The Lay Scientist

Four Dead in South Africa Over Measles Vaccine Fears

Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:33:39 +0000

South Africa is in the grip of a Measles epidemic that has affected over 2,000 people and killed four, with the majority of cases occurring in the Guateng region.

But an unusual feature of this outbreak is that it isn't necessarily poorer families being effected. The South African Department of Health have noted an unusual pattern to the cases.

"One striking feature of this latest outbreak is that while it has affected children of the poorer communities, it has also been concentrated among relatively well-off children, predominantly in the 15-19 year old age group. We believe that in both groups, the underlying cause has been failure by the parents or guardians to take children for immunization i.e. both the initial and follow-up doses."

Authorities in the region are launching a mass vaccination program for children up to the age of 15 to try and bring the virus under control, but they are running into the Wakefield effect; parents who, as a result of the errant doctor's long-since discredited work still fear that the vaccine will somehow lead to their children developing autism. As a result, thousands of South African children are being left tragically unprotected against a disease that can cause death, blindness and brain damage.

The problem is leaving health authorities exasperated. Kim Hawkey of the South African Sunday Times reports that:

"Dr Lucille Blumberg of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said the autism theory had played a role in parents opting not to inoculate their children. "It, in fact, caused huge harm to the programme. There is no scientific basis whatsoever linking autism to the measles vaccine," Blumberg said.

[...]

"The executive director of the NICD, Professor Barry Schoub, said the autism theory had "spiralled completely out of control", possibly because some parents of autistic children bought into it while trying to find the cause of their children's condition."

While it's tempting to pin the blame for this outbreak on anti-vaxers, there may also be problems with the vaccination program itself, as News24.com report:

"There were also others who got measles although their vaccinations were up to date.

"Dr Lucille Blumberg of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said earlier it was not clear how this happened.

"Two vaccinations were supposed to protect 99% of children and one vaccination 85%. It could be that earlier consignments of the vaccination were not cooled or stored properly."

It could of course be a statistical thing - with a vaccine that's 99% effective there will always be a handful of people who get the vaccine and still get Measles - although in a fully vaccinated population of course herd immunity will still protect them. Still, it's something the authorities need to investigate further if they're going to restore confidence in the national programme.

In the meantime, events in South Africa give us yet another reminder - if any more were needed - of the consequences of irresponsible quacks and reckless journalists starting vaccine scares.

__________________

Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Up to a Quarter of British MEPs in Denial Over Climate

Martin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:45:29 +0000

Back in June, Frank Swain and I argued for evidence-based policy ahead of the European Elections, and called for greater scrutiny of the various parties' policies on science. Inevitably for a pair of science bloggers pretending to be Guardian journalists, we were ignored. The election came and went, people elected a parade of fringe characters, and the result for science policy can be seen in the following statistic, researched and calculated over several very tedious evenings.

By my count, 23% of Britain's 72 MEPs are either explicit climate 'skeptics', or are members of 'skeptic' parties who remain silent on the subject (I use the term in quotes since climate 'skeptics' are generally about as 'skeptical' as 9/11 'truthers' are truth-oriented - googling for things that support your case and credulously accepting them as 'fact' isn't skepticism).

You can see further data, graphs and commentary below. The raw table of all MEPs is linked at the end of this post.

Lets start with the overall numbers. The table below shows the sum of MEPs holding each view, and was constructed based on an exhaustive search for published quotes in the media. I've included two figures: the first column shows explicit views, while the second column shows how the data changes if we assume that those MEPs who don't express views are likely to follow the party line (which gets us the 23% figure - I'll discuss the problems with this assumption below).

*British MEPs by Climate Views*
	Unknown	No Warming	Not man, Don't Act	Is man, Act
Explicit	10	9	3	50
Assume Party	0	9	8	55

So 12 MEPs (16.7%) are actually on record taking an stance on climate opposed to science. They are Stuart Agnew [UKIP], Marta Andreasan [UKIP], Gerrard Batten [UKIP], Godfrey Bloom [UKIP], David Bannerman [UKIP], Derek Clark [UKIP], Nick Griffin [BNP], Daniel Hannan [Con] and Roger Helmer [Con] who deny that any warming is occuring; and Andrew Brons [BNP], Nigel Farage [UKIP] and Paul Nuttal [UKIP] who deny that any warming is man-made.

Let's just take a minute or two away from the data to enjoy Godfrey Bloom giving probably the most epicly stupid 90-second speech you'll see in the European Parliament large month.

Erm, right. Anyway, we can break these down by party as follows.

*Bad Science Views by Party*
	MEPs
Con	2
BNP	2
UKIP	8

The problem here are the 10 unknowns (14%), hence my weasel-worded use of "up to" in the title of this article. They are Derek Vaughn [Lab], Kay Swinburne [Con], John Bufton [UKIP], Phililp Bradbourn [Con], Trevor Colman [UKIP], William, Earl of Dartmouth [UKIP], Jacqueline Foster [Con], Emma McClarkin [Con], Mike Nattrass [UKIP] (whose views are somewhat ambiguous), and Nikki Sinclaire [UKIP].

It seems reasonable to assume that these MEPs are likely to follow the party line, which I'll look at further below. If any readers can help track down the views of these ten, I'll be happy to update the article (with credit given).

Let's gratuitously show off my blog's graphing capabilities for a third time, and make another bar chart (the graphing capabilities are so advanced, I haven't figure out how to do pie charts yet. Sorry.)

*Unknown Views by Party*
	MEPs
Lab	1
Con	4
UKIP	5

Note the almost complete absence of the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the SNP from this analysis so far. 100% of Lib Dem and SNP MEPs have publicly called for action on climate change. Indeed, the same is true for all of Scotland's MEPs, and our Northern neighbours lead the British Isles on climate. Only one Labour MEP has apparently failed to speak on the issue.

The 26 Conservatives did better than I expected, perhaps through Cameron's attempt to rebrand the party as Green Conservatives. Indeed, Tories like Vicky Ford are openly attacking bad science, with quotes like: "To be honest, I get fed up with climate-change-deniers." Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan from the Tory fringe pose the last challenge to a European party consensus on the issue, while the views of four remain unknown.

The fringes of the right, who now comprise around 20% of our elected representatives in Europe, are a car crash. The BNP aren't exactly the most rational of parties, and their views were not unexpected; but UKIP are a much more serious proposition and take a fiercely anti-science line, as you can see from a quick search of their website. UKIP are a climate denialist party.

UKIP have 13 MEPs, of whom 8 are definitely in opposition to the science, while the views of 5 are undeclared. Looking at the stream of anti-science output coming from their party, and taking into account the anecdotal evidence from MEPs like Richard Corbett (who refers to "the entirety of UKIP" being in the denialist camp, though admittedly before the 2009 elections), it seems reasonable to assume that most of those unknowns are not far off the views of their colleagues.

Given that I've generously assumed all four Tory unknowns follow their party line, the speculative figure of 23% I mentioned at the top of the article seems reasonable to me. I appreciate, however, that this is a very unscientific approach, and I'm looking forward to being ruthlessly attacked in the comments for it!

Over the last several years, overt climate denialism has been pushed to the fringe of politics, with the debate among mainstream parties pretty much won by the science. Indeed, around 70% of our MEPs accept (publicly at least) that climate change is a man-made problem and that we need to act.

The problem for the European Union is that the same fringe has reemerged as a major force since the June elections, particularly with the growth of UKIP. This sudden increase in anti-science views among our European representatives threatens, if it continues, to undermine progress tackling the scientific challenges we face, and tarnish our reputation as a leading nation in the fight against climate change.

And it begs the question, what range of views will the 2010 General Election (or elections) bring into our domestic Parliament?

Raw Data

Download Data as Text File

Key to Data File:
0 = Unknown view
1 = No warming at all
2 = GW not anthropogenic, do nothing
3 = AGW Happening, do nothing
4 = AGW happening, action needed

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Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Fry/Hitchens on Catholic Church

Martin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:17:00 +0000

Recently, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens took on Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigria) in an Intelligence Squared debate on the statement: "The Catholic church is a force for good in the world." Here is the video (Hat tip: Pod Black).

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Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

On Angry Mobs and Science Activism

Martin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:30:47 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk lately about angry mobs. When Jan Moir wrote a viciously homophobic attack on the recently deceased singer Stephen Gately and his grieving friends and family, she was confronted by an angry mob. When ace lawyers Carter-Fuck attempted to gag the Guardian’s reporting of a parliamentary question, the censored information was carried along the information super-highway on virtual placards by an angry mob. When Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand committed the crime of offending a man famous for offending the Spanish, the Daily Mail acted as the seed around which an angry mob crystallized.

Like it or not, angry mobs are a feature of democracy, which is after all a sort of mob rule. But do angry mobs get a bad name?

The phrase ‘angry mob’ is in itself a loaded term constructed from two negative words, carrying more baggage than the terminal of a small regional airport. It is a pejorative political label, and its pattern of usage is similar to the archetypal example of such a label: ‘terrorist’. The definition of terrorism depends overwhelmingly on which side of a particular debate or conflict you happen to be on; one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. One man’s angry mob is another man’s legitimate protest.

The angry mob is also undeniably effective. As a society, our relationship with angry mobs is very much like our relationship with vibrators – we look down on them, we sneer and call them uncouth or vulgar, but the fact of the matter is that they get the job done.

And there’s nothing wrong with a bit of good old-fashioned anger. There are many things we should be angry about – legal systems undermining democracy, hate speech in the national press, climate change, quackery, it is right to be pissed off by bad things. As Rudyard Kipling famously observed in his poem If:

"If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, then perhaps you have misunderstood the situation." (D.K. Moran)

So I put it to you that an angry mob is not a bad thing. It is an effective tool of democracy, as vital and rightfully placed in society as, say, the speeches of Cicero. The problems start when outrage begins to undermine rationality. A protest can be well-meaning, and righteous, but still deeply irrational and misguided.

It was right, for example, that Jan Moir’s disgusting smear provoked outrage; however the reaction was unpredictable and had no logic behind it. The Daily Mail print bigotry on a daily basis and a quick search in their archives for terms like ‘Muslim’, ‘homosexual’ or a look at their general treatment of women brings up examples far worse than Jan Moir’s piece, yet it was just that one article that provoked outrage; a rage which burned so violently out of control that idiots posted Moir’s home address online. Why was there no similar reaction to the likes of Melanie Phillips?

Similarly, Trafigura saw a reaction that was to some extent a bit harsh on Carter-Ruck. The job of any lawyer is to offer their clients the best advice they can under the law. Carter-Ruck royally screwed up in this regard, and so their clients have a lot to be unhappy about. But the target of public wrath shouldn’t be a law firm acting within the law, but the law itself; a law enabled by the very parliament It was "gagging".

The public have an in-built desire to construct simple narratives around complex stories, and Carter-Ruck were, like Moir, an easy villain. They were effigies, and they burned, and we were happy for a time; but the wider issues – bad law and bigoted newspaper columnists – remained untouched by the overnight storm.

We've seen the angry mob applied to science in recent days by Professor David Nutt, constructively 'sacked' for publicly contradicting and undermining the government's rabidly-whipped line on drug classification. It's impossible to prove intent in this sort of instance, but we know that Nutt jumped before he was pushed, and either deliberately or otherwise he called upon the angry mob to support him, whipping up a frenzy of media activity in a very short space of time.

What effect will David Nutt's resignation have on science-based policy? Some have said that the timing of his resignation could allow drug policy to become an election issue, but given that the two main parties have the same line on drugs, this is vanishingly unlikely. Whoever wins the election, policy will continue down the same path. Even if the Lib Dems hold the balance of power in a coalition (which would likely precipitate a second election next year anyway), they won't be able to get reform past the combined opposition of the two big parties.

Angry mobs and lobbying are part of the democratic process, and people arguing for evidence-based policy should be willing to get their hands dirty embracing these tactics if they really want to effect change. They are another tool for the arsenal, and an angry mob can sear a message onto the public consciousness better than a thousand New Scientist editorials.

On the other hand, these tactics can be ineffective, or backfire spectacularly. It's one thing to make people angry, but quite another to keep them on message ~~and under control~~ (Ed: 'control# was the wrong word here, my point is that once you've instigated a mob, you can't always continue to influence it).

This isn't important when your message consists of blunt, reactionary points like "kick the darkies out", but for scientists trying to communicate more subtle messages about how irrationally we deal with relative risk in society that job becomes orders of magnitude harder. Melanie Phillips' dismissal of "Professor Nutty" is a simpler meme for people to consume and spread than "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."

This is the point where I should conclude the post with my opinions on how I think science activism needs to progress, but the truth is I haven't got the answers beyond saying the obvious; that we need to get smarter and more effective at pushing scientific evidence into the public consciousness in key policy areas. If you have something better, you know where the comment forms are.

And you can join myself, Dr. Petra Boynton, Gimpy, and others at a special event in Westminster on November 24th, for a panel discussion/debate on this very subject. Hopefully I'll see you there!

__________________

Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Nutt Sacked: A Victory for Ideology over Evidence

Martin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:31:19 +0000

While I was mid-upgrade, Professor David Nutt was sensationally sacked as the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by the home secretary, Alan Johnson. The news was broken by BBC reporter Mark Easton, who has been following conflict between science and politics that has been simmering ever since the government ignored scientific advice to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug.

I'll be blogging in much more depth about this as events continue to unfold, but it's worth making one point very clear about the relationship between science and the public, because a lot of people writing about this topic haven't picked up on it yet.

Alan Johnson did not employ Professor Nutt, whose position as an advisor was voluntary and unsalaried. However, Professor Nutt's research was to some extent publicly funded. Anyone who has ever submitted a research proposal to the UK research councils will know that it is the duty of any publicly-funded scientist to disseminate their findings to the, er, public. Not only that, but it is expected that (where possible) modern research proposals including some attempt at wider public engagement with research.

This point needs to be made clear because of the reason Alan Johnson has given for the 'sacking', and the reason Gordon Brown has given for supporting his Home Secretary.

Alan Johnson gave his reasons in a rather bad-tempered interview with Sky's ubiquitous hack Adam Boulton thus:

"[He] crossed the line between offering advice and then campaigning against the government on political decisions". "

The problem here is that if there's a way of speaking out publicly about drugs without it being 'political', I'm damned if I can find it. You could of course say the same thing about many other subjects, depending on your views: climate change, evolution, pharmaceuticals, whatever.

The point is that many fields inform (or rather should inform) government policy; but I don't see the government sacking the entire staff of the British Antarctic Survey for trying to raise public awareness of climate change. You cannot gag scientists in hot-topic areas from speaking out. Indeed, it's their public duty to do so.

Gordon Brown went somewhat further:

"I think Alan Johnson made the right decision because we cannot send mixed messages."

Now, nobody hearing Professor Nutt speaking about the government is going to confuse him with a Labour minister, so the problem that Gordon Brown is referring to is the problem of a senior scientist publishing and publicizing research that contradicts the government line. In Gordon Brown's world of control freakery, such dissent is not to be tolerated.

Gordon didn't stop there, but came up with this glorious mangling of the concept of evidence-based policy:

"We have to take a broader view in the round that was more than just the scientific advice. It's about the effects on young people that drugs are harmful and not acceptable."

Well, great, except that the effects on young people are actually covered by the scientific evidence. Scientific evidence which Parliament's own Science Select Committee summarized thus: "We have found no convincing evidence for the deterrent effect, which is widely seen as underpinning the Government’s classification policy." Indeed, when Cannabis was downgraded to Class C, use actually fell. That just leaves us with the "not acceptable" part of that quote which of course is, ultimately, what this is all about.

Indeed, for Labour to be appealing to the need for clarity at this stage is a bit rich, as Dame Ruth Runciman of the UK Drugs Policy Commission pointed out:

"We do not believe the credibility of the current system or the clarity of message has been enhanced when, in just the space of seven years, five home secretaries have sought one way or another to address the classification of cannabis."

If this was a debate about evidence, Nutt will still be at his post and the findings of the Science Select Committee would not have been ignored. That they have, and that the best reason Brown and Johnson can give is some garbled version of "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that" speak volumes.

A picture speaks a thousand words, and the following graph (from Nutt et al's 2006 paper "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse") showing the ranking of legal and non-legal drugs by harm caused (both individual and to society) versus their classification, sums up
the absurdity of the situation far better than another three hundred words of waffle from me.

Stare at it, and marvel.

Perhaps the most appropriate response was relayed to Iain Brassington at the British Medical Journal:

"I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to make decisions as Home Secretary. I would therefore ask you to step down from the Government with immediate effect."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Apologies for the quick summary post, but I've spent the last four days rebuilding layscience.net. I hope you like the redesign, and I'll be writing a bit more about new features in the coming days.

__________________

Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Image Source:

Wikimedia Commons

Feynman's Elegant Explanation of Science Through Chess

Martin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:01:37 +0000

Probably one of the most elegant descriptions of science I've seen. (HT @madgestar on Twitter).

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Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Nick Griffin vs The Daily Mail in Quotes

Martin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:49:03 +0000

The inclusion of a question about Jan Moir on the edition of Question Time featuring Nick Griffin was fitting, serving as a perfect reminder of where a large proportion of the BNP's support comes from.

The Daily Mail - whose Latin motto translates roughly to "tits and fear" - have roundly condemned the far-right party, and ahead of the broadcast yesterday published a handy guide to Nick Griffin's most bigoted quotes.

Well that's great, except for the fact that many of these vile views can be found expressed by the Daily Mail's own journalists at Mail Online. Here I've presented a handy breakdown, pairing the Daily Mail's Nick Griffin quotes with related quotes from the Daily Mail itself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

EROSION OF WHITE CULTURE:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'Mass alien immigration and suicidally low birthrate mean that the White Race is poised on the brink of a precipice of rapid and irreversible decline. If we do not step back now, we face political and then physical extinction. Unite or die!'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Ruth Dudley Edwards (in an article titled "Will Britain one day be Muslim?"): "The danger of ending up like those poor, despotic and medieval Islamic states in which millions live miserably is a prospect that Christians, Hindus, moderate Muslims and non-believers should be uniting to prevent. But the truth is that we are doing little to stop it."

MULTICULTURALISM:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"Has called Britain 'a multi-racial hellhole' and described British Muslims as 'the most appalling, insufferable people to have to live with'. Sunday Times, June 2009"

"'We haven't given up on our principle that mono-racial countries . . . monoethnic countries are more stable and. . . multi-racial societies always end up going down the road of tyranny.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Uncredited: "The bitter price of multicultural folly"

Uncredited: "Tony Blair has admitted at last that multiculturalism has failed, but future historians will puzzle why anyone thought it would ever succeed."

ISLAM:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"[Islam is a] vicious faith that has expanded from a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago... now sweeping country after country before it, all over the world.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Melanie Phillips: "It is hard not to reach the dismal conclusion that a society faced with violence in pursuit of the goal of overturning Christian values and conquering Britain for Islam turns tail and runs away."

Richard Littlejohn on an ICM poll even he described as "loaded" (see previous posts on this): "ICM regards the sample group of 500 [Muslims] as 'moderate'. If this is what passes for moderate, heaven help us. Even a leading Muslim Labour MP says the results of the poll are 'alarming'. [...] Are we to see Saudi-style 'Chop Chop Square' executions every Friday in the centre of Bradford?"

COUNTING IMMIGRANTS:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'A favourite childhood game. . . was counting black people on the streets from the car window when my parents drove through London.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Uncredited: "Poles are already setting up Polish branches of trade unions in Southampton - where they number up to 30,000."

Andy Dolan: "For the last 13 years Jack has been the most popular boys' name in the land. But in multicultural Britain children named after the Muslim prophet Mohammed come a close second."

HOMOSEXUALITY:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'TV footage of dozens of gay demonstrators flaunting their perversions in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Jan Moir (who else): "Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

Melanie Phillips: "The leaflets also urged homosexuals to 'turn from your sins and you will be saved'. But to the secular priests of the human rights culture, the only sin is to say that homosexuality is a sin."

Melanie Phillips (again, this time in The Spectator): "The true liberal position, that it is right and just to tolerate behaviour that deviates from the norm as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, is deemed to be rank prejudice on the grounds that homosexuality is not ‘deviancy’ but normal. The agenda is therefore not liberal tolerance but illiberal coercion against mainstream moral values..."

LIBERALS:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'If the liberals would just let us have one island, one place, where we could go and do what we want to do by ourselves, most white nationalists would be quite happy to have it.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Amanda Platell: "...their predicament is testament to the moral collapse that is the true legacy of a liberal establishment..."

Lindsay Johns (on, brilliantly, the sacking of Carol Thatcher for racism):"How dare these BBC liberals patronise us."

SENDING 'THEM' BACK:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"Asked what he would do with people living in Britain who couldn't be 'sent home' because their nationalities were not clear, he said: 'Drop them out of a plane somewhere over Africa. I don't really care.'"

"[Any Muslim caught] indulging in specific crimes [would be told] it's either go back to Pakistan or be hanged."

The Daily Mail Itself:

Richard Littlejohn (Webchat):
Pieter: Should asylum seekers/political refugees who committ an offence automatically be expelled?
Richard_Littlejohn Yes."

OSWALD MOSLEY:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'There is a strong, direct link from Oswald Mosley to me.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
It's tempting to bring up the fact that the Daily Mail itself supported Mosley prior to World War II, but since the owners and editors of that period have long since moved on, that would be a little unfair.

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Now, some caveats are needed here.

Firstly, these are a subset of Nick Griffin's quotes, and the Mail have not (to my knowledge) pushed anti-semitism or encouraged violent uprising in their pages. Well, not since the 1930s at least. You can't use a selection of quotes like this to demonstrate that the Mail are as bad as Griffin - they're not.

Another point to be made is that some of these statements are perfectly acceptable, if a little ignorant. There's nothing inherently evil about the quotes on "liberals", nor is counting immigrants necessarily racist. I include these examples to highlight the hypocrisy of the Mail's inclusion of them.

But my point is this. By printing a constant stream of bigotry and fear-mongering over race, religion and sexuality (of which the quotes here are a tiny sample), the Daily Mail (and Jan Moir) have done more than anyone to promote the rise of the BNP. By printing stories about immigration that are simply lies, and infusing them with racially-charged hyperbole, they have helped to create an atmosphere in which issues like immigration cannot be sensibly discussed; in which extremist views can thrive.

It is a testament to their wilful ignorance of their own role in promoting this vile party that they are able to print an article condemning sentiments expressed by their own damned columnists.

__________________

Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Image Author:

BNP

Image Source:

Wikimedia Commons

An Analysis of the Thai AIDS Vaccine Trial

Martin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:38:46 +0000

Dorian McIlroy has written an excellent guest post on the recent AIDS vaccine claims over at ViroBlogy which I'd like to pimp here.

See also my criticism of the media claims surrounding the trial here: "Are Recent AIDS Vaccine Claims Seriously Flawed?"

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Here in Paris, the initial results from the Thai ALVAC/AIDSVAX vaccine trial have just been presented. The first presentation was by Dr Supachai Rerks-Ngarm, who was followed by Colonel Nelson Michael (who gave his presentation in uniform). This was a big double-blinded RCT, with more than 16000 participants, about 8000 people in each arm of the study. I am not a methodologist, but this trial does appear to me to have been very well-designed, carried-out, and analyzed. So I think one should unreservedly treat the results as high-quality.

Continue Reading at ViroBlogy...

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Martin is the editor of layscience.net. Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

The CNHC ('OfQuack') Misled the Cranial Forum, Documents Suggest

Martin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:57:13 +0000

Earlier this evening I stumbed across the minutes of the meetings of the Cranial Forum, a body set up in 1999 to look at voluntary self-regulation in craniosacral therapy, a form of alternative medicine whose practitioners believe manipulation of the spine and skull can treat various ailments.

In recent months they have been debating affiliation with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, the government-funded alternative medicine regulator dubbed "OfQuack" by critics. Browsing through the relevant minutes, I found something rather interesting.

Earlier this year, Tony Brooks and 'Le Canard Noir' of Quackometer used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a document from the Department of Health, detailing the number of practitioners that the CNHC had managed to sign up by the end of April. The total figure stood at 232, of whom 194 were massage therapists (the remainder being nutritionists). In addition the document provided projections drawn up by the CNHC, which predicted that they would have 607 members by the end of May.

Throughout the spring and summer, the Cranial Forum have been firing off requests to the CNHC for further information, as they contemplate whether to align with the regulator. The responses of the CNHC have been recorded in the minutes of various meetings of the Forum, in April, June and July.

This is where things start to get interesting, for in the minutes dated April 6th, under a section entitled "Update from CNHC", we find the following (my emphasis):

"Three hundred massage practitioners are already registered and more are expected. The aromatherapy register will open on the 5th May. Nutrition is in the process of agreeing their registration process but it is taking time."

And in the minutes of their June meeting, they relate the following information from the CNHC:

"Four hundred massage practitioners are already registered and six hundred are awaiting processing which has been delayed by a computer glitch. The aromatherapy register will open on the 5th May."

So let's get this clear:

1) At some point prior to April 6th, the CNHC told the Cranial Forum that they had already signed up 300 massage therapists.

2) At some point prior to May 5th, the CNHC told the Cranial Forum that they had already signed up 400 massage therapists, and were in the middle of processing 600 further applicants - 1,000 in total.

3) At the end of April the CNHC told the Department of Health that they had signed up only 194 massage therapists, and projected a total of around 600 members in all professions by the end of May.

These figures simply do not match in any way.

The figure that the CNHC gave the Cranial Forum at the start of April was at least 55% higher than the official number they reported to the DoH. And for the figures given to the Forum in May to be accurate, the CNHC would have had to have received over eight hundred applications in the space of a few days, and to have conveniently experienced their "computer glitch" in the same period.

This discrepancy is documented fact, and the CNHC have some very serious questions to answer regarding how they managed to give two completely different figures to the government and to a fellow alternative medicine body.

But as well as the figures reported to the Department, it's possible to count the number of practitioners yourself by searching the electronic register on their website. (Hat tips to Alan Henness and Simon Perry who have been compiling these figures.) Doing so produces 928 results as of October 17th. At the ends of September and August the figures were 797 and 607 respectively. Going back to the end of July, 528 members were listed.

This is curious, given that the CNHC informed the Cranial Forum prior to the end of July that "the CNHC has 1,000 registrants."

One can only assume that is has taken them three months to add the missing 400+ names to the online register. Perhaps they should divert some of their PR budget to hiring a better typist?

At some point, the Department of Health will make the official figures for July available to the public under the Freedom Of Information Act. The CNHC already have some explaining to do; but if the DoH figures for July are as far from the figure given to the Cranial Forum as we think they will be, then the fall-out could be catastrophic.

Update - Massaging the Figures:
Alan Henness has very kindly provided a graph of the number of massage therapists registered by the CNHC over the last several months, as recorded on their online registry. Note that we still don't appear to have seen the 1,000 massagers promised back in May. That's quite some computer glitch.

For more background on the CNHC see - Tags:OfQuack.

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A Graphical Representation of Irony for Trafigura and the BCA

Martin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:39:27 +0000

The first of the graphs below the fold shows traffic to layscience.net for the first 16 days of October, an already high-traffic month thanks to my lovely new band of guest bloggers. It is also a graphical demonstration of the Streisand Effect in action; the phenomenon by which attempts to stifle discussion of a subject only encourage more chatter.

Here's a little quiz for you. Can you guess on which day Trafigura's lawyers tried to suppress reporting of a parliamentary question? And can you guess on which day the British Chiropractic Association issued their latest ill-advised press release defaming Simon Singh? Now imagine those twin peaks, repeated across the interwebs.

In fact, you don't have to imagine it. Below is a visualization provided by the nice folks at Trendistic showing how #Trafigura rose to become the #1 topic on Twitter, mentioned in over 1.2% of tweets.

Carter-Ruck are of course attempting to defend the reputation of Trafigura, while the BCA's statement said that:

This claim has been brought to restore the good reputation of the BCA and that of its members.

I wonder how that's working out for them? I'm not a lawyer or a PR expert, but if they want my advice, sometimes it's far better to just keep quiet.

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Reasons Why Singh Shouldn't Countersue

Martin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:52:27 +0000

Yesterday, the British Chiropractic Association made what many believe was a serious error of judgement in a press release regarding Dr. Simon Singh's recent appeal victory. In the release they stated that:

"However, this action is actually a simple libel claim based on the fact that the BCA was maliciously attacked by Dr. Singh in the Guardian newspaper."

As legal expert Jack of Kent has pointed out, this is a defamatory remark which Singh could countersue over, and in Jack's view, "the moment he chooses to do so will surely be when this case ends."

Whoops.

And so, the virtual vultures of the interwebs are circling around BCA HQ, chanting "countersue!" and shaking their bloodied feathers in a vaguely intimidating sort of way. Which is understandable, because frankly if I were Simon Singh I'd jump at the opportunity to take advantage of the farcically dumb person at the BCA who put such a daft press release online about an ongoing legal action without running it past their lawyers first.

So the case could come to an end. But is that really what we want to see? Well, not in my opinion. Let's look at the wider picture.

Simon Singh could have settled months ago. Indeed, some might have argued it was the sensible thing to do. But he didn't. As Simon himself explained:

While there is still the slightest chance of defending my rights as a journalist then I am determined to continue with this legal battle. Indeed, I look forward to the opportunity to discuss the evidence for chiropractic in court.

More importantly, while this case is alive there is an opportunity to raise a whole series of arguably more important issues, particularly the appalling state of English libel laws.

Aside from the conviction that he is right and can win this case, Simon and Sense About Science have used this case as a platform from which to argue for wider libel reform, to protect the ability of science journalists to debate science, and to keep litigation out of scientific disputes.

Assuming that Jack of Kent's assessment is correct, assuming that Singh's team take the opportunity to countersue, and assuming that they win; this would have two side-effects.

1) In my view it risks undermining the campaign to keep libel out of scientific debates if, in the course of arguing that this dispute should be handled like a scientific debate, Simon resorts to counter-suing for libel himself. I'm sure many of you will point out that it's not quite the same thing and I agree, but you can see how it would look to the wider world.

2) While he would force the case to be dropped, Simon wouldn't "win" the case in any meaningful sense. The money and effort he has invested so far would not have the wider impact he wanted, and the original dispute would remain unresolved. In other words, we'd be back where we were in 2008, waiting for the next journalist to call something bogus and get sued.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I am not going to criticize Simon if he takes this route out. As I said above, I'd probably do the same. Simon has done more than enough for fellow science-writers, heroically sacrificing his time and money to bring attention to a critical issue in science journalism. I will support him whatever he does, and I suspect even if he takes this opportunity organizations like the BCA will look at this case and think twice about pursuing critics in the courts again. The BCA and the wider chiropractic industry have been comprehensively embarassed by this debacle.

But, for my own selfish reasons, and for the wider community, I hope that Simon fights on. Libel is an increasing threat to us ragged band of bloggers and writers. Ben Goldacre had to defend himself against Rath, Quackometer was temporarily shut down by legal threats, and as blogs like ours become increasingly popular and prominent it's a question of 'when' rather than 'if' more of us are sued.

By fighting on, Simon Singh could finally rid us of that menace. Or, he could lose spectacularly. That's why I'm glad I'm not in his shoes; and that's why I'll continue to admire his efforts whatever he decides to do.

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Six Problems with the BCA's Latest Statement on Singh (Updated)

Martin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:31:02 +0000

Just after I clicked "submit" on my previous article on the Singh vs. BCA affair, I discovered via @JackOfKent that the British Chiropractic Association have released a more, er, in-depth statement on the latest ruling. You can get it at their website, or cached here for safe-keeping. I'll reproduce the text below (since this is a press release and I am apparently a sort of press now I feel this is fair), then comment.

Dr. Simon Singh has been granted permission to appeal against the decision of Mr. Justice Eady. As the Claimant is not permitted to be represented in a hearing of this nature, the Judge of the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Laws, did not have the benefit of being able to consider all the issues, nor indeed, has he heard any argument from the BCA.

Dr. Singh has used this case as a platform to argue that science writers should be immune from the law of libel and be free to write what they please. Ever since the Eady decision of 7th May 2009, he has engaged in a high profile media campaign to assert that the BCA's action is a restriction of the freedom of speech. It is nothing of the sort.

The BCA supports and would never seek to stifle legitimate open scientific debate. However, this action is actually a simple libel claim based on the fact that the BCA was maliciously attacked by Dr. Singh in the Guardian newspaper. When given the opportunity to retract his words and apologise, Dr. Singh refused. This claim has been brought to restore the good reputation of the BCA and that of its members.

Dr. Singh may now put his case before a full Court of Appeal. Here the BCA will, for the first time, have the opportunity to present its case. The BCA remains confident that once in possession of all the facts the presiding judges will refuse the Appeal.

There are several points in this bad-tempered little piece that are worth raising.

1) As Jack of Kent notes, the BCA have for the first time directly accused Simon Singh of malice, a defamatory allegation that, if intended rather than being a sloppy error, would suggest a possible new line of attack in the case.

2) The BCA state that "This claim has been brought to restore the good reputation of the BCA and that of its members." Given that this claim has resulted in a mass attack on the profession, a high profile campaign to keep libel laws out of science, hundreds of complaints to regulators against individual chiropractors and widespread ridicule of the attempts of the BCA to provide evidence for the effectiveness of their treatments, how exactly is that going chaps?

3) It is false to claim that Justice Laws has not heard any argument from the BCA - he of course had access to the details of the original rulings which were being appealed. It is absurd to suggest that the Court of Appeal is the first opportunity for the BCA to present its case. I'm also not convinced that the BCA weren't permitted to be represented at this hearing, but I await the comment of more qualified writers than me to clarify this point.

4) Continuing from that point, the BCA repeatedly allude to additional evidence that 'wasn't considered', "once in possession of all the facts," "did not have the benefit of being able to consider all the issues." This raises the question: what new facts are there, and why didn't you present them in your original case? It sounds suspiciously like appealing to 'stuff you don't know so you can't criticize it.'

5) The suggestion that Singh's camp refused to compromise with the BCA is disingenuous at the very least. The Guardian offered the BCA a 500-word article in which they could exercise the right to reply, along with a comment in the corrections and clarifications column. The BCA refused the Guardian's offer, and made it clear they were coming after Singh himself.

6) The suggestion that "Dr. Singh has used this case as a platform to argue that science writers should be immune from the law of libel and be free to write what they please" is simply nonsense. The Sense About Science campaign is very clearly focused on a campaign to keep libel laws out of scientific debates and disagreements. Their argument was that the BCA should be able to defend a challenge to the credibility of their science by presenting an argument of their own. As noted above, the BCA refused the offer of the Guardian to facilitate this, preferring instead to try and settle a scientific debate in the libel courts. Given the poor quality of their arguments, this is perhaps unsurprising.

In short it's a very sloppy statement packed with misrepresentations which some have already suggested is legally illiterate. I'm not qualified to comment on the legal aspects, but hopefully Jack of Kent will expand on his analysis soon.

Update:

The BCA have altered their press release (HT: @JackOfKent), to remove "maliciously", presumably having realised the implications. The phrase:

However, this action is actually a simple libel claim based on the fact that the BCA was maliciously attacked by Dr. Singh in the Guardian newspaper.

Has been altered to read:

However, this action is a simple claim based on the fact that the BCA was libelled wby Dr. Singh in the Guardian newspaper.

But the original press release is still available if you know the URL, and of course now out in the wild. By making such a strong allegation of malice against Singh, have they made a critical error? And will they deal with the five other problems with their release outlined here?

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Chiropractors in Paddle Misplacement Farce: A Round-Up

Martin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:44:20 +0000

Back in 2000, when I was a lowly undergraduate, the warden in charge of our halls called all the resident students to the bar for a meeting. There, he warned us of a terrible health and safety menace. Apparently, near the student village, there lurked a large crop of magic mushrooms. On no account, he informed us, were we to go near the mushrooms located in the field at the top end of the village, nor were we to pick the white ones with the brownish tops on them.

After the helpful meeting the field swarmed with a veritable herd of eager students. The mushroom market boomed, at least until the autumn frosts set in and the economic bubble burst, temporarily causing a mortgage crisis in a local Welsh bank; but I digress.

I mention this story because it's been a bad month for the chiropractic profession, and Singh vs. BCA is just part of it. The British Chiropractic Association - or rather, the BCA's lawyers - are the poor misguided wardens in this story. "Don't write bad things about chiropractic," they might have said, "and particularly don't write about chiropractic regulators' abuse of evidence," they implied, "or we'll defend ourselves with the shield of libel law while bopping you on the head with the mighty sword of misery," they were no doubt tempted to add.

But of course that just made us want to do it more. They slipped, and fell, and the mighty sword of misery went straight up their arse.

The inimitable, indomitable and indignant Jack of Kent pointed out the misconceived nature of the BCA's lawsuit many months ago, but recent events have surpassed - or perhaps underpassed - even his expectations.

The headline news is of course Singh's victory in the battle to be allowed to appeal Justice Eady's original ruling on meaning. It's one small battle in the broader context of the trial; but it means that we're back to square one, with the BCA's lawyers once again required to make the case that Singh "had made factual statements rather than mere comment", and that "the factual statements meant that the BCA were knowingly dishonest."

The BCA have already issued a statement, or at least a paragraph, which is somewhat more subdued than some of their earlier press releases:

14th October 2009: The British Chiropractic Association (BCA), notes the decision of Lord Justice Laws in granting Dr. Simon Singh leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

It looks forward to the opportunity of presenting its case where the issues can be heard and the BCA's position can be made clear.

Good luck with that. Of course, the British Chiropractic Association's last attempts at presenting a case, in this case for the efficacy of chiropractic in treating a range of childhood ailments, were systematically destroyed in the space of about 24 hours by a glittering cast of disgruntled science writers, with the handsome editor of The Lay Scientist noting that the BCA had managed to misrepresent a Cochrane review by removing key words from a quote. Evidence of deliberate deception perhaps? Perhaps lawyers, perhaps.

But it's not just the BCA that have gotten themselves into bother. The GCC, presumably envious of all the attention the BCA have received, have adopted a bizarre policy of striving to be even more stupid than their cousins at the BCA, like a sort of dim-witted monkey watching its troop leader falling off a cliff and thinking: "Hmm, that looks fun, me copy."

They haven't quite succeeded in this aim - yet - but my God they're trying hard. They've been helped in the last week by Alan "Zeno" Henness, and Leicester SITP's Simon Perry. Together they exposed the fact that the GCC is pushing a leaflet on its website and in paper form which makes a number of dubious claims about the benefits of chiropractic. Perry was able to obtain a copy and send it to the ASA, at which point the GCC wet their collective pants at the prospect of an ASA adjudication going against them and offered to remove the leaflet - something which would be rather embarassing since ASA compliance is part of their own Code of Practice. As Simon noted:

...if the General Chiropractic Council believed they had the evidence to back up the efficacy of using chiropractic as a treatment for asthma, headaches, migraine and infant colic – then they simply could have produced it.

They didn't, and so once again we were able witness (eventually) the sad and pathetic sight of chiropractors frantically rewriting and withdrawing claims. Just like earlier in the year, when a mass panic developed after an onslaught of complaints to Trading Standards, regulatory bodies and the brilliant Advertising Standards Authority.

Pathetic is about the only word to describe the leadership of the chiropractic industry. Dozens of writers and activists have shone a bright, ultraviolet spotlight on the seedy hotel bedsheets of the chiropractic industry and found stain after curious stain.

Back in June, the United Chiropractic Association whined about "a concerted campaign to discredit the profession", but as I pointed out at the time, the simple fact is that the chiropractic profession has discredited itself, by demonstrating that it is institutionally corrupted by quackery, that many in the profession are guilty of making unsubstantiated claims about health benefits, and that regulatory bodies have failed to maintain any sort of control over the situation.

Indeed, it's difficult to see how groups like the GCC and BCA can claim to have any credibility in chiropractic regulation when they are flirting with breaking their own codes, or engaged in misguided attempts to sue their critics. Far from protecting their interests, the interests of their members, or the interests of patients, they have engineered the worst publicity the chiropractic industry has ever seen.

Well done guys.

Update: The BCA have released a further statement, studied here http://www.layscience.net/node/694.

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Trafigura: A Carter-Ruck Fuck-Up

Martin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:05:29 +0000

Old journalists say that if you speak the word 'Trafigura' three times, a lawyer appears in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; telling you not to write about it. This prophecy has come true for the Guardian, on whom everyone's favourite media lawyers Carter-Ruck have placed an unprecedented gagging order which, outrageously, bans them from reporting parliament - a spectacularly undemocratic tactic which as the paper point out calls "into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights." The threats don't work of course; they never have. Not even in ancient times.

The glittering Temple of Artemis in what is now western Turkey was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I say was because on around July 20th, 356BCE a fame-obsessed man name Herostratus decided to burn it down, claiming credit in an attempt to have his name immortalised in history. The Ephesean authorities not only executed him, but, hoping to deny him his desired fame, banned all mention of his name. He became famous in spite of - or perhaps even because of - their actions, in the earliest recorded example of The Streisand Effect; the phenomenon by which any attempt to censor something results it it being even more talked about.

This is especially true in the Internet Age. As EFF founder John Gilmore so eloquently put it back in 1993: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

And so it was inevitable that, even as The Guardian go to court today to have the order overturned, Carter-Ruck's strategy would fail spectacularly. So spectacularly in fact that Trafigura became, briefly, the number one trending topic on Twitter; one of the most talked about stories on the planet. Rarely will you see a legal firm so deftly beating its own goal-keeper. Terribly misconceived, as lawyer and legal writer Jack of Kent would put it.

But what is this Trafigura business all about? And what have the Guardian been banned from reporting?

Trafigura are a Swiss-based multinational oil trader, and with a turnover in the region of seventy billion dollars probably one of the biggest companies you've never heard of, in spite of being accused in the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal. They are physical traders, carrying oil around the world, processing and refining it for resale at a profit.

A few years ago, they spotted an opportunity for refining sulphur-contaminated gasoline from the Mexican state refinery, and processing it at sea using a process called "caustic washing", a cheap and decidedly uncheerful process that generates waste so dangerous it is effectively banned in most parts of the world. The refined oil was sold on for several million dollars at a time, but their ships were left with a cargo of toxic waste.

E-mails obtained by the Guardian showed that in 2006, having failed to offload this waste in Europe, they took it to Ivory Coast, and disposed of it with an enthusiastic but unqualified local "man-with-a-van." It ended up in dumps around Abidjan, Ivory Coast's maritime capital.

Thousands fell ill, with many burns inflicted by caustic soda, and many deaths caused by breathing in hydrogen sulphide fumes produced by the waste. The company were forced to settle a 9-figure lawsuit on top of compensation previously given to the country's government.

Which brings us to the present. In parliament today, the a question is due to be asked by Newcastle MP Paul Farrelly, and it is this which the Guardian have been banned from reporting. As the Guardian have stated:

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The question referenced, which is published online at the Parliament website, is believed to be the following:

From Parliament.uk, “Questions for Oral or Written Answer beginning on Tuesday 13 October 2009?

(292409)
61
N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

The question makes reference to the Minton Report, The report is available online, and suggests that Trafigura knew early on that the waste they dumped in Ivory Coast was toxic, a claim which the company have denied.

Whatever Carter-Ruck's reasons for this injunction, their approach has backfired spectacularly. A reference to a question that would have been buried in the middle of the Guardian has now been spread around the world, the question has been posted on numerous websites, and the Minton report is now published online and linked to by thousands of people. And good, because the appalling behaviour of companies like Trafigura needs to be exposed, and people need to stand up to attempts to stifle democracy.

Update, 12:15pm: John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, has called for an urgent Commons debate on the matter. This has been echoed by the Lib Dem chief whip, Paul Burstow, and Nick Clegg has shown an interest in the case on Twitter. No word from anyone from Labour yet. Further reporting on this in The Guardian.

Update: 13:00pm The Guardian are claiming victory in their battle to have the order overturned, with Carter-Ruck conceding defeat. Excellent news - common sense prevails.

The Guardian was due to appear at the High Court at 2pm to challenge Carter-Ruck's behaviour, but the firm has dropped its claim that to report parliament would be in contempt of court.

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An Interview with Homeopathic Adventurer Jeremy Sherr

Martin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:33:55 +0000

Jeremy Sherr talks about his work convincing Africans that homeopathy can cure their diseases. Between the fringe meeting tonight and my imminent death from Ebola I don't have time to dissect this properly now, but I'll leave this as an open thread so you can watch the video and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Jeremy Sherr: Interview about his Repertory of Mental Qualities

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