Category: Science

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Multi Tasking

There’s a common myth that humans can multi-task and work well at all the tasks upon which they are concentrating. First, let’s discuss the term multi-task. It’s derived from computer speak then best definition is:

apparent performance by an individual of handling more than one task at the same time.

Now, I am going to mention what the science tells us about multi-tasking. When I say science in any of my communications I mean the broad consensus of the outcomes of scientific studies. I don’t mean just what a single scientist or person says, I aim to give you the CONSENSUS. Over time science has looked at things, asked questions and tried to answer them. The human endeavour has produced, over time, a consensus on how reality works. When we find errors we correct them. Science is a self correcting process. If things are wrong, science will correct them. The consensus changes with our latest understanding of what is correct. You will always be able to find a scientist who will disagree with the consensus, especially with politically charged ideas [anthropogenic global climate change], but the consensus is important as it gives us the best ideas of how things work.

OK, my research here is mostly from Wikipedia. I am perfectly aware that this can be a site that has reliability issues, but on matters of science I think it is a good start point. I would NOT look at Wikipedia to get a balanced view of politics or people, but on science issues it is very good.

There has been a reasonable amount of research into human multi-tasking and the results of these experiments indicate that although we can switch tasks quite quickly we can perform none at the best of our ability. If you multitask you are going to do all the jobs to a poorer standard than if you concentrate on a single thing at a time. Moreover, if you wish to complete all tasks to a good ability then you will get them done quicker if you concentrate on a single task at a time.

Our brain is NOT a computer and the analogy fails all the time if it is thought of as a computer. Our memory is remarkably plastic, our brain function is plastic and our concentration can only really be on one thing. If you start reading about how our brains work and the amount of information they ignore and just make up you will be very surprised.

There is no evidence that there is a gender difference in multi-tasking, so if people say women are good at it you should correct them. You should also correct people who say they can multitask. Point out the evidence says that you will perform the tasks less well than if you cover them individually. These people will try to argue from personal experience but they would be wrong to do so. We are very subject to confirmation bias and incorrect thoughts that personal experience is pretty much always subjective. The reality is often different – just remember that dancing bear in the basketball players video.

I was going to give you personal examples of failures to multitask, but my previous paragraph excludes me from doing so. In which case I will just give you some more general ideas to confirm in your heads that what I say is generally true [I’m using your preponderance to have confirmation bias as a route to accepting this communication].

Ever been driving and talking or doing something and then suddenly thought: I don’t remember the last mile of driving?

Ever phased out of a conversation because something is happening in the background?

If you talk to people who design cockpits for airplanes they will always talk about reducing the pilot work-load. This is so that the pilot can concentrate on flying the plane rather than have to worry about checking things all the time and flicking switches. If the pilot has a reduced work-load s/he will be better at doing his/her job properly and being aware of the important things.

When driving cars it is important to concentrate on the driving aspect of being on the road and not other stuff happening in the car. It is your job to make sure you are safe to you and the other road users around you. If things go wrong it is your concentration that could save you and others. The problem is that for most of the time when driving nothing goes wrong and so people concentrate minimally on driving and spend their time “multi-tasking”. This reduces their ability to pay attention to what is going on around them. Gladly it is quite rare for shit to happen but it does happen and you need your whole attention when it does. Pilots spend their entire careers practising over and over again the drills needed to save an aircraft and the lives on board so that if/when it does happen they can automatically make the right decisions. We don’t practise any of this in cars, apart from an emergency stop for our driving test, and so this causes problems when things do go wrong. People are not practised at what to do. I would argue that this is largely because it is not financially worth it to save a few lives on the roads compared to the investment that would be needed to make everyone practise car saving techniques regularly.

That last paragraph loses the plot a little. But here’s the summary and a little more exposition. People can only perform a single task to their total ability. If they attempt to multi-task then the overall effect is a significant drop in their output and understanding.

In terms of education this communication explains why children can’t do homework in front of the television. I would also argue that listening to music will hamper their understanding as they will concentrate on the music and not what they are studying, or they are doing both but to poor effect. I have some music on while writing this but I couldn’t tell you what words they are singing because I am mostly concentrating on this writing. I am using the music to block out other distractions and this may prove useful for learning if it is in an environment where there are auditory distractions. Finally, we take examinations in quiet rooms because the quiet allows us to concentrate on the task in hand.

Now, for some Gran Turismo.

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Switching

Today [Wed 20th August 2014], I am switching broadband supplier. I have been with EE for about 18 months and am moving over to Sky broadband. I think one of my first communications on here was about changing to TalkTalk from PlusNet. Now I am moving to give even more of my money to Murdoch and his family of companies, something I am rather unhappy about. If I was to total up how much I spend on TV and now broadband I would be horrified. I pay for my television because I like the following:

  • Cricket
  • American Football
  • Formula 1

It is currently 0730 and my broadband seems to be working fine on the old router. When things seem to break I will swap over to the new Sky modem router and also change the micro-filter. I will then spend some time messing around with the router settings so that my home network things work as they should. I set up static IPs for all my devices, mostly because it keeps things nice and neat and not because it is necessary.

[Follow up written Fri 22 Aug 2014]

Went to the park in the afternoon. Had already been out in the morning and broadband was still working once we got home. Once we entered the house I glanced at the EE router and it was flashing “no internet”. I changed the router and micro-filter. Plugged in and watched the lights flash. Eventually some bits were steady white. This meant I had an internet connection.

I logged into the router and changed the SSID so it would work with all my devices. Once that was done I slowly started plugging in all the network.

So, now I am on Sky broadband and phone rental. My initial thoughts are:

  • Not enough settings I can mess around with inside the router. This may, or may not, be an issue. Some of the following could cause me to change router if the issues continue.
  • The download bandwidth is poor compared to what I got with EE. It’s about half at the moment.
  • The router doesn’t like me doing some computer stuff and listening the internet radio. The radio keeps cutting out.

Apparently Sky are spending the next 10 days testing my line and working out a good connection bandwidth for me. I hope that I get more than 5Mb/s. This was my normal bandwidth before Sky. I also hope that the router can cope with all the traffic on my network. I will give it about a month before I seriously consider getting a new router and setting it up myself.

There is an issue with getting my own modem-router to use. Sky will not release my broadband login information. This means I will have to make sure I can find that information in the router before I get a new one. A quick internet search brings up software that will work to find out those details.

Let’s see what the next few weeks bring. I am hopeful.

UPDATE 25 August 2014:

The download bandwidths have increased slightly. I have reached about 5Mb/s which is on a par with my previous provider. The router seems a bit shaky when there’s a lot going on with my network. It doesn’t like uploading large files and streaming downloading at the same time. This means I will probably change my router once the bandwidth settles down. I have a plan to use my EE router. It is more customisable than the Sky router and worked pretty well, even if it was free and I don’t like the design.

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An Homoeopathic Discussion (maybe)

I saw a retweet or tweet, I’m not sure how a saw it as I don’t tend to follow anything on this subject matter. I saw this on my general twitter account, the one I use for following things I’m interested in rather than just my friends.

I re-tweeted this myself in a kinda ironic way. I also asked if there were any papers to back up the claim.

I actually got a response. Which was good. I was expecting to find that I was ignored. 

So, this was good. I went to see if I could find the science paper. It is here, at the Journal Of The Royal Society Of Medicine. I have looked at the abstract and I have the following points to make:

  • This is a meta-analysis of many previous trials.
  • This is a study of Adverse Effects of using various homoeopathic preparations (see the table).
  • The study looks at AEs of provings. A proving is not a treatment for a particular illness or problem. A proving is a way of matching a homoeopathic preparation with what symptoms it produces, thereby giving an indication of what it could be used to “treat”.
  • This study shows that the AEs of homoeopathic preparations are pretty much inline with the AEs of giving people placebo. There was one result which showed that placebo had statistically higher AEs and one where the homoeopathic thing was much worse than placebo (see this table).
  • The paper shows that the AEs from homoeopathic preparations are broadly the same as placebo (nothing). This shows that homoeopathic preparations are nothing.
  • This paper does NOT consider the efficacy of these treatments for any particular illness or problem.

My summary so far: I have been given a paper which shows that homoeopathic preparations are the same as placebo for various treatments. So I would say that homoeopathic preparations are safe to use. Whether they work or not has not been explained, yet.

Here’s what I got back.

Here is a direct link to the review of evidence published by two practising homoeopaths. I looked over this review [from under the “news” section of the website] and found that it was essentially filled with contradictions. There wasn’t much talk about methodology of the trials and which particular remedies were used. It then goes on to include a table about which remedies could be used and includes statements such as:

Homeopaths contend that respiratory allergies are best treated by professional homeopaths who prescribe individually selected homeopathic constitutional medicines according to specific and unique genetic history, personal health history, and totality of present physical and psychological symptoms being experienced.
Although homeopaths assert that this method of homeopathic prescribing provides the longest-term benefits, no research confirms this observation.

If you include a statement like the second paragraph in your writing then you absolutely should not have the first. The meaning goes thus:

“Some people think this, but there’s no evidence for it”

It’s a very similar technique used by newspapers and the Discovery channel in its “science” programming. “Some people believe Jesus was an alien, we will leave it for you to decide”. Whether some people believe something or not is irrelevant. Belief does not change what the evidence shows. The review also uses the brilliant argument that “further research” is needed. Well, if the trials you are mentioning in this review don’t give stand out evidence and they are the best you’ve got then asking for more research is a form of special pleading.
My next response was aimed at getting a link to the BEST paper that a homoeopath can produce.

Here’s the next response.

Here’s a direct link to the “best” trial. Which isn’t a trial. It’s a puff-piece from a British Homoeopathic organisation. Having had a look through this publication I have searched for the two references to allergies.

The first reference to allergies is:

Bornhöft G, Wolf U, Ammon K, et al. Effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of homeopathy in general practice – summarized health technology assessment. Forsch Komplementärmed 2006; 13 Suppl 2: 19–29.

I’m not going to read this because the title has nothing about the effectiveness of homoeopathy in treating allergies. It’s about safety. I can assure you that taking homoeopathy is the same as taking nothing and so it’s safe because it has nothing in it.

The second reference is:

Bellavite P, Ortolani R, Pontarollo F, et al. Immunology and homeopathy. 4. Clinical studies – Part 1. Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine; eCAM, 2006; 3: 293-301

Here’s a link to the paper stored at the US National Library of Medicine. From the conclusion of this meta-study:

In summary, there is an efficacy/effectiveness paradox (similar to that found in several other areas of complementary medicine research) with a weak evidence in favo[u]r of homeopathy when studies are done in randomized and double-blind conditions, but yet there is documented effectiveness in equivalence studies comparing homeopathy and conventional medicine and documented usefulness in general practice.

This says that when the “gold standard” of medical trials are applied to homoeopathy, the randomised double blind placebo controlled trial, then there is weak evidence for homoeopathy. If homoeopathy produced any outcome at all we would expect strong evidence in these trials. The paper summary does not state that “placebo-controlled” so it is possible that they were really just measuring a placebo effect.

Placebo Effect – An Aside
Very briefly I would like to point out that the placebo effect is a nill-effect. Your body will heal itself what ever you decide to take. Taking any form of medicine garners the placebo effect. so, you could take homoeopathy with no clinical effect and only the placebo effect [zero real effect] or you could take real medicine and have the bonus of the placebo [zero real effect]. Placebo – you might “feel” better, but you aren’t. Simple.

I’ve followed the reference from the paper for its conclusions in this area.

Walach H, Jonas WB, Ives J, Wijk RV, Weingartner O. Research on homeopathy: state of the art. J Altern Complement Med. 2005;11:813–29.

Here’s a quotation from the summary available here.

While there are nearly 200 reports on clinical trials, few series have been conducted for single conditions. Some of these series document clinically useful effects and differences against placebo and some series do not. Observational research into uncontrolled homeopathic practice documents consistently strong therapeutic effects and sustained satisfaction in patients.

So, this is a meta-analysis discussed in another meta-analysis and it states that virtually no trials have been done on a single condition. This is common with CAM as it means there’s more chance of finding an effect when you mine the data. Some trials are tested against placebo and some not [another CAM trick]. As is most common, when good double-blind placebo controlled trials are completed the effect of homoeopathy is reduced to virtually zero although “observational” studies [self reporting and other subjective stuff] reveals strong effects. These “observational” studies may report strong effects but it does not mean that they are real.

Another of the references in this paper links to some allergy investigations so I looked through those.

Aabel S, Laerum E, Dolvik S, Djupesland P. Is homeopathic ‘immunotherapy’ effective? A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with the isopathic remedy Betula 30c for patients with birch pollen allergy. Br Homeopath J. 2000;89:161–8.

Link here. Answer “no”. There is no difference to placebo, except for a couple of days in the middle of the trial where we have pointed out small differences because it confirms what we think. But overall there is no effect.

What we think this means is that there should be further investigation. What I think this means is that there’s no need for further investigation. It’s quite clear it doesn’t work.

Another paper about allergies:

Aabel S. No beneficial effect of isopathic prophylactic treatment for birch pollen allergy during a low-pollen season: a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of homeopathic Betula 30c. Br Homeopath J.2000;89:169–73

Link here. NO BENEFICAL EFFECT.

Another:

Aabel S. Prophylactic and acute treatment with the homeopathic medicine, Betula 30c for birch pollen allergy: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of consistency of VAS responses. Br Homeopath J.2001;90:73–8.

Link here. This trial looked for correlation between taking homoeopathy and the self-reported symptoms of people and found correlation. r=0.7 or so, which isn’t bad, but then although it shows correlation it most definitely does not give any causation. So this is a mostly useless study.

Here’s the final one I’m going to look at. I was trying to make sure that I have looked at most of the evidence before replying to Mr Homoeopathy man.

Lewith GT, Watkins AD, Hyland ME, Shaw S, Broomfield JA, Dolan G, Holgate ST. Use of ultramolecular potencies of allergen to treat asthmatic people allergic to house dust mite: double blind randomised controlled clinical trial. Br Med J. 2002;324:520

Direct link here. Here’s some words from that paper:

Results

There was no difference in most outcomes between placebo and homoeopathic immunotherapy. There was a different pattern of change over the trial for three of the diary assessments: morning peak expiratory flow (P=0.025), visual analogue scale (P=0.017), and mood (P=0.035). At week three there was significant deterioration for visual analogue scale (P=0.047) and mood (P=0.013) in the homoeopathic immunotherapy group compared with the placebo group. Any improvement in participants’ asthma was independent of belief in complementary medicine.

Conclusion

Homoeopathic immunotherapy is not effective in the treatment of patients with asthma. The different patterns of change between homoeopathic immunotherapy and placebo over the course of the study are unexplained.

So, this was a double blind randomised controlled trial and it showed no effect. time for a reply to Mr Homoeopathy. I’ve asked for best evidence but have found none of good quality so far. Even the best RCT says no effect. It’ll be time soon to call quits on this discussion.

The reply was thus:

As of yet I haven’t received a reply. When I do I shall continue this communication. I hope to get a reply with a good RCT with a positive result for homoeopathy.

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Camera Flaws

I love my new Nikon camera. It takes great photos, is easy to use, has brilliant settings and feels great in my hands. It’s a great bit of kit.

I like my iPhone camera. It’s small, pretty much always on my person and, surprisingly, takes pretty good low light photos.

The problem is that my iPhone camera is getting on a bit and has flaws in every picture it takes. Normally these can’t be seen because there’s plenty of detail in those areas. However, when there is a steady area the flaws show up a lot. Just see this photo of Whitby and spot the problem areas.

Taken with my iPhone, hence the finger marks
Whitby

I’m not sure if these can be cleaned away or if they are internal. I also can’t be bothered to find out.

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Storm

The 18th July was a good day. It was the end of my twentieth year of my teaching career. It was also the hottest day of the year. My car said 33C at one point.

That night there was also the most almighty storm. I was sitting watching television when it went darker than normal and so I went into the garden. I saw a sight I can tell you. The sun was setting in the west and it was bright in that direction but to the east and south it was dark and foreboding. There was no noise but there was a lot of lightning over towards Maidstone.

Before The Storm
Before The Storm

 

Lightning
Lightning

After a while I could hear what I thought, at first, was rain but it was a slight breeze going through the nearby trees. Then all of a sudden the wind really picked up. It became a constant driving wind and then the rain came, large spots at first and then torrential. The lightning and thunder was just spectacular.

An Evil Arrives
An Evil Arrives

These are two videos I took to show the electric storm over the Weald of Kent.


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An Atheist Answers

I recently looked at a tweet in my timeline:

I am an atheist. Let me see if I can answer these questions. I will do my best to not turn the question around but actually answer the question to the best of my ability.

Quoth I:

Some Questions Atheist Cannot Truly and Honestly REALLY Answer! Which leads to some interesting conclusions…

1.       How Did You Become an Atheist?
2.       What happens when we die?
3.       What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL!4.       Without God, where do you get your morality from?
5.       If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?
6.       If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?
7.       Where did the universe come from?
8.       What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?
9.       What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?
10.   If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

I answer these below.

How did I become an atheist?
I’m not sure I was ever that religious. I was taken to church on Christmas Eve by my mum. I did, at times, attend Sunday school and I read a cartoon version of the bible. So I was certainly exposed to church and religion as a child but I was never really indoctrinated. When the Gideons came in to school and gave me a bible I ate each page so at the age of 12 I wasn’t that fussed by god and stuff. When I joined the Air Cadets I made a pledge to God, The Queen and Country but wasn’t that fussed about the God bit. I attended church as part of the ATC and have been to funerals to say goodbye. I don’t think my default position was ever God, I was looking for evidence and never found it. [that’s not actually true, one Xmas eve midnight service I was almost called to God because the church looked beautiful but then I was very drunk and although the church was pretty that doesn’t mean God exists]. Whenever I think about religion and God I get angry at how it suckers up people who lack a certain train of thought, it preys on everyone. It is quite obvious to me that there is no rational evidence for the existence of God. If it is discovered I will happily believe. Until then, the burden is on those who believe to convince me with rational evidence.

What happens when we die?
My heart stops, my brain functions die away as the oxygen is used up and I cease to exists. After that my body will slowly disintegrate and I will become part of the Earth again.

What if I am wrong and there is a heaven and a hell?
I guess this depends on which brand of religion wins the great battle. If it’s christianity then I’m sure that God will forgive me and understand my questioning and accept me into heaven. If it’s another brand then surely the compassion preached by religion will accept my mistakes. Can I really be sent to heaven for questioning the lack of evidence for God? Perhaps the more fundamentalist Christians and Muslims will condemn me to ever lasting pain and torture.
I would like to point out that while I have answered the question my answer to the previous question pretty much rules out the existence of any afterlife. The afterlife is just a human invention to easing the pain we feel when those close to us die.

Without God where do you get your morality from?
As much as I grew up and currently live in a country with a largely Christian culture I don’t need to be told that to kill someone would be wrong. I also don’t need a book to tell me right from wrong. My personal morality is probably quite different from the overarching social morality which exists within the laws of the country in which I reside. I can reach my own conclusions about morality by thinking about it. My general rule is to not do harm to others.

If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?
No, no and the knowledge itself is it’s reward. A longer answer: Our social laws exist outside of religious instruction. As a member of society I accept the law of this land and the morality it implies. I don’t always agree with it but I accept it. There was once a time when the law was “god given” but to be honest it was just the interpretation of god’s law by a human being and so open to problems [it was once acceptable to kill witches, evidence of witches having supernatural powers is remarkably skant and so it is no longer legal to kill witches, a triumph of reason over god]. I do not want to murder or rape. I want to do no harm to others. I don’t need god to tell me that. I also reap my own rewards of doing good, I tend to be treated well by others. I don’t need the promise of life-every-after to make me do good things, I can’t imagine anything much worse than living forever.

If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?
My meaning comes from trying to learn and understand the cosmos but more so from the love I get from my children and getting a thank you from someone.

Where did the universe come from?
I don’t know and to be honest I’m not that bothered by that. I do find it amusing we seek answers to the questions WHY and HOW when sometimes you shouldn’t think in those human terms. In science terms we know that the big bang is our best explanation of the START of the universe but not the WHY and HOW. I will just say that if God did create the universe then why does that mean that I have to follow the writings of some dessert people from two thousand years ago?

What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?
What about miracles? When miracles are investigated they turn out to have very Earthly origins. Humans are brilliant at fooling themselves all the time. People can claim to have a Jesus connection or having seen saints or angels but I don’t think they fully understand the working of our minds/brain. People can claim everything they want. Until they can show demonstrable evidence I’m not interested. I feel as though I have a connection with Thor, am I ok or deluded? If I grew up in India you would be asking if I felt a connection to Shiva or other gods. It’s quite cultural.

What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?
These guys are necessary to help people learn to think rationally and see the problems of religious arguments. They pretty clearly try to explain why beliefs are wrong, they don’t try to mock those who have those beliefs.

If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?
Not every society has religion, Buddhism can be considered a religion but it is devoid of our notion of god. Some religions have many gods. Some gods have been supplanted in common culture. Which god are you talking about? Humans are story telling great apes who concocted tales of supernatural beings to explain the things to which we had no answer. Over the last 2000 years we have made leaps and bounds into understanding so much of the wonder of our world that the notion of answering Why? and How? with the answer God should be dismissed entirely.

 

I am not an eloquent writer or purveyor of ideas so my arguments may not come over as the subtlest or best worded. I have tried to answer these particular questions to the best of my ability and in a small space. I have also tried to keep to the question and not end up writing at a tangent to the subject. I have also tried hard not to question the particular beliefs that have lead to these questions.

I don’t expect people who are strongly religious to accept my answers, but I have answered these questions as honestly as I can. I am unsure what particular conclusions I am meant to find but they probably aren’t the ones the website writers wanted.

The final word comes from the Ricky Gervais character Derek:

Derek
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False Debate

Well, I have had this communication as a draft title since 8 April 2014. I thought I should write some more on sceptical thinking matters since I wrote the piece on osteopathy. I have returned to this matter today because for the last few days the virtual world has been lit up by the news that the BBC are no longer going to be allowed to have quacks and frauds on TV programmes to give the “two sides to every story”.

In a nutshell you take a generally accepted view on reality and interview an expert in that subject and then because you can’t appear to be biased you give a nutter the chance to speak about what they think. So you might have someone on the news or science programme discussing evolution and to “balance” the argument (there is no argument, evolution is pretty much done and dusted) you get some religious nut who really thinks the Earth is 6000 years old and therefore evolution can’t exist.

When a view of reality is considered fact (as far as we can accept it) you then have to understand that it takes a huge amount of evidence to over-throw those views and not just someone from a lobbying group going on about how climate change doesn’t exist.

Here’s the link to the Telegraph’s new story.

Just in case you were wondering, here’s some things that are scientifically accepted:

  • Gravity
  • Evolution by natural selection
  • Immunisations
  • Anthropogenic Climate Change

Here are some things that are considered bullshit:

  • Young Earth creationism
  • Homoeopathy
  • Chiropractic
  • Osteopathy
  • Reflexology
  • Zero loss power machines
  • Astrology
  • Crystal energy

Here are some things you are welcome to argue the toss about but there is never going to be proof of the positive:

  • Existence of god and or gods
  • Telepathic powers
  • Mediumship
  • The “soul”
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Lightning Port

I had to get my iPhone fixed recently. The charging connector would only fit correctly into the socket at very particular angles. This was a touch annoying and it also meant that I couldn’t play music in the car as I use the cable to send information to the stereo. I could connect via the headphone cable but that’s a pain and I can’t use the car stereo to control the iPhone.

Searching online it looked as though I was going to have to post the phone it off to some company and then wait for it to be returned. I was almost looking forward to spending some time without my phone. It would certainly be a bit weird. I know I rely on it a lot for weather, news, email, twitter, remote control, in fact nearly everything tech-wise. I rarely turn on my PC now because I don’t do a great deal on it. I use the PC when I have to type because I don’t like non-tactile typing on phones [such as writing this website].

For some reason I hadn’t thought of looking for shops in town that would fix my phone. I also had found some instructions online showing how to do this by myself but given the equipment I would have to buy and the time and stress of doing this alone in my dining room it just wasn’t worth it. I would have liked to have tried doing it myself but the phone is a precious thing!

I searched Google and the little map bit in the right came up with some possible places in town where I could get the phone fixed. I gave one a call and they seemed confident they could fix my port and also change the battery at the same time. I enquired about warranties and times to fix etc. I was reasonably happy to let them have my phone.

One morning I took my phone in to town and left it with Mobile Street to be fixed. Customer service was good. They seemed like bright people and confident they could fix my phone. It would take about an hour.

Later, I went to collect the phone, pay my bill which was comparable to the online services, and feel connected again. The technicians had managed to fix my phone charging port, replace the battery and also clean some chocolate that had ended up being dropped in the speaker grill.

The charging port works brilliantly. The battery seems better than previously but I haven’t really been able to test it properly as the phone has had a lot of use. The battery dies pretty quick at work because I work in a building that is almost a Faraday cage and my phone is constantly seeking a signal. At weekends the phone has been used to play games a lot and so it is being used intensively. Maybe one day I’ll try not to do much on the phone and see how long the battery lasts.

I, once again, feel connected to the world.

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Sack Race

I saw an advert last night while watching Warehouse 13. Rather, I was fast forwarding through the adverts and saw a clip of Mo Farah in a sack race. I have no idea what he was advertising I was just reminded of some cunning shenanigans of primary school sports day.

I was at primary school in the 70s and early 80s. This was in the days when:

  • There were 3 channels on television
  • TV only started at 4 in the afternoon
  • Telephones could only be used to phone people and were attached to the wall
  • My phone number was 3 digits long
  • The height of television cool was The Rockford Files
  • Wrestling wasn’t American
  • A space-hopper was the toy of choice
  • BMX was new
  • The bike of choice was the Chopper
  • You had to be home by dinner time
  • AIDS hadn’t happened
  • The people trying to kill us were from Ireland
  • I actually spent quite a lot of time scared of being killed in a nuclear war and I worried about the end of civilisation

Oops, that went quite heavy! Perhaps I’ll enlighten you another time with tales of growing up in the cold war.

Anyway, this communication is mostly about primary school. I can vaguely remember a few things from primary school. It was always sunny [confirmation bias], we would quite happily wear shorts for school, I had a giggling fit in the 3rd year after either Matthew or I farted.

Primary School sports day: I don’t remember being involved a great deal. I never really enjoyed playing or watching sports as a child and I think I probably did it because we had to. During sports lessons there was a small group of us who would wait behind in the changing rooms while the rest of the class went on to the field and then we would go to the playground and tell the teacher there that we had been sent to play basketball. I have no idea if our teacher was aware of this, if he was then he never said, perhaps it was worth it for us to not be in the football practice.

Finally we get to the point where I refer to the sack race. Every year we would have a sack race as part of the annual “embarrass those who are unfit or fat” day. The idea is that you climb into a potato sack and then jump as fast as you can along a 60 metre track. This is shown on the television advert. This is also a very inefficient way to travel, but I guess being good at it is useful if you are captured and kept in a sack.

The technique to win, which has always stuck with me, is to put your feet in the corners of the sack and then run as normally as you can. The first time I saw this I was amazed. It was a boy in the year above me called Jon Sheekey [spelling probably wrong]. He lived down the Chelmsford Road and also had part of a pencil lead stuck in his hand [the things you remember!]. Jon put his feet into the corners of the sack and then ran, he was a pretty fast runner anyway, and he won the race by about half the length of the track. Sheer genius!

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Vegetable Patch 2014

Planted the vegetables for this year. It’s a disgrace really as I don’t eat them and neither do the kids but I think it’s important for them to see stuff grow.
This year we have:
Sweetcorn
Onions
Carrots
Potatoes

The potatoes are in round pots to try and keep them contained:

20140406-154747.jpg

We have the rest planted in the ground. The silver plant container has chestnut trees we planted last autumn.

20140406-155039.jpg

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Losing Mass

I want to try and have more communications on here with an overview of my take on the evidence out there for common practices. I’ve only really done one of these before and it is a look at the evidence for osteopathy. Our greatest achievement as human beings is to be able to test ideas and then form better ideas based on the evidence. It’s quite simple really, but, at the same time it’s denied by most of us. Just look at religion, it’s a pervasive and destructive view of the world backed up by an entire lack of evidence and it has such a hold on humans, we just want to believe the easy stuff and ignore the realities of what we know.

You would think that the subject of dieting be straight forward. It’s a very basic law of physics [thermodynamics]. For a subject to use energy the energy must be there in the first place. The human body synthesises food to make energy. If there is excess energy the human body stores this as fat. It really is that simple. To make the body use fat you have to reduce your energy intake and force the body to use its stores of energy. Essentially:

Make energy out greater than energy in.

This should be the end of the communication. But there are some pervasive ideas I wish to contend. To maintain a mass loss you have to change your overall behaviour.

It’s My Genes
Yes, it is your genes and it is “programed” into you. That’s why it’s so hard to do. It’s not an excuse. No, you do not have a “hormone” problem. You have an eating problem. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get fat by eating fewer calories than you need to maintain your body. The thinner you are the less food you require to maintain your body. The fatter you are the more food you need to maintain your body. It’s not a lot though. Look up your Basel Metabolic rate, mine is below. It’s surprising how little energy we need to stay alive.

BMR

Diets DO NOT work
Temporarily restricting the foods you eat with the desire to lose mass will always result in later mass gain. You might see a mass loss and you might be really happy about it. However, ultimately you need to change your behaviours permanently. You have to develop your habits to find food that suits you and fits into a calorie controlled diet. You have to be HAPPY with what you eat and how much you exercise. This is REALLY hard to do. This is why Weightwatchers doesn’t work. You lose the mass and feel the peer pressure but ultimately you end up putting the mass back on because you haven’t changed your behaviours overall.

A lot of diets, where you count points or use replacement foods, are just calorie control mechanisms. You are too lazy to understand how to add up calories and so you rely on a crappy points system and buy into foods branded with your particular regime. You might wander the supermarket with a booklet giving you permission to buy certain foods or not. This is not a good way to live. You must change your habits entirely.

Food and kcalories
Ever wondered why in some diets you are allowed unlimited amounts of some vegetables? It’s because they contain so few calories compared to other foods that you can’t eat enough to survive or if you could you’d hate it. Here’s an idea of calorie content:

  • Water – 0
  • Pre-cut slice of bread – 100
  • Apple – 80
  • Chocolate bar 200-400
  • Café Latte – 120 or more
  • Can coke – 140
  • Glass (small) red wine – 120
  • Bottle beer – 150
  • Shot spirit – 50
  • Cookie from supermarket – 300
  • Donut – 250
  • Crisps (30g) – 180
  • Carrots (100g) – 40
  • Chicken breast – 200
  • Richmond Thick Sausage (grilled) – 130
  • Rice (100g) – 120
  • Pasta (100g uncooked) – 370
  • Potato (100g) – 80
  • Granola / muesli (100g) – 500
  • Cornflakes (100g) – 380
  • Special K – (100g) – 375
  • 12″ thin pepperoni pizza (supermarket frozen) – 900
  • Dominos lg reg crust pepperoni passion pizza – 3200

The surprises for me when I started looking into this were:

Pasta and all wheat products are really efficient in terms of food mass to calories. Other wheat products are all bad, essentially anything cooked with flour: cakes, biscuits all types of bread are all heavy with energy, flat breads are the worst, a large pitta could be about 300kcal. They are the baddies. If you want to lose mass really restrict these items. Cook with alternatives. Potato is a good this to use but you have to make sure you cook it sensibly. Roast potatoes are lovely because of their texture and because they are soaked in fat.

Beer and wine are pretty bad. They don’t have to label bottles with calorie information so it’s hard to tell. I tend to drink a spirit and diet coke. Fortunately for me I’m not that fussed about beer.

Café Latte is a surprising one here. Coffee shops tend to use semi-skimmed milk but that’s still quite calorific. Ask for a skinny-latte or better still just have an Americano with semi-skimmed milk. A teaspoon of sugar is about 30kcal. Use sweeteners to help control the overall calories. It’s very surprising how quickly you reach 2000kcal a day just with a normal routine.

Breakfast
Breakfast cereals contain CEREAL and so are high in energy content. Muesli and granola are the worst [peddled as healthy by the advertising industry] because they have loads of wheat and other cereals. Have you ever measured a “serving” of 30g of cereal. It’s depressing. The industry might think it’s a serving and call it such but it’s not what most people would call a breakfast. The little multipack boxes are 25g.

The most amusing thing about breakfasts (apart from all the sugar and chocolate that are added to encourage kids to eat a healthy cereal based breakfast) is that Special K has (effectively) the same energy content as normal cornflakes. This STILL makes me chuckle whenever I see adverts for it!

FAT
Low fat. High fat. People seemed programed to think that if they eat fat they will get fat and the way to lose mass is to cut out fat. Yes, this will help as fat in foods is energy-efficient. However, food manufacturers replace the fat with SUGAR! Start looking at the energy content of all foods as you buy them, you might be surprised. Choose foods you enjoy but have lower energy content. It really is:

Energy in, energy out.

Exercise
It hurts and requires effort. Losing mass is really hard. If you watch something like “Biggest Loser” on TV you see people losing mass really fast. Why? because they eat sensible amounts and work out like crazy in the gym. More importantly they learn to enjoy the new control they have over their lives. They like the power they feel. I hope they are able to maintain this loss once they have left the ranch. It’s very hard to keep these changes going and all too easy to think that one biscuit doesn’t matter.

Thin People
Do you know someone who

can eat what they want and not put on mass

I do. Thing is, it’s bullshit. Skinny people tend to eat less or exercise more. It’s that simple.

SuperFoods
Do not exist, it’s bullshit. Just eat a sensible varied diet.

Diet Pills
Bullshit. They may help a little bit but you’d do better to spend your money on vegetables and fruit. We love a quick fix and they DON’T exist.

The Summary
Change your entire behaviour and develop a new approach to life or forever life with a poor relationship to food.

 

More information is available everywhere on the planet. Read around the subject but don’t buy into schemes or special diets. This article on Science Based Medicine is a good start. Do not trust health GURUS, do not read diet books. It really is quite simple really:

energy in, energy out

The Gaia View
Being overweight is morally reprehensible given that we (as a species) don’t feed all our own kind. It’s a disgrace that I can enter six massive shops within five miles of my house and pretty much buy anything I want to eat while there are 870 MILLION under-nourished people living in this world. This does not count those for whom finding food is their primary concern.

 

Mass
Once again I have used the term MASS in this communication. It’s because I understand physics.

Evidence
Early on in this communication I used the phrase “my take on the evidence”. I realise after writing this that the phrase is rubbish. The evidence shows what the evidence shows. This is more my generalisation of the evidence for you, my readers. There may be some discussion in “science” about some issues and that generally occurs where the evidence seems conflicting. I am not talking about the “debate” about global climate change or evolution as these are pretty much as settled as they can be. There is no debate. Just the imaginings of the deluded few who see these things as attacks on their beliefs. Which is what they are. Your beliefs do not follow the evidence, hence the term belief and so you have to change your beliefs, which is really hard. It is much easier to deny the evidence that to change your beliefs. Anyway, this communication has been my interpretation of the evidence for you.

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The Mass I Lost

The quick way but maybe not the easiest way I could lose mass would be to change the cross component of the Higgs Field, a by-product of which would be adjusting the mass of the Higgs Boson. I failed in my quest to do this, the scientists at Cern weren’t happy with my suggestions.

Towards the end of 2011 I wanted to lose mass. I had been large (95Kg) for a while and it was time to get fitter and aim for a healthy mass. I had heartburn a lot and snored a lot with some sleep apnea rolled in for fun. My details from Wolfram|Alpha.

BMI

BMI2

BMI3

BMI4

By simply calorie watching and keeping to a maximum of 1800kCal a day I lost weight. Probably at about half a kilogram a week. The sums are quite simple! A kilogram of body fat contains around 7000kCal. So, if you reduce your calorie intake by 500kCal a day, you will lose around 3500kCal a week of body fat. If you don’t believe my fat energy content then just look up the calorific content of butter or margarine. They are both pretty similar to body fat.

Within 3 or 4 months I had reached a natural limit of mass loss by diet alone and so decided to up the game with some serious exercise. I started small. Running and jogging a mile. Eventually I built this up to 4 or 5 mile runs over about a period of six months. I lost the rest of the mass and settled at about 80Kg. I tried to do about three runs a week at roughly 500kCal each. That means about 3 miles per run. You could walk this distance and achieve roughly the same effect, it just takes longer to complete the 3 miles.

BMI5

BMI6

BMI7

My heartburn has vanished. I no longer snore. I don’t have sleep apnea anymore. I have a resting heart rate of around 50 bpm and I can run for 10k without feeling dead. As long as I run I get to enjoy some bad foods now and then. I feel pretty great.

There are days I hate this. There are days I really don’t want to run or I find it particularly unenjoyable. You have to get over these. It’s so easy to slip back into old habits.

I know the BMI isn’t perfect as a measurement but it’s a good guide to use.

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Logging My Life

I’ve had a request [!] to cover some subject matter on this website! What a wonderful thing to happen. I’m quite excited to use this opportunity to pass on information that might influence others. Mind you, I guess the point of some of my communications is to persuade readers to think and to challenge their current thought patterns.

Since December 2011 I have been recording everything I eat. I did this originally to help me lose mass. I do it now to maintain my mass. I think I have a curious relationship with food, although it’s probably not much different to anyone else’s. Over the last twenty five years or so my mass has varied from around 80Kg to 95Kg. Long gone are the active days of my teenage years where I didn’t have to think about these things. I can still remember going gliding with the Air Cadets at RAF Wethersfield and being asked my mass in pounds, it was 140lbs. I don’t think I could physically get that low any more.

During the first half of 2012 I actively tried to lose mass. The process of this will be covered in another communication. To help this process of losing body mass I logged my food using an iPhone app. This is good for a few reasons. Firstly, you get to learn and understand the calorific values of the foods you eat. Secondly, you realise that it’s extremely easy to over eat. Lastly, you start to see the body as an incredibly efficient food-to-energy machine. It shouldn’t really be a surprise but the amount of food needed to sustain the body is not really that much in comparison to the amount we expect to eat. There is a big social problem in that large portions are acceptable and that people can’t add up. When you learn that walking or running 1600 metres will burn around 160 calories [just under two slices of plain bread] you realise that it’s a lot of effort to lose half a kilo of fat!

I use MyFitnessPal to record my food intake and, early on during my mass loss programme, I used this to record my activity and exercise too.

myfitnesspal

Food can be scanned and the nutritional details are entered automatically. It’s a very handy way to keep track of what you eat. Sometimes you have to guess, especially if you eat out, but over time you get a good idea of how much energy is in the food. I will be a bit more specific in another communication.

To track my exercise I use an app called MapMyRun. It tracks the route that I run and then also converts the information it receives to calculate my energy burn. This app can be used for cycling, walking or logging any activity.

mapmyrun

I have spent quite a while looking up energy burn and calibrating the data I get from the app. I have looked at academic papers about energy use and also looked at information from Australian sports institutes. In very basic terms, if you walk or run 10m you use 1 kCal. I think the apps I use are accurate to a sensible level of accuracy. If there are errors it could be within a 200kCal range and it wouldn’t really affect the outcome. Just by being more aware of energy intake and output you learn to self regulate a bit.

I like the apps I used to log my life as they synchronise with my Up software. This means that all the information I enter cross-pollinates and everything adds up nicely! It saves having to enter lots of data into different apps.

apps which sync

Yes, I do know that I used the term MASS throughout this communication and I am aware that I was actually referring to what most people would call WEIGHT. The problem is that I’ve not been measuring my weight for a few years, if I had the units would be in Newtons. If I use the units of KG then I must be measuring MASS. If you don’t like the use of this term then I suggest you don’t read any more of these communications.

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Up – One Year

I have been a member of the Up community for a year. I first found out about the Up band on the flight to Washington DC and then bought one in the Apple Store in Georgetown.

The Up band measures and stores information about my movement. That is pretty much it. What this allows me to do is track my steps each day and also my sleep patterns. The Up app on my iPhone also connects to my food intake app and the app I use to track my runs and other forms of exercise.

In the year that I have owned an Up band I have had a number of replacements. I think I have had to get three replacements. I’m not sure if there is a build issue but something seems to go wrong. While I still have a band that is in the guarantee period I will continue to use an Up band. Eventually, the company will stop replacing them for me and I’ll probably jump ship to another fitness tracker.

Over the last year and for the periods that data is available [there’s about two months for which I do not have any data as I had no band] I have:

  • Eaten an average of 2492 kCal per day
  • Burnt an average of 2502 kCal per day
  • Made an average of 9064 steps per day
  • Walked an average of 7803 metres per day
  • Average sleep per night is 7.04 hours

Up-one-year

I have just noticed that n=308, so two months without the band is about right.

My Up band, large, onyx.

20140402-115539.jpg

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British Summer Time

I don’t like change. I particularly don’t like changing the clocks. Some of my distaste for this biannual event is that it means I have to walk around my house adjusting various time displays and I also have to find the instructions for the cooker because I can never remember how to change the time on it. Why does my cooker need a clock? I also don’t like the day being asymmetric for around six months of the year. Finally, more daylight in the evening means more glare on my television [I need to buy some curtains but haven’t for ten years and so the likelihood of me getting around to it is quite low].

For around six months of the year we change the clocks so that we are in British Summer Time, what our American cousins would call Daylight Saving. I find this bizarre. I like how our clocks are aligned during the winter. When it is midday the sun is at its highest point in the sky and also due south. This makes an amazing amount of sense. I am aware that local midday is different across the UK and it depends how far east or west you are from the meridian but as a general measure it works well.

What I don’t like is the notion of midday during British Summer Time. The sun is not at its highest in the sky and won’t be for about an hour (depending on where you are). There is apparently an economic argument for having more daylight time later in the evening but I have yet to be convinced that it makes any difference. The “farmers need the light” argument is quite pathetic. Farmers would just get up earlier. I am not aware of any good reason to perform this ritual mess up of my routines.

Let me explain a couple of things.

noon defn

The definition of noon is, first and formost, MIDDAY.

midday defn

The definition of midday is the MIDDLE of the day. If our clocks say 12pm [12:00] then this should be the middle part of the day. If the sun is yet to rise to its highest point and we have more daylight hours after 12:00 than we had before the 12:00 BST is NOT midday. AM and PM both contain M which stands for meridian.

meridian defn

So, meridian refers to midday which refers to the middle of the day which, to me, is quite clearly the middle of the day when the sun is at its highest.

I could almost accept us changing to be in line with other European countries as we trade and work closely with them but unfortunately they are also wrong. France is either GMT+1 or GMT+2 and given that Paris lies on the meridian they clearly have no idea about how time works.

By the way, the National Physical Laboratory recommends the use of the 24 hour clock. I think I tend to use the 24 hour clock on this site more than I do am and pm. Apparently there is no convention to indicate whether midday is am or pm. I had thought that this was solved and that midday is pm but amazingly not.

12am 12pm

If the NPL are telling us something we should listen.

I am quite aware that my bad feeling towards BST is mostly to do with my interpretation of the definitions and that other people might decide to define midday as the point when our clocks are halfway through the day rather than use the sun to define the halves of the day.

Just so you are aware the international time standard is UTC.

Universal Coordinated Time

Although UTC is synonymous with GMT and for all intents and purposes the same it is no longer a recognised standard. UTC is maintained by the scientific community and GMT is not. I used UTC as the time indicator on my tattoos.

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House Fairy

I stayed at a friend’s house last night. He’s a good friend so I shan’t name him. If you know me well, you’ll know who I’m talking about.
I get to sleep on the divan in the office. I don’t have a problem with that per se. My problem is with the state of wiring in his office. This picture shows the state of wires and plugs in one corner under the desk!

20140323-065132.jpg

This particular set up is somewhat distressing. Not really because of the fire risk but more because it needs a good tidy up. The total current drain is quite small and so the fire risk is pretty minimal. But, look at the state of it! Quite distressing!
I might start a service called “House Fairies”. Give me your address and at sometime while you are out I’ll come and magically wire up your appliances nice and neatly with proper colours and clips, making it look lovely and you’ll know where things are. Another part of this service would be to adjust any light switches which work the wrong way around. The house where this photo was taken also has light switch where you have to press the top bit to turn the light on. This is wrong. I can adjust that.

The light switch when the light is off (flash photo):

20140323-070750.jpg

The light switch when the light is on:

20140323-070931.jpg

I should have a website where you sign up and list the “House Fairy” jobs you want done. I will then come around at some random time and, Hey Presto! You’ll come home one day and everything in your house will work properly!

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Pigeon Check Update

The “pigeon-check” is not longer necessary. See this communication. My place of work (see the EXIF data in the photo) has installed pigeon-spikes along the top of the building and so the level of poop has decreased to zero. Win!

20140317-195012.jpg

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NAS Drive Failure

On a list of things you don’t want to read [first world problems] is:

Drive 2 on this device is at risk of failing, please replace.

I guess there are worse things that this such as:

Drive 2 has failed.

Both drives have failed.

But still, it was enough to make me worry a little. My data on the NAS is organised in Raid 1 configuration so that both drives are exact copies, just in case one of them fails.

I spent some time investigating new NAS drives and making sure that I have space to expand but I think that will have to wait a few years. I would like a three or four bay device with two 2TB drives to start. I would only use Raid 1, but this configuration could potentially give me 8TB of data storage. I currently have used about 0.5 TB on the current NAS and that is after two years of ownership so I shouldn’t worry too much about needing the space until my sons get older.

I ordered a Western Digital 1TB Red drive as the WD website said that it was a suitable HDD for the ix2 series of NAS. I had planned for the whole operation to take an hour but in reality it took about 10 minutes and that was with me taking my time. Really impressed with how simple it was to replaced the drive.

Here’s the NAS.

Iomega IX2-200 CLoud Edition

After removing the two screws on the base of the device I removed the old disk 2.

Sliding out old drive

Unscrewed the old HDD from the plastic casing.

Old HDD in enclosure

Screwed the new HDD into the casing.

WD Red

Slid the new HDD and casing into the NAS enclosure and replaced the screws in the bottom of the device.

WD into NAS

Placed NAS back in its place in the “tech corner” of the house and turned it on.

After a lot of drive reading and writing it was ready for log in access and the control panel said it was rebuilding data protection [most instructions I read had said I would have to authorise this action]. I will amend this once the data rebuild is complete.

This whole process was pretty simple and I’m impressed with Iomega for the drive and am feeling quite smug at the moment.

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Chimney Balloon

I’ve lived in my house for nearly ten years. It’s an old house (built 1880) and a Victorian terrace. The back of the house overlooks fields and woods all the way to the paper mill at Aylesford. There’s always steam (or smoke – less pleasant but it’s probably steam because a lot of water is used in paper stuff) of some kind spewing from the mill.

Mostly the wind comes from the south to west in the South East of Great Britain. This means it travels freely over the open area at the back of my house and then strikes my house nearly front on.

map fields

In the map the long thin blue bit is a river (tidal section of the river) and the big blue bits are quarry lakes.

The wind hits the back of the house. This causes high local pressure while over the house the wind continues moving creating a low local pressure (Bernoulli Principle). Most of the gaps in my house are at the back of the building. This means that the wind flows through these gaps and exits through the largest hole in the house which is the chimney, which has a lower pressure at the top!

wind diagram

This situation caused draughts and noise even when there was a slight wind.

One day I got “Google happy” and just searched for a chimney balloon. I don’t know what prompted me to search for this, I may have searched for “chimney draughts” first and then found the chimney balloon. Who know? Google and Chrome but I’m not going to spend my time looking through my history.

I ordered a chimney balloon from Amazon. It’s a plastic bag that I inflated in the chimney pipe. It blocks the chimney. It stops the draughts. Simple. I’m impressed with what a simple solution it is.

The one draw back is that it has also made the dining room really quiet. I can no longer hear the outside world. This is very strange but something I’ll get used to. There were some serious winds recently and I only knew about them when I went into the bathroom (it is at the back of the house), the dining room was that quiet. Also, my feet no longer get really cold when I sit in the dining room as there is no draught (or rather minimal draught now).

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Osteopathy

Introduction

Osteopathy is a treatment that is prevalent in the area I live. There are 60 results of osteopaths within 10 miles of Maidstone for comparison there are 46 osteopaths (from Yell.com) within 10 miles of Bristol. Close to Maidstone is the European School of Osteopathy. There are many osteopaths working in Kent and many people I know see osteopaths and probably pay reasonable sums of money for the sessions.

What I aim to do here is look into the history of osteopathy, what osteopathy is and the medical efficacy of osteopathy to treat various conditions. Although I will admit up front  to being very sceptical of osteopathy as a treatment and I would describe myself as a free thinking, religious free, sceptic however, I will try to give a balanced view. If you think I have made errors of fact then please let me know. If I have written opinions with which you disagree then keep it to yourself.

The History

Osteopathy started in 1874 in the USA. A school was started in 1892 and the term osteopathy was coined. Andrew Still, the founder, was dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional medicine and chose to award DO or Doctor of Osteopathy degrees. Osteopathy as a practice spread and is commonly practised around the world. [1]

What Is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a form of healthcare that emphasises the interrelationship between structure and function of the body. Osteopaths claim to facilitate the healing process by the practice of manual and manipulative therapy. [2]

Classical Osteopathy

This is a traditional form of osteopathy where practitioners claim to be able to heal infections and diseases with manipulations which unblock the body’s mechanisms for transferring fluids. [3]
The John Wernham College of Classical Osteopathy is an example of classical osteopathy practised in Maidstone. They have made claims in the past of being able to treat diseases with osteopathy. They were told to change their claims by the ASA who found there was no good evidence to support their claims. I know about this because I challenged their claims through the ASA. [4]

Modern Osteopathy

Is a mixture of treatments applied by people trained in the physiology of humans. This is what the European School of Osteopathy says:

The ESO has always had a broad approach to osteopathic education, covering a wide range of osteopathic modalities and concepts at undergraduate level.  This includes a full range of structural osteopathic techniques, General Osteopathic Treatment (GOT), studies in the cranial field (Involuntary Mechanism studies), Balanced Ligamentous Tension techniques, Muscle Energy Technique (MET) and Visceral osteopathy.  Students receive a good grounding in obstetric and paediatric osteopathic care and are able to see a wide range of patients within the teaching clinic, including some time spent in the specialist Maternity and Children’s clinics. [5]

Efficacy

It is vitally important to know whether a treatment works or not before it is endorsed. I will briefly cover medical trials and how we know what works and what doesn’t.

The best form of medical evidence is a double-blind randomised controlled study. The worst form of medical evidence is a collection of anecdotes. Reading and interpreting medical trials is pretty much an academic discipline in itself. I shall do my best here to explain. [6]

Medical trials need to be randomised and controlled. There should be a control group that receives either no treatment, the next best treatment or sham treatment. The participants should be divided between groups randomly. The participants should not know which group they are in. The people administering the treatment should not know which group they are in. All scientific evidence shows that knowledge of what you receive increases your chance of it “working”.

The placebo effect is mentioned a lot in medical trials. The placebo effect is a misnomer. The placebo is no effect at all. In trials where subjective reporting is used people will report feeling better even if they have had no effective treatment. In trails where objective outcomes are measured there is no effect when there is no effective treatment. For example, in an asthma trial, people who were in the placebo wing reported that they felt more able to breathe but when this ability was measured it was no different. The placebo is just the fact that humans will feel better but that they are not actually any better. This is why anecdote is useless. [7]

Acupuncture often shows to be as effective as sham acupuncture in studies. In essence “real” acupuncture is as effective as “sham” acupuncture. This is the placebo effect. Objective measurements show no difference between the two groups.

For evidence of efficacy each condition being treated must have its own trial. It is not acceptable for a therapy to claim that just because it works for lower back pain it is also effective at treating upper back pain. We would not accept a drug that is good for healing tonsillitis to also be able to heal athletes’ foot. It would need to be tested in both circumstances.

Good scientific evidence for a medical treatment can be considered to be double-blind placebo controlled randomised trials with a good structure and well defined aims. From this “gold standard” the quality of the evidence deteriorates as more freedom is introduced into the trial. Scientists always qualify what they say with the terms good/excellent/limited/variable evidence for something. That is because scientists do not work in absolutes. Even with something as obvious as evolution or gravity scientists will talk about the overwhelming evidence and not that it “is”.

So I shall look for good scientific evidence that osteopathy works in a variety of medical problems. My sources for this will be The Cochrane Collaboration, the NHS and NICE (The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). PubMed has a wealth of papers published about osteopathy but there is too much for me to read through, especially when looking at each initial problem that is being treated. If you look through these yourself please make sure that you understand statistics, causation and the flaws in designing medical trials.

The National Health Service and NICE

The NHS Choices website explains that there is good evidence that osteopathy is an effective treatment for lower back pain and there is limited evidence that it may be effective for other neck, shoulder or lower limb pain [my emphasis]. There is no good evidence that it is effective for any other form of condition. [8]

The NHS Choices website then explains that osteopathy is considered an “alternative” or “complimentary” therapy, i.e. not medicine and therefore doesn’t work.

Osteopaths may use some conventional medical techniques, but the use of osteopathy is not always based on science.

This means that the good bits are what we would call medicine and the rest is not.

Cochrane Collaboration

This is an organisation that reviews all the medical trials available to come to valid conclusions for the treatments being suggested.

Osteopathy and pain control during childbirth:

We found six studies, with data available from five trials on 326 women, looking at the use of massage in labour for managing pain. There were no studies on any of the other manual healing methods. The six studies were of reasonable quality but more participants are needed to provide robust information. We found that women who used massage felt less pain during labour when compared with women given usual care during first stage. However, more research is needed. [9]

Let me interpret this for you. Women who had massage and other nice things done to them during childbirth “felt” less pain. This is a subjective measurement and means nothing in terms of actual reductions. The last sentence asking for more research essentially says that although this is interesting there aren’t enough data  for the results to be conclusive.

Osteopathy, manipulations and period pains:

The review of trials found no evidence that spinal manipulation relieves dysmenorrhoea. [10]

‘nuff said.

Osteopathy and infant colic:

Although five of the six trials suggested crying is reduced by treatment with manipulative therapies, there was no evidence of manipulative therapies improving infant colic when we only included studies where the parents did not know if their child had received the treatment or not. [11]

So, when the patients were blinded there was no improvement. Often with “alternative” therapies the better designed the trial the effectiveness disappears.

These trials were looking at things that are more likely to be practised by a traditional osteopath. Curing infant problems and pain not related to the back. In essence, from the information so far osteopathy is only effective for lower back pain and that may be because they use more medical techniques than osteopathic treatments.

In America

In the USA Doctors of Osteopathy are recognised. But as explained by Marc Crislip most leave behind their osteopathic training when they graduate, turning into proper doctors. [12]

It Costs Money

In the UK people generally have to pay to visit an osteopath. It is well understood that paying more for a product invests that person into believing it works. Just look at audio cables. You can pay a fortune for audio cables and when blinded random trials are conducted people are unable to tell the difference between expensive cables and cheap cables. If osteopathy costs a lot of money then you are invested to believe it works and so will feel better. This does not mean that you are any better.

My Conclusion

Osteopathy can be effective for lower back pain.

However, osteopathy cannot be taken seriously. There is scant evidence that it can treat or is effective at treating many of the conditions that it claims. It started as quackery in a time when our medical knowledge was poor. As our medical knowledge has increased it has tried to change to meet new standards and treatments. However, it fails to provide GOOD SCIENTIFIC evidence that it works. Practitioners of osteopathy are mostly either doing regular physiotherapy and modern medicine and so shouldn’t be called osteopaths or they are practitioners of something that just plain doesn’t work.

You can tell it doesn’t work by the company it keeps in shops and practices. As explained in this communication if somewhere offers homoeopathy and something else consider it a red flag to be wary of what they do.

As Tim Minchin says:

“By definition”, I begin “Alternative Medicine”, I continue “Has either not been proved to work, Or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call “alternative medicine” That’s been proved to work?

Medicine.”

As an aside I personally find it appalling that you can gain a SCIENCE degree from studying this stuff at the European School of Osteopathy. There isn’t really any science content in the “science” course. It’s a shame that the University of Greenwich validates this. [13]

References

1. Wikipedia page on osteopathy. Link
2. Glossary of Osteopathic Terms. Link
3. Wikipedia page, section “Scope of manual therapies”. Link
4. Advertising Standards Authority ruling on Wernham clinic. Link
5. European School of Osteopathy pages. Link
6. Wikipedia page on clinical trials. Link
7. A description of the placebo effect. Link
8. NHS Choices. Link
9. Cochrane Collaboration. Pain control in childbirth. Link
10. Cochrane Collaboration. Controlling painful periods. Link
11. Cochrane Collaboration. Manipulative therapies for infantile colic. Link
12. Science Based Medicine – Marc Crislip. Link
13. ESO Courses validated by the University of Greenwich. Link

This is my first proper article on this website and it’s taken six hundred communications before I got there. I’ve tried to include some links to specific claims and I will add some when I find the sources. Most of my knowledge on this matter comes from years of reading Scientific American and listening to some excellent podcasts on the matter “Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe” and “Skeptics With A K”. I do not claim to be an expert. I do not claim to understand everything but my understanding is that most of what an osteopath practises is not science and has little evidence to support it. I have written this in good faith.

If you have something factual you would like to correct then email me (ianparish@gmail.com) and I will do my best to correct what is factually incorrect. If you really want to impress me then send me the links or papers of good medical trials for osteopathy and other conditions to show it is effective. I will gladly change my mind if the evidence shows I am wrong. That’s what being a rational thinker is about. Accepting good evidence and changing my views if needed.

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