together, or in separate containers that are kept at the same level of light, heat, humidity, noise, etc.

You may wish to formalise the way in which the love and hate bond is created. This could be through, perhaps, addressing the love jar with kind words and compliments for half an hour a day, before turning to the hate jar and insulting it for half an hour a day. Keep in mind the requirement for maintaining like atmospheres for both jars. There must not be handling of the jars, unless one can guarantee that the jars are handled in an identical manner.

Once the week is up, the collars are removed, and each pair is judged in turn. The judges, who will not be aware of the love/hate assignation, must decide based on examination of the apple halves, which half is in a better condition. It is vital at this point that any possibility of feedback is removed. Ideally the apple hosts should remove the collars before passing both bottles together to someone who in turn passes them on to the judges; this reduces the possibility of any cuing, subconscious or otherwise, that will give the judge a better idea of which is the love half, and which the hate.

Only after they have made their judgements can we compare their results with the actual love/hate halves.

By chance alone, when this experiment is run in sufficient number, we would expect a fairly even spread - we would expect roughly half of the "love" apples to be in the better condition. If we find that there is a bias in distribution of conditions, then we need to examine our protocols to ensure that "leakage" is not taking place anywhere; i.e. that the randomisation process and the blinding process are working as they should. If we are certain that our experiment is holding true and giving us reliable data, then we publish our findings, and invite our peers to decide if the results of the experiment are meaningful. It is not unusual that our peers may at this stage uncover flaws in our methodology that have led to the results. Where this is the case, we look at how we may eliminate those flaws in further experiments.

Given sufficient funding, I will be happy to undertake this experiment and shed some light on whether or not Nikki Owen is on to something.

Would've Could've

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:26:00 +0000

The 30 Second Skinny Mrs Xiao-Ping Zhai runs a fertility clinic based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. Some time ago The Beacon complained to the ASA that she was using the name Doctor in her advertising despite not being medically qualified, and that she was making outlandish claims for the success of her treatment. Mrs Zhai failed to be able to provide evidence for these claims and so agreed not to make them in advertising in future. In explaining away science's failure to find a positive result for TCM and fertility to the BBC, she betrays some clouded logic that even serves to undermine her own claims.

Here's a simple point that is worth remembering. If robust clinical trials have systematically failed to show a positive result for a particular treatment, then there is no solid evidence for that particular treatment. That's so obvious it's practically a tautology, which is why it angers me when practitioners make claims like the following:

One high-profile practitioner, Dr Xiao-Ping Zhai[sic], of The Zhai Fertility Treatment Clinic, said there were indeed problems with the way in which these trials were designed and that different analysis would show the benefits.

"Certainly for those with unexplained fertility problems in particular, we know acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine can be beneficial. What matters is both the expertise and experience of the practitioner, but most of all the treatment of the patient as an individual. It is the tailored treatment which is key.

"We need clinical trials that take this into account."

This was Mrs Zhai's answer, given in a BBC report, to the recent findings published by the British Fertility Society. They analysed 14 acupuncture trials, covering 2,670 individuals undergoing IVF with attendant acupuncture and found that there was no benefit to be had in going under the needle. They had hoped to look at Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine, but none of the existing trials met with their search criteria; i.e. none of the TCHM trials were of sufficient quality and rigour to be considered for analysis.

Mrs Zhai provides two canards here. Firstly is the idea that research is fundementally there to establish "what we already know". If they fail to confirm our beliefs then the trial is at fault, not the belief. Rather than take the hit and state that, yes, in the circumstances set out in the various trials, acupuncture was showed to have no effect, she states that we know "certainly" that TCM can be of benefit, shifts the blame of the failure onto individual practitioners, and raises canard number two, that treatment of the patient is individual, and so trials looking at the same treatment administered to a group of people can't shed any light on them.

That, potentially, could be the case, but it raises a problem. Zhai discusses people "with unexplained fertility problems". In other words, people who can't get pregnant for no readily apparent reason. Let's first look at how we decide whether or not a woman is infertile. We decide based on them not getting pregnant, but after how long? Figures vary. In the book Slow, by Carl Honore it was suggested that the average was 18 months. The figures are often put on a sliding scale, which makes calculating an overall average, with its comforting "am I normal" quality, fairly difficult and ultimately misleading. The NHS website gives the following: "Most couples (about 84 out of every 100) will get pregnant within a year if they have regular sex and don’t use contraception. About 92 out of 100 couples trying to get pregnant will do so within two years."

On the NHS couples must wait 3 years before being place on an IVF treatment, but the majority decide to start earlier and go private. A Daily Mail article (I know, I know) covered research by Dr Geeta Nargund, that seemed to show there was little point in starting treatment after only a year, though this was based on a computer simulation of 100,000 women, rather than historical data. Nargund's model suggested there was a small increase in the possibilities of conception through IVF after one year of trying naturally, but this small increase came at a cost, the dangers attendant to multiple births, for instance. The point here is that it seems likely that couples seek out fertility treatment privately before they really need to.

I suspect that Zhai's view of reality is this. She privately treats people who have not been trying to conceive for very long. These are the inexplicably infertile patients Zhai refers to; couples who are fertile, but impatient. She then treats them with TCM, but those that conceive were going to conceive any way. It is this misconception (ho ho) that clinical trials would seek to rectify, and without clinical trials backing up Zhai's claims, she cannot say that properly designed trials "would" show a benefit, only that they "might". That is the nature of clinical evidence, after all.

Lastly, if the treatment is tailored to the individual, then on what grounds? These are the mysteriously infertile, so how is it that this mystery is unfolded? Or when Zhai refers to individualisation, are we really talking about trying everything they can think of until conception occurs? Are we talking about the "throwing shit at a wall" approach so favoured by many CAM users?

Zhai's clinic was the subject of a recent complaint to the ASA. I know, because I was the one that made it. For some time the clinic, a satellite to the London Fertility Clinic, had been making fairly strong claims about their success rates. The ASA, after a little persuasion, took up the complaint, and it got as far as the draft adjudication which is presented to the ASA council for final signing off. It is fairly rare, but not impossible, for council to disagree with the adjudication. Here, the recommendation was that the complaint be upheld. This was down to the fact that the evidence provided by the Clinic did not offer any detail as to how it was compiled. They also upheld the part of the complaint addressing the fact that the clinic gave Zhai the title of Doctor, and (all together now) although doctor is remarkably not a protected term, it must not be used in a context that suggests that someone is a qualified medical doctor if they are not. In other words, don't call yourself a doctor in an ad for a fertility clinic if you're not a doctor.

Once the draft was published and distributed, it might have been in the clinic's powers to provide the missing information, place their evidence into context, and overturn the draft decision. However, they decided to opt for "resolution". This meant, in effect, that they asked the ASA if, should the clinic remove the advert, the complaint would be resolved, not go to council, and most important of all, not get published in detail on the ASA website. It could be that they just didn't have time to sort out the relevant information; it could be that there was a gaping flaw in the way their data had been compiled; it could be that the evidence, not flattering to begin with, would have been even less flattering once placed in a proper context; I don't know, because it never happened. All I am left with are a number of "mights" and my own preconceived notions.

NB I still have a copy of the Zhai Clinic Draft Adjudication. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do anything with it, however. I may publish the clinic's defense later tonight.

Tommy Davis on Religious Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:05:00 +0000

"Scientologists as a general rule are opposed to any human rights violation, anything that violates an individual’s right to choose, anything that would reduce a person’s freedom, individuality and ability to think for themselves."

However...

“One can’t be a Scientologist and not be part of the church.”

Homeopathy as Misdirection

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:22:00 +0000

This is just a brief observation about the activism, both for and against homeopathy, that surrounded the Evidence Check. As was ruled by the check itself there is no robust evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. It has been shown in randomised placebo controlled trials that it is no better than a placebo. So certain are many that the implausible mechanic of water and sugar-pill memory can in no way lead to any clinical benefit that they feel it unethical to undertake further research into it. The pro-homeopathy lobby might believe otherwise, but when Robert Wilson, the Chairman of the British Association of Homeopathic Manufacturers, bemoans the lack of large sample trials, and in almost the same breath volunteers what really ought to be his best piece of evidence for homeopathy and chooses a trial with a small sample size, he neatly sums up the state of play, and the relationship with evidence that most proponents of the magic water seem to have. Weak clinical evidence is waved about, strong clinical evidence against homeopathy is ignored, and if all else fails they decide that homeopathy is so special that it "defeats" science. This last argument has always puzzled me, as it consitutes an open admission that the effects of homeopathy are so fickle that you can't put any amount of faith in it.

But here's the rub. It's great fun to discuss tipping a thimble full of arsenic into the Atlantic and giving it a stir. Homeopathy is an irresistible lure to skeptics because: it turns out a lot of people don't realise what homeopathy actually is; the physics is simple to demonstrate and involves silly big numbers; it's an easy thing to compare its trials with those of mainstream medicines. I'd say this is much of the thinking behind the overdose stunt. It's purpose wasn't really to prove to people that homeopathy doesn't work, because an overdose doesn't make sense in homeopathy, irrespective of the confusing mixed messages its packaging and proponents give out. It's purpose was twofold: to demonstrate to people who don't yet know that homeopathy pills are empty, and also to have fun doing it. I'm not saying the first purpose is not important, it is. I'm not saying the second purpose is inappropriate, ridiculous beliefs are open to ridicule. However, something a little strange happened after the report was published, and is crystalised by a number of tweets and a blog post by Bruce Hood.

Hood suggests that one of the possible implications of the NHS withdrawing the supply of homeopathic remedies is that people will undergo long and fruitless investigations in order to determine what is wrong with them (homeopathy canard: we cure the whole person, what are your symptoms) and these investigations will end up costing the NHS more than providing sugar pills. I'm not sure I entirely agree with Hood, though it's worth noting that if reports are to be believed, I suspect the evidence check itself cost more than a year of NHS homeopathy. Hood is no supporter of the homeopathic hypothesis by any means, but is more interested than many are willing to be with the implications of restricting access to placebo-based treatment. And here's the observation. You can find plenty of skeptics willing to tell you that homeopathy is just a placebo, and you can find plenty of homeopathists willing to tell you otherwise. A debate that is much less popular, however, is: what are the ethics of providing people with placebo-based treatment?

Ugly isn't it. I've discussed in the past how alternative medicine has sometimes been used to fob off the underclass because the money or expertise simply wasn't there to provide conventional medicine to the masses. The trouble is, as the money and expertise isn't there, what else do you do?

From what I can gather, the NHS ideal is that medicines should stand on their evidence base (though how many common treatments have evidence is surprisingly low), and that patients should be allowed to make informed choices about the treatments they receive. We measure treatments against placebos, so no placebo-based treatment has evidence, and part of the mechanic of placebos is deception, which goes against the idea of informed choice. The path seems clear, then, were it not for the fact that the placebo effect is real; certainly real enough to require placebo control arms in the first place. If no other treatment is available, is it ethical to deprive someone of genuine placebo-based relief in order to maintain the honesty and sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. Are some homeopathists standing their ground in the face of evidence not because they believe in the magic water, but because they are defending their placebo; keeping the lie in place so that the medicine remains effective.

I've often wondered if there would be ethical and practical grounding in signing off a placebo-waiver whenever you register with a surgery. This would form an explicit agreement between you and your GP that they are able, where no other treatment is viable, to prescribe a placebo. What I like about this idea is that it crosses a line that I think exists in quite a few people's heads. When they discuss how placebos should be available, they tend to couch it in terms relating to other people, and rarely in terms relating to themselves. Plenty of people say "give them placebos", I've heard very few say "give me placebos".

Beyond these arguments are "bigger picture" positions. Getting sugar pills from your GP to help you over the doldrums sadly uses the same lie that leads the genuinely deluded to go off to Africa to try and cure HIV AIDS. If your sugar pill is based on pseudoscience, to legitimise its use in one area legitimises its use everywhere. Ironically a way round this would be to manufacture your placebos as if they were pharmaceutical products, specific active ingredients operating on obscure aspects of human physiology. That way you couldn't possibly be propping upthe beliefs of dangerous fanatics. Except that they're also trying to cure HIV AIDS with vitamin C...

I'm proudly undecided about the ethics of placebo treatment. I can see valid, if difficult to weigh, points on either side of the discussion, and know that personally I would rather the truth, however bitter a pill to swallow, even when it denies me relief. What pains me more, though, is that few people seem willing enough even to have the debate in the first place, despite it being the only alternative medicine discussion actually worth having.

60%?

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:34:00 +0000

The Government today responded to a petition requesting that the forthcoming National Identity Scheme be dismantled. It stated, along with a rather puzzling projected cost of £4.575 million for the next ten years (billion, surely?), that "Research over the past 18 months into public support for identity cards shows that 60% of people support the National Identity Service."

This figure puzzled me somewhat, because the NID scheme has been piloted in Manchester, and the response falls far short of the 60% calculated. The Manchester figures offer the first insights into the likely realworld takeup of ID cards and database registration. It goes without saying that the "cost of transaction" for actually submitting oneself to the database state is much greater than ticking a box saying you would, should such a scheme come to be.

The Register reported in January that 1,300 people had signed up for the scheme between November 30th and January 14th, a period of six weeks, covering a population area of 2.5 million. So how far can we take these figures?

The scheme has been connected to passport renewal (and more of that later). Passports are renewed once every ten years, so we would expect, over a year, for there to be a market for passports, and therefore ID cards, of one tenth of 2.5 million, or 250,000.

We know that over six weeks, 1,300 applied. If this figure were sustained across the year, we end up with an annual take-up of (1,300/6)*52 or 11,266. We would expect that if 60% of people were interested in the scheme, then the percentage of the 250,000 eligible would also be approximately 60%. But 11,266/250,000*100 gives us... 4.5%

Now, these figures are far from perfect. The scheme was launched in December, which I suspect is not the time most people renew their passports. You might like to think of this as Labour kicking the scheme into the long grass, but their decision to extend trials to Liverpool and/or London suggests otherwise. I suspect also, that the division of the total population of Manchester by ten is a rather crude way of going about establishing the market for the cards. The age range is 16+, for a start, so that will reduce the overall figure. However we are looking at a shortfall of 55.5%, which is quite a lot to account for.

There are other problems that tug our 4.5% in the other direction. Chief amongst them is this. The ID Card, although it can (companies allowing) be used as a travel document, is not first and foremost a travel document. It is what it is, which is an identity card. It has, admittedly, from its birth been attached to the passport. It's "just a little bit more" expenditure based on the biometric passports the Government begrudgingly voted in favour for has planted the legitimacy of its existence firmly in the realm of travelling. It's just that it has that pesky intrusive database stuck on the end; the one with a much greater scope than the NHS database, yet with a smaller projected budget and tighter timetable.

The ID card is further tied to the passport because that has been the main suggested route of acquiring a card; when registering or renewing your passport.

To be fair, although UKIPS has marketed the NIDS as a travel document, it's also pointed out that it is a cheaper and easier to lose proof of ID. In a classic bit of joined up thinking, the Government is choosing to tackle antisocial behaviour by suggesting that youths register with the ID scheme so they can go out and get wankered; neatly sidestepping the fact that ProveIt! cards are substantially cheaper, and more widely recognised. UKIPS go on to insist that the scheme will protect one against identity theft, by which they generally mean credit card and online fraud, as opposed to the other kind where bank accounts and credit cards are set up in someone's else's name. How it works is this; if you want to open a bank account, rather than being called on to provide a utility bill and some form of ID, you just need to sidle up with a National ID card and you're sorted. The criminal, however, cannot have such a National ID card, so instead he must either wing it with a cosmetic forgery (and how many banks have access to the NID registry yet?) or do it the old-fashioned way because the bank doesn't know whether or not the person is on the system anyway. Then there are all the other benefits that we can't go into here, mainly because it is for each Government department to come up with its own business model on how best to implement the technology. Or in other words, because no-one knows if they exist yet. I shall calm down.

My point is that the benefits the card are being sold on either are based on total take up of the card, or on fairly menial things such as having a smaller thing to carry around with you when you need to pick up a parcel, get pissed, or buy pornography. Let's take another look at the choice figures given by the Register. It states that total passport issuing for the same period as the ID trial accounts for .7% of the population. If we apply the same process as above to this figure we get just over 6% takeup of the population as a whole, or 60% of our expected 10% market. The reason it's not 10% is because of the passport's status as a travel document. One does not need a passport to live in the UK, merely to traverse its perimeter; therefore the number of people in the UK who own a passport is smaller than the number of people in the UK. I love maths. The market for ID cards, that offer supposed benefits beyond such border crossing, ought to be greater, and yet demand is much smaller.

It seems clear that Labour, having commited to reaching a threshold before enforcing the scheme on the rest of us, and creating a scheme that has insufficient benefits for initial take-up, have doomed a scheme they have championed through adversity for years. The truth of interest is not to be found in the carefully construed research that they have commissioned but in the lacklustre response Manchester has shown the undermarketed and ill-timed scheme. There is little more to be done now than to downscale the system to a control for foreign nationals and have done with it.

EDIT

Following a FOIA request I've received the following data on total passport issues throughout 2009. From it I've calculated a rough monthly distribution of the total with, as predicted, a peak in the summer months.

Jan-09 390,136 ...7.64%
Feb-09 441,765 ...8.65%
Mar-09 552,964 ...10.83%
Apr-09 488,207 ...9.56%
May-09 472,107 ...9.25%
Jun-09 593,990 ...11.63%
Jul-09 569,396 ...11.15%
Aug-09 434,608 ...8.51%
Sep-09 402,346 ...7.88%
Oct-09 296,290 ...5.80%
Nov-09 253,346 ...4.96%
Dec-09 210,543 ...4.12%

If we assume this monthly distribution is normal, then we can estimate our January figure for ID card uptake as 867, making each percentile worth 867/7.64 or 113.48; and our total annual expected uptake of National ID Cards for the Greater Manchester area at 11,348. The initial estimate of 4.5% is pretty much on the button in light of this further information.

Faith Schools: They Can Do What The F___ They Like

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:22:00 +0000

More special treatment in the pipeline for faith schools. Oh to be a bigot with a book.

Dear XXXXXXX,

The Schools secretary Ed Balls recently tabled an amendment to the forthcoming bill addressing sex and relationship education in schools. This amendment will allow special exemption from the bill for faith schools and its introduction is being heralded as a success of the lobbying of the Catholic Education Service.

The bill originally was intended to standardise the teaching of sex and relationship education across schools, that "information presented ...should be accurate and balanced"; that the subject should be "taught in a way that is appropriate to the ages of the pupils concerned and to their religious and cultural backgrounds and reflects a range of religious, cultural and other perspectives"; that it should "be taught in a way that endeavours to promote equality, encourages acceptance of diversity and emphasises the importance of both rights and responsibilities."

Balls' amendment will allow Catholic faith schools to instead teach about sex and relationships in line with their "religious character"; i.e. that homosexuality is an aberration that should be discouraged; that contraception is wrong; that contraception leads to the spread of HIV AIDS; that sex outside of marriage is shameful.

I understand that the implications of the amendment are currently being denied by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It is their understanding that: "schools with a religious character will be free, as they are now, to express the views of their faith and reflect the ethos of their school, but what they cannot do is suggest that their views are the only ones." If that is the intention of the amendment then the amendment is unnecessary. As quoted above, the bill insists that the subject be"taught in a way that is appropriate to the ages of the pupils concerned and to their religious and cultural backgrounds and reflects a range of religious, cultural and other perspectives." If that is the case, then the amendment serves no purpose, and clouds the Bill, suggesting as it does a legal loophole with which faith schools can pursue their own agendas of intolerance.

I urge you to reject the amendment.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXXXXXX

The Trouble with OTIII

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:00:00 +0000

30 Second Skinny The scriptures for Operating Thetan 3 serve as a kind of shibboleth for the Church of Scientology. The Church flatly denies (often without lying outright) that the scriptures in the public domain are the genuine ones, so should someone reach and pay for the OT3 they are in a position where they are already deeply embedded in church life and must make the difficult choice of swallowing the story so often denied, or walking away from a sizeable part of their life. Should they stay in the church, it is likely that the church realise more and more courses and auditing can be pushed onto them.

Please note that this article will not discuss the specific contents of OT3, only its context within the Church's Bridge to Total Freedom.

It is enough to say that we can be certain of the contents of OT3, given the lengths that the Church of Scientology has gone through in order to quash it becoming common knowledge. This, of course, has had the reverse effect.

Yet they continue to deny it. Here are some Scientologists denying it on BBC's Panorama. I've censored it so that Scientologists can read it without getting into trouble.

SWEENEY: Scientology now flatly denies the XXXX story but it's been so widely reported it seemed wrong not to ask them about it, particularly as many of the most senior scientologists all operating Thetans.

(Kirstie Allie interview) Xxxx, an xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx xxxxx from.. xxxxx xxxxx, xxxxxxxx them xx xxxxx and then xxxx xxxx xx.

Kirstie Allie, operating Thetan level 7, said it wasn't true.

(Juliette Lewis interview) An xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx who xxxx xx xxxx xx xxxxxx...?

Juliette Lewis giggled and denied it.

(Leah Remini interview) The xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx who xx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xx xxx xxxxxx'x... xxxxxx.

TOMMY: John I already answered this.. let us know what you're talking about, it's like loony. It's weird.. makes you look weird.

This is the head spokesperson of the church flatly denying the story. To John Roberts on CNN he said of the contents of OT3 "Well, John, does that sound silly to you? I mean it’s unrecognizable to me."

They deny it is true, and point out that it is ridiculous.

But it's still there in the scriptures. Which raises the question, what happens when someone has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on self help, having taken on board that the enemies of Scientology tell all sorts of lies, having witnessed Tommy Davis, along with the great and the good in Scientology, deny those crazy lies; what happens when that person finally get their hands on the OT3 briefcase, opens it up and peeks inside? OT3 is a hard lesson to learn in the first place. Andrew Morton discusses how badly affected Tom Cruise was once he reached the "wall of fire" and this was before the contents had become widely known; this was before all the denial and ridicule had set in.

OT3 has been described as a shibboleth. Once you have spent the money on reaching OT3, you will either balk at the realisation that the crazy stories you have heard are true and walk; or you will make the "bad money after good" mistake, and carry on. And once you have passed OT3, the Church will know they have someone profoundly committed to being duped.

In the interests of transparency, this post was prompted by revelations that Scientologist William Rex Fowler has been arrested for murder, and a brief case containing Scientology scripture was taken from the crime scene.

When detectives asked Janet Fowler [William Fowler's Wife] to speak with them, she had an urgent concern as her husband lay fighting for his life in the intensive care unit.

"Janet Fowler quickly demanded the briefcase" containing information about Scientology that detectives had removed from his office, the arrest affidavit stated.

"One thing I need is his briefcase," Janet Fowler told detectives, according to the court record. "It was taken out of his office. It is important to me, my church, and it is religious material and I want it now!"

Rex Fowler had left a note dated the day of the shooting instructing whoever found it to "please give the briefcase to Jan." Another note, found on Fowler's work desk along with several keys, explained to "Jan" what each key unlocked.

Detective Gene Claps explained to Janet Fowler that investigators needed to review the briefcase contents.

"Even if you looked at it and read it, you would not understand anything in it," the wife replied, the arrest affidavit stated. "Because it is way above a normal person and you would not know what it meant."

"Janet Fowler then demanded the briefcase be returned again, by saying, 'I want it back now, right now!' " Claps wrote in his statement.

It seems unlikely that William Fowler had been in Scientology for 36 years without reaching the level of OT3, though comparably lengthy service within Church staff without much bridge progress is not unheard of. I don't think Fowler did reach OT3, realise he had been lied to for 36 years, and then commit suicide, but the trouble with OT3 is that by the time you reach it, you are so deep into the Church that the realisation you have been trapped could feasibly have repercussions on this kind of scale.

Coercion and Extortion? In My Religion?

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:12:00 +0000

Tommy "Foot Bullet" Davis has been at it again. In case you've not heard, Larry Anderson, star of the Church of Scientology's Orientation video, has woken up and walked, claiming that he no longer believes Scientology can deliver what it promises (freedom from "the trap"). He also blames what he regards as corruption in the upper levels of management, citing the fact that the Church, for a period of about two years, was quite happily selling books it knew were no good, while those titles were being revised for re-release. This mis-selling is the sort of brazen nasty that we like to report on at The Beacon because it is irrefutable. The "wrong" books were sold right up to the day before the release of the "corrected" versions. It's so irrefutably wrong of the Church that they haven't even sought to apply any spin on it.

But anyhew. It's what happened next where it gets really interesting. Reports are widespread of the lengths that the Church will go to to retain parishioners it believes are valuable to the church or best kept silent. After making his intentions clear Anderson agreed to meet and discuss with Davis the return of money the actor had on account with the Church for services he had not yet received. Anderson had the foresight to record the "brief meeting" that became a ninety-minute conversation, with the full consent of Davis. Excerpts from the tape are now available online.

Knowing that the conversation is being taped, Davis nevertheless tries on various tactics to ensure Anderson, at the very least, remains quiet about the Church on his departure and does not receive any refunds. He waves the IRS at Anderson, discusses Anderson's impending disconnection (with some wonderful double speak; he says it does and doesn't happen in the same breath), tries to make Anderson feel guilty and/or pay(!) for the projected $2 million reshoot of Orientation and makes veiled threats concerning those Anderson will leave behind in the Church. One can only wonder how differently the conversation would have run had it not been taped!

Davis seems to be making a habit of saying things he oughtn't on tape. Last year saw him reveal that he was passing on former-Scientologists auditing files, collations of things admitted to while undergoing auditing, in the hopes that he could make some kind of ad hominem attack and damage testimonies regarding David Miscavige's violence and brutality. Naturally enough the provision of firm evidence that the Church does exactly what it says it doesn't do did not do much to dissuade the reporters from pressing ahead with their story. One wonders how long Davis can keep hold of his job; his continued ineptitude in handling these situations suggests that Miscavige has no-one with which to replace him. By sticking to CoS procedure, Davis only ever seems to galvanise departing parishioners into the new role of vocal criticism of the Church, its management and its policies. Scientology seems unique as a religion that makes enemies of its footstools.

The Trouble with TRs

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:11:00 +0000

The 30 Second Skinny Scientology's Training Routines often involve pattern spotting. Psychology suggests that is possible that by training someone to be a more adept pattern spotter they may in turn become more superstitious, or in other words come to recognise patterns that aren't really there. This could well be a consequence, intended or otherwise, of the TRs.

For the uninitiated, TRs are the Training Routines that mark the beginning of someone's path in Scientology. The initial routines zero through nine form the basis of the communication course and involve learning how to shout at ashtrays. It has been criticised elsewhere. The troubling aspect for me with these exercises is that they teach one thing while claiming to teach another. Key here is the much touted "bull baiting" which forms TR 0. Here you are supposed to be learning how to deal with someone being openly hostile to you, but the TR is taught using a "buddy" system. Sometimes you are shouted at, and sometimes you do the shouting, so you are not only being trained in resilience, but also how to be abusive. You can see the fruits of these routines in a myriad protest videos! But there is something else that is introduced later on in the TRs that is worth special note.

TR8 (tone 40 on objects) is the famous "shouting at ash trays" routine. The earlier routines have a clear end marker. You pass these TRs when you are able to receive verbal abuse without reaction, or by illiciting the answers you want from your coach. TR8, however, steps into vague. TR8 is to be done until one has a "cognition", being a "sudden realization about oneself having to do with Scientology". And that's all the help you get. You are repeating a semi-meaningless exercise at length until you make a personal realisation. Later training in Scientology will rely on this "repeat until cognition" format, but here, I believe, is its first outing. Why is this a cause for concern? Let's talk pigeons.

In 1947, the behavioural psychologist B F Skinner published research that he claimed demonstrated the development of superstitious thinking in pigeons. He kept the birds in cages and at random intervals ran small amounts of grain into them. He noticed that the birds tended to develop rituals based on whatever they, by chance, were doing when the grain was first introduced; 3/4 clockwise turns, for instance. These behaviours would develop despite there being no genuine cause at work, and even more tellingly, the birds would persist in their rituals whether or not it resulted in grain. One could argue that it was Skinner who was making a connection that wasn't there rather than the birds, but the reality remains that this is how we operate with our own superstitions. A date goes well, so we bestow our underwear with magical powers, and continue to wear them on dates, whether or not the dates go well. I had a lucky rabbit's foot, but I lost it.

Now here's where it gets even more interesting. This tendancy towards superstition is linked with our ability to spot patterns; set someone a series of pattern-spotting exercises, and quiz them on their irrational beliefs, and you will find a correlation. This makes a kind of intuitive sense. In order for us to read entrails, we need to recognise something in them. In order to feel as though "someone is trying to tell you something" you need to hear them. Put plainly, superstition involves recognising patterns that aren't there, so the better you are at recognising patterns to begin with, the more likely you are to believe that the patterns you see everywhere are created by some outside force or reality. This is explained in Bruce Hood's wonderfully lucid book SuperSense.

If we take this on board, we are left with a question. If we train someone to become a better pattern-spotter, do they then become more superstitious. I suspect that the curmudgeonly uber-rational will not waver, but those who do not hold fast to a particular ideology would indeed, over time, become more superstitious. They would spot more patterns in the world at large, and come to form superstitious beliefs in order to explain them.

And so back to that training structure. We are told to repeat certain trivial actions over and over and over until we have some kind of realisation about ourselves, about the exercise, about the universe. It makes sense that the cognition should resolve what the exercise is asking of us, that we spot the pattern in it. So one of the potential consequences of the study of Scientology is an increasing reliance on magical thinking at the expense of rational thinking. It would certainly explain some of the conversations I've had with Scientologists!

Hubbard Motors

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:32:00 +0000

with apologies to Tory Christman

"Hubbard Motors! 100 million vehicles sold!"
"Hi, this is Mr Construct. I bought a car not so long ago from you."
"Of course, sir. Can I interest you in supplying us with a testimonial?"
"Not really. There's a problem with the car."
"A problem?"
"It doesn't work."
"Really?"
"Really. I was told it would be more powerful than run of the mill cars, but it doesn't seem to be. I keep getting left behind at traffic lights."
"Oh my. Are you sure you're driving it properly?"
"Sure I'm sure."
"Well this is a pickle."
"Also, it cuts out completely whenever I try and drive past accidents."
"No, no, that's by design. It's an undocumented feature."
"I'm not sure I know what you mean by that."
"Oh? Which word did you not understand."
"It's not the word, it's the... never mind."
"Okay. Well why don't you bring this car of yours in and we'll take a look at it..."

Later that Day

"If you'd just like to turn on the windscreen wipers, sir."
"The wipers? I think the problem is with the engine."
"Oh don't worry, sir, I'll find the problem; but please, the wipers?"
"Okay... There."
"Hmm... well they seem to be working fine."
"Like I say, it's not the wipers. I just can't get any power out of the engine."
"But the wipers are part of the car."
"Yes."
"And the wipers work fine. You've observed this to be true, yourself."
"Yes, but-"
"Therefore the car must work fine. I have proved it. Axiomatically."
"I don't follow your logic. Sorry."
"You don't? Odd. Someone must be clouding your judgement on this."
"Someone?"
"Has anyone been critical of the car at all?"
"Well, my wife doesn't have very much good to say about it."
"Oh no?"
"She has a point, though. It's been nothing but trouble since I got it."
"I think we have found the problem, sir. I've proven that the car is fully operational, which can only mean that it is being suppressed by some outside force. This wife you speak of is the source of the problem."
"My wife? What has she got to-"
"It's technical, but the most important thing for you to do right now is to go back to your wife and tell her that if she doesn't stop criticising your car, then you'll have no option but to leave her."
"Leave her?!"
"Leave her."
"Over a car? Look, I'm not happy with the way I'm being treated here. Can I at least have a replacement vehicle?"
"There's nothing wrong with your vehicle, sir, it's your wife's suppressive behaviour that is the problem."
"Nonsense. That's it. I'm well within my rights. I'd like a full refund."
"But we can't possibly take the car back and refund you, sir. There's nothing wrong with it. We could take the car back, but it's a lengthy process. A lot of admin. And we charge for admin."
"But the car is faulty! Its engine's busted!"
"That's something that Hubbard Motors will contest sir, in court if we have to. And we can afford some very good lawyers. Also, I found these in your glove compartment. A lesser person would be shocked."
"What in the-?"
"I know. The secrets people hide."
"I've never seen those before in my life."
"I'm sure the police will take that into consideration, sir. Now, what is it to be?"

Later that Week

"Who is this?"
"Who is this? You phoned me?"
"What's that you say? A bomb? In the showroom?"
"What? Is that..."
"Wait! I know that voice. Mr Construct? Why would you perpetrate a bomb hoax?"
"You phoned me!"
"We view this as an act of terrorism, Mr Construct, and this call has been recorded. If you do not desist in this hate campaign then you leave us no alternative than to take this up with the FBI."

Later that Year

"Mr Construct?"
"..."
"This is Mr Savage, sir, from Hubbard Motors."
"Please, leave me alone."
"I have some excellent news Mr Construct! We've found what was wrong with your car! There was a problem with it after all."
"Then you can fix it?"
"Better than that, we can replace it!"
"You can?!"
"With our latest model! All for the competitive sum of $250,000!"
"What? You're going to charge me for the replacement."
"Also, please can you arrange to have your existing vehicle junked as soon as possible?"
"You want me to junk the car you sold me that didn't work and buy another car from you to replace it? For a quarter of a million dollars?"
"Come on, Mr Construct. It's more than just a car. Think of it as a way of life... Mr Construct..? Are you there Mr Construct?"

Fighting Nonsense with Nonsense

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:02:00 +0000

Dear Helios Ltd.

I read with some discomfort that Natrum Bromatum can stop someone being homosexual. http://shelleytherepublican.com/2010/01/20/finally-a-100-effective-cure-for-homosexuality.aspx

If this is the case, should NB carry a warning? This sounds like a massively disruptive side effect for those who are happy with their sexuality. I'd hate for Helios to be the subject of a lawsuit.

Kind regards,

Beacon Schuler.

Homeopathy and Malaria, Still...

noreply@blogger.com (Beacon Schuler) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:57:00 +0000

The 30 Second Skinny A study into a homeopathic preparation of the neem tree has been promoted as evidence that homeopathy can be used against malaria. However, the study raises many concerns. Results of the two year trial were being published after only six months, but no later version of the paper seems to exists. It also didn't compare the treatment against a placebo, and recruited people who had had malarial attacks in the last twelve months, making its six month reporting of little value. It is worrying that advocates of homeopathy deny clinical trials are capable of proving homeopathy works, yet at the same time use flawed trials in order to claim homeopathy has some robust evidence supporting it.

Merseyside Skeptics recently made the point, in their 10:23 campaign, that it is pretty mcuh a waste of time debating whether or not homeopathy is effective for anything with people who believe in it because there is little consistency or logic to their argument. This was exemplified in the evidence check recently where a homeopathic entrepreneur explained that the problem with a lot of the meta-analyses (which tend to suggest homeopathy is not effective) are flawed because they rely on studies with small sample sizes. Later on in the panel, he was asked if he could name a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial and decided to eschew his previous misgivings and refer to a small sample study. It is not just that proponents of CAM cherry pick their evidence, they also will routinely flip-flop over their position on clinical proof itself. Homeopathy is "clinical trial proof" until a trial comes along that seems to demonstrate efficacy.

An example of this came to light from the Twitterverse being waved by @ltlmtnhomeopath. It is particularly incendiary because it suggests homeopathy can be used as a preventative measure for malaria. Homeopathic treatment for malaria has become a bit of a cornerstone for the UK skeptic movement, inasmuch as it shows the ugly dangerous side of something that most run-of-the-mill people who prefer a bit of evidence with their physic consider to be a pointless but harmless treatment. Here's a blogpost from DC's Improbable Science that goes into this in more detail.

Anyway enough yakking, here's the evidence that @ltlmtnhomeopath feels it worth her while to publicise, and to save you the jump, here's the abstract...

Introduction

In natural medicine, the neem tree (Azadirachta indica) is recognized as an effective treatment for many diseases and is used for treatment of bacterial, viral, fungal infections and for the treatment of malaria. A homeopathic formulation has been used since the year 20001 for the prevention and treatment of malaria and appears to be safe and effective. Resistance to neem has not been found in many hundreds of years of use across the world.2

Materials and methods

The purpose of the study was to research whether the daily use of homeopathic neem medication decreases the number of malaria attacks within 6 months and up to 2 years of treatment in a population of both children and adults in the area of Musoma, Tanzania. This was a single arm3, prospective, observational trial in subjects with recurrent malaria attacks in an at-home setting. The 6 months follow-up data are presented here. Efficacy data was based on subject reports gathered by questionnaires. Malaria symptoms were not objectified by a clinical diagnosis. The homeopathic medicine used in the trial is an ethanol based tincture carrying the medicinal properties of the neem leaves4.

Results

152 patients were enrolled in the trial: 79 children with a mean age of 11 years (4-18) and 73 adults with a mean age of 37 years (19-93). The group of children consisted of 37 girls and 42 boys. All subjects reported at least one malaria episode in the previous 12 months. In the study population as a whole, 5% reported an increase of malaria attacks at 3 months and 7% at 6 months. 38% reported no change at 3 months, decreasing to 13% at 6 months. The percentage of subjects who reported a decrease of malaria episodes increased from 57% at 3 months to 81% after 6 months of treatment. Compliance was low in the first 3 months of treatment in the children group. Up to 68% of the children took less than the prescribed amount of study medicine in the first 3 months. This improved after adding the remedy to drinking water in the following 3 months. In contrast, 89% of the adults took the remedy as intended or took more than the intended prophylactic dose. There were no reports of side-effects during the treatment.

Conclusions

The homeopathic neem preparation has shown to be effective for the reduction of malaria attacks in a highly endemic area for plasmodium falciparum5. The treatment is safe in the short term and the low cost of manufacturing renders this treatment especially attractive for developing countries as the purchase cost is well within the range of an average household budget.6

Notes arising...

1 A homeopathic treatment ought to cure like with like; here it seems a homeopathic preparation of a herbal remedy is being used.
2 There is no clinical proof of efficacy prior to this trial, so there can be no proof of "resistance" or otherwise to neem. I suspect that all malaria is resistant to homeopathic neem, but don't let my bias spoil things.
3 This is a single arm trial; the results cannot be compared against a no treatment or placebo arm, so we will find out exactly nothing from it. I hope this was made clear when recruiting the 152 people to the trial.
4 Again it is unclear as to whether this is genuinely a homeopathic remedy or some aqua vita.
5 This is supposed to be a prospective study, so the suggestion is that positive results will encourage further research in a more controlled way. Suddenly, though, we have leapt to a declaration that neem works and...
6 ...is easily marketable.

What I find most appalling about this is that it is talking about repeat malarial attacks, use a selection criteria that specifies at least a single attack in the last twelve months, but publishes its results after six months, long before the end of what was apparently supposed to be a two year trial. Also, much of the data is hidden away in percentages and arbitrary groupings. People kept diaries to keep tabs on their malarial attacks, so we ought to know at least how many attacks they suspected they had in the previous year (this was part of the selection criteria after all) and how many attacks occured in the six months covered by the diaries. In fact the number of attacks during the trial are not taken into account. The report states "Subjects were asked to indicate whether the frequency of malaria attacks had decreased, remained the same or increased after the start of the study treatment," (emphasis added). The statistics do not come from the number of attacks, but on the subjective views of the individual test subjects.

Imagine that you had a single malarial attack eight months prior to joining the trial, and then subsequently had no malarial attacks for the first three months. You certainly couldn't say that your attacks had increased if you'd had none at all, which leaves you with the possibility that you'd experienced no change, which would be the safest option, or if you were a happy camper, you might feel that you were experiencing fewer attacks than you'd had in the previous twelve months. Three months is less than twelve months, so I would hope very much that the study indicated high scores for "no change" or "reduction in attacks". The context of the attacks of the previous year would also be worth exploring, along with any changes of behaviour as a result of that attack. Did their brush with death lead them to beg, borrow or steal a mosquito net, for instance?

The data covers a period in 2005. I'd be very keen to see how the study progressed. I'd be very keen to know if the study was even concluded, so sure the writers seem in their conclusions. I'd be very keen to know if any of the subjects died during the trial, which was a tragic likelihood even across the six month span of data scrutinised by this paper.

But the point isn't really to demonstrate how the trial was run in such a way that a positive result seemed inevitable, it is that people who believe in homeopathy feel vindicated by these pieces of shoddy research, and never seem to show any interest in applying rigour in their reading of them. They would rather embrace and publicise flawed evidence, and to hell with the consequences. To echo Merseyside Skeptics, there is rarely much to be gained from discussing the evidence with them. They probably feel the same way about us "dinosaurs" with our 21st century evidence based attitude to their 19th century magic. Much better to save our energies for protest and action that will genuinely make a difference, to campaign for an evidential base to the policies of entities commercial and governmental concerning treatments for which their remains little or no evidence, to turn our attentions to NICE and Boots, rather than to attempt to change the beliefs of @ltlmtnhomeopath and her like, dangerous as they are.

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