Tag: science?

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Bioresonance

People like simple answers to complicated questions, it’s part of how our brains work. We would much rather be told one thing rather than having to learn about a multitude of different things. For example, as I’ve been reading in The Angry Chef book recently, a diet where you cut out carbohydrates is a simple answer to a simple question. The real answer of eat everything in moderation and exercise is harder and less simple. A simple answer, even when it is wrong, will stick in your heads more than any nuanced argument which takes everything into account. It’s a bit like the world at the moment. Economies around the globe are crashing due to lockdowns and so governments are trying to open up the economies again. This means encouraging people to do normal things, go shopping, eat out, go away on holiday, buy houses etc. But, governments also know that this will lead to an increase in the infection rate and people’s deaths. Every government is now weighing up the balance between deaths and poverty due to economic collapse and deaths from this disease. The infection factors are going to be quite complex but the UK government keeps coming out with short phrases designed to confuse, sorry help, us remember what to do. There are no guarantees that will stop us getting ill. All we can do is minimise risk. Wash your hands, wear a face mask so you don’t infect others, keep your distance etc. Because humans like simple answers products which make stupid claims exist and make money for their lying owners.

So we come on to Bioresonance Therapy. Or rather the claims made by a UK website about the product that they sell. I’ve printed out their homepage and have it here, just in case one day the website goes away and I can’t get links to their pages and comments. I can’t remember how I found this page, this has been a draft on this site for about two years and the website still exists so let’s go through the text shall we? I shall be referring to SCAM quite a bit and you should know this stands for Supplements, Complimentary and Alternative Medicines [thanks to Dr M Crislip for the term].

“Bioresonance” – a term that sounds sciency and you know the word bio and you know the word resonance. You probably have some vague recollection of these terms in school or people using them to describe proper science effects.

“Therapy” – SCAM artists love the word therapy because it sounds like something real is happening and they won’t use the term medicine because it’s regulated and if you claim to have a medical benefit then you have to prove it properly.

“Energy medicine” – what? This is a nonsensical term which isn’t protected by law and can be applied to anything. It’s also vague enough that people will interpret it and use their own definitions. If you want energy then you eat food. There isn’t any other way you can get energy into your body. Unless you are thinking radiation energy which is likely dangerous.

The first paragraph on this page says that you should have normal medicine as well as getting treated by this thing, whatever it is. Apparently bioresonance has benefits and the device has been used since the 1970s. I do think that if it worked then it would be available in doctor surgeries and maybe even in hospitals but I must be mistaken in thinking that those places want the best for their patients. We are then told that this device was featured in a documentary with Ty Bolinger. The documentary was called “The Truth about Cancer” – I can assure you without even looking that this is a dangerous claim to make and the documentary probably goes on to explain that you can help improve your condition with lots of bullshit stuff that doesn’t work. I’ve looked at two things; their website and their twitter feed. The website is horrific and I didn’t even scroll all the way down to bottom of the home page. Search for Ty Bolinger for yourself and see. The following tweet is on the timeline and if you want to take medical advice from a company that doesn’t understand medicine then it’s up to you I guess. They are killing people. This endorsement isn’t the best, I’m surprised that Bioresonance mention it on their homepage.

Then there is a claim that 18,000 BICOM devices have been sold worldwide. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t really seem that many for a product that is meant to work. Unless they are super expensive. This is an appeal to popularity. The idea that lots of people use these things and so it must work or be useful. This is bullshit. Here are some handy little reminders for you: some people are stupid, Mr Blobby was a Christmas number one – never trust popularity.

And we are on to paragraph two. There’s some general stuff about bad things like disease and parasites. Apparently parasites are a large cause of many conditions that people suffer. I honestly wasn’t aware of this. It’s bullshit. But the words PATHOGEN and PARASITE sound super scary don’t they. The BICOM device uses “energy medicine”, literally not a thing, to eliminate these invaders [another scary word] without the use of drugs – now I’m curious what other claims they are going to make. Apparently these devices have been around for over 35 years [appeal to longevity] and so they must work. The devices are made by Regumed???? I think this is a contraction of Regulated and Medicine but I prefer to pronounce it to rhyme with legume.

Paragraph Three doesn’t really say much. It just says that we will learn more by looking through the website. And that is what we shall do. Next is the video which I broke down in March.

I just looked at the product page for this website and I am in shock. A quick glance down the rest of this front page shows me that all the language is vague. There are no concrete claims within and saying things like “help the body help itself” is literally meaningless. It sounds as though it’s a good thing but it doesn’t mean anything from a marketing point of view and so we could say that eating an apple with help the body help itself. Just breathing does the same thing. The page goes on to say that we feel run-down or tired or suffer from electrosmog [whatever the fuck that is]. Everyone feels like that sometimes and it’s a natural part of life. The causes are going to be very vague and there’s not a lot we can do about it. I am actually overcome but the sheer amount of crap on the homepage of this product. When you have a homoeopath inventing new stuff you just know it’s bullshit. I honestly feel sorry for people who read this page and think that they will benefit from the information within. This is a SCAM product.

Now, here’s the thing that shocked me. The “product” page. There are four “popular” products. I’ll list the first and the last.

What the fucking fuck. This is a lot of money for something that doesn’t work. No wonder they’ve only sold 18,000 around the world. I guess you also get training in the bullshit. You get to understand how it all works and then I suppose you have to charge the people you want to treat. It’s going to take quite a bit to make this money back. If you are willing to spend this much money on a device that doesn’t work then you are going to be bought into everything it has to offer. I like to think my home cinema kit sounds nice, but I don’t really know, I just know how much I spent on the amplifier and so I do my best to think it sounds better than it possibly is. I also do the same with wine. If I spend a lot of money on a bottle of wine then I believe it tastes better – it doesn’t, there are plenty of studies that show that wine tasting is bullshit – it’s best to buy a cheap bottle and get drunk.

For £15,000 you can have a B32 Bicom Prevent! The very first sentence on this product description says it uses the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine. You can see what I know about TCM in this communication. You don’t need to read any further, you already know that this is a crock of shit.

As a device it looks nice but I can assure you it doesn’t do anything real. For GBP27,000 you can have the following device of gizmos that doesn’t actually do anything for your “patients” or for you and is based purely on un-scientific principles. I give you the “BB324/B32 BICOM optima® Therapy Device with EAP Test Part”. I am seriously in shock at how much this stuff costs and I worry about all those people who have bought into this crap.

Click on the image to see what conditions they aim to improve. Number 469 is “nose bleed”. FFS. This device can help you if you have a nose bleed. I think I need to get out and go for a run. There’s only so much of this horrifying quackery I can take. I am terrified that people make money out of this. I can’t stand the idea of people using this device to take advantage of the ill. The problems with this particular website are legion. I’ve just thought about sending information about the claims on this website to the Advertising Standards Authority but using a Whois service this website is run in Germany and so the ASA have no power over this site. Now, they do have a UK address so I might see what recourse I have to get them to prove any claims. I have to look for specific claims on the site. These might not exist. There are certain phrases that don’t really mean much and so a carefully written website can imply a lot of things but be legally acceptable. I’ll look into this later. I need a break from this SCAM. I had hoped to discuss more of their claims and pages I am honestly still in shock at the cost of the devices.

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Will Not Do What It Says On The Tin

Since the end of May I have been trying to lose weight [more formally – mass] and I’ve been doing this using methods which have worked in the past. Namely, logging all my food and doing plenty of exercise. It’s the only way I am able to do this, by keeping to a decent calorie limit and burning the fat by exercise. Reducing my food intake will only lose so much weight. I think the body gets used to the reduction in food and so initially there will be mass-loss but over time this effect dies down and I’m in the stage now where the reduced calorific diet maintains me but exercise is the only way to burn the fat. I’m doing my best to do this in a healthy way. I’m eating a decent mixture of foods, some fruit and lots of fibre. I understand that if there’s one thing everyone could eat more of to improve health it’s fibre. Yes, I get bored and some days I hate it. Sometimes I cheat and order pizza or kebab but I accept that and know that I can get going again and be on my way to my goal in a week or so.

I have met a friend and eaten out, I have also been quite drunk and done all the normal things I would do in my life. The main thing is to try and keep going. Losing mass is a mental battle and not really a physical one. I know. When I’m feeling unhealthy I try to feel better by eating, which makes me feel more unhealthy and so on. If losing weight was easy then everyone would be doing it all the time. There wouldn’t be any obesity. But, to coin the Ben Goldacre phrase, I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that. I’ve been lucky that the lockdown has happened and by the end of May I had reached a rock-bottom level and was willing to try and change my habits. I have no idea how long this will last. It’s a mental health issue more than anything else. I have lost 7KG since the beginning of June. So, roughly a stone for you Daily Mail readers. It’s taken three months to lose that. Three months of mostly boring food and being good, three months of plenty of exercise, three months of not having to be at work. I don’t know where the motivation came from. I don’t know how to keep it.

BMI End May
BMI End May

So, at the end of May the NHS was encouraging me to lose 4.6kg. This isn’t something I looked at then, I’ve just used the site now as I wanted to know what my BMI is. I do understand that BMI is an imperfect measure but it’ll will do. Now, at the end of August, the NHS is still wanting me to lose 4kg, even though I have lost the original 4kg. Maybe they are using sensible targets which are achievable for people?

BMI End August
BMI End August

So, the purpose of this communication isn’t to brag or go on about mass-loss. It’s more about this next level of bullshit I’m about to discuss. I’ve been using MyFitnessPal to record my food intake and keep my food energy to a sensible level over the last three months. Now, I don’t pay for the extra version of this app, I use it for what I want and I don’t need other features, much like the Strava app that I use to record my exercise. The MFP app has adverts on the “front page” and also what it calls blog posts. These are mostly easy to ignore but every now and then something will catch my eye and I can’t help giving it a read. The advert that prompted this communication was about some form of bullshit but my interest was piqued.

I have been and looked at this website. The above image is just that, an image and so if you want to watch the video you’ll have to go to the website. As you can see I’ve watched 55 seconds and I nearly punched the monitor when he said that his name was Eli rather than pronouncing it Eeeli. So, there are red flags without having to go too far into this bullshit.

Red Flag – Qi. Sometimes called Chi. This is a massive red flag. Qi is meant to be the flow of energy around the human body. When this energy flow gets interrupted you will get ill. To know where this energy flows is important and balancing your energy will mean making sure that your energy flows correctly around your body. The important thing here is that Qi doesn’t exist. There aren’t secret channels of energy flowing around your body. This is an entirely made up mode of biology from a time when the human body was a mystery. If you have any form of literature or people talking about Qi the safest thing to do is to throw it in the bin or walk away like Homer hiding in a hedge.

Red Flag – Immune Health. You can’t boost your immune system and generally it works without any external interference. If your immune system doesn’t work properly then it is quite likely you will already be in hospital and undergoing amazing treatment from proper sciency stuff.

Red Flag – protect against COVID. Fuck this site for using this to make you think you can protect yourself using “ancient” wisdom. The best thing you can do is wash your hands, wear a mask and stay away from other people.

Red Flag – supercharge your immune system. Literally not a thing you can do. We don’t have any real control over our immune system. It is just there. This is a wank statement.

Red Flag – ancient wisdom. This is the best of all. Ancient Wisdom is not a thing at all. Things were not better in the old days. People died all the time of curable diseases. Here’s some things we’ve done recently; germ theory is about 150 years old, immunisation is about the same age, antibiotics are about 80 years old, small pox is eliminated, leprosy can be cured. Science bitches – it works.

Slightly further down the page I can sign up for acupressure hints and tips. Acupuncture is based on the understanding that sticking needles into your skin and help unblock the flow of Qi and help you recover to full health again. What mechanism does this use? It doesn’t. Acupuncture doesn’t work. It doesn’t do what it says.

Having dismissed this site as utter bullshit in the first few lines I then went to the home page to see what claims there are. I was interested to see what else this person thinks they can help you with. I wanted to know how much money it costs.

There is a claim that a newspaper declared Eli the Qi Gong teacher of the year. I mean, sure. If you are the best of the nothing that you teach then I am not impressed. Also, you’ve been named by a local newspaper. I don’t think that counts as anything special.

Through my online Qi Breaks™ Online platform you’ll learn the secrets to self-healing, pain management, stress reduction and higher energy levels with simple, easy-to-follow practices designed for everyone regardless of experience and age.

https://www.qiwitheli.com/

This on the site made me curious. I think much of the site does. There is so much bullshit here that I keep being reminded of the Apocalypse Now! quotation:

Willard: Oh man, the shit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it.

I clicked through to the Qi Breaks minisite and was confronted with a lot of stuff about ancient wisdom. I will tell you that some people in the ancient times were clever but then again, some people were stupid. There isn’t really a thing of ancient wisdom. It’s just a clever marketing ploy to make you think that this stuff has been around for so long so it must be correct. In the previous video Eli claims that there is documented evidence that some people lived to be 80 or even 100. I mean, there probably were. But it doesn’t seem to be that great since we live that long nowadays. Some people even live to 120. It would be interesting to chat with this person about life expectancy and explain that it has been generally going up over the last two hundred years as we learn more science. If Eli wants documented evidence why doesn’t he use the bible? It’s got stories of people living a long time. Maybe we should do what they did?

So, Qi Breaks looks like an online video thing that you pay for. It’s meant to help you do lots of non-specific things that are self-reported and not really measurable. This means that it will probably “work” for you. You spend the money. Do as you are told and then you will say that you feel better. If you don’t think it works then you just quit and so the testimonials will always come from people with positive reviews. Are they really any better or have they really boosted their immune system? Unlikely.

Eli claims to have a “deep healing Qi Gong” method that you can pay extra for. Here’s what he says:

“Deep Healing Qi Gong™ uses practices known to have specific impacts on the emotional, physical and mental levels – the integrated body’s Qi (life-force energy). It is rooted both in ancient Bhuddist and Taoist systems as well as in modern energy healing methods and supported by science. I helped heal many from chronic health conditions western medicine does not have answer to.
This method not only works to help you heal yourself by clearing Qi blockages and restoring the natural flow of Qi in the body, it also helps you manifest exactly what you want to have in your life.
I developed this method over the last 10 years through my own personal journey, working with many individuals over the years and studied with teachers in the US, Europe and Asia.”

There are a number of things about this that strike me:
Life-force energy – isn’t a thing.
Ancient – who cares? This says nothing about whether it works or is real.
Supported by science – OK, show me the fucking science.
Heal chronic health – unlikely. I would like to see proper documented evidence for this.
Western medicine – this is used to dismiss modern medicine or “medicine”. I’ll take my chances with things that really work thank you.
Qi blockages – not a real thing.
Manifest exactly what you want – this is concerting. Is Eli saying that if you “want” hard enough you can have? Is he using hints of “the secret” here? Is he doing that “ask the universe” bullshit? I’m amazed at this. There’s a real issue with people thinking that illness and other outcomes in life are their fault. Or they think that the universe has it in for them. This isn’t true. What is true is that illness is random and society is actually built to stop you doing the things you want. Unfortunately many people can’t accept that some outcomes in life are just random and they believe it must be the fault of the person.

This whole website is a way of removing you from some of your money. If Eli really has mastered or created Deep Healing Qi Gong then wouldn’t the best thing for him be to give it away to the world for nothing? Shouldn’t he be working in hospitals to help cure everyone? If this stuff works then why isn’t he being hailed in the New England Journal of Medicine? If all these things he says are real then why isn’t everyone using them? If these things really worked then your GP would get you to do them. But, these things don’t work. I’m going to leave Eli and his bullshit for now. But I haven’t quite finished. I want to explain where Traditional Chinese Medicine comes from. The quick answer is China. But the real story is a little more interesting.

In the 1950s China was struggling with population and Communism. Not much different from today really. Medicine was improving in the country and so doctors were issued with a book that gave them treatments and drug listings for specific diseases etc. Because there were problems with the availability of real drugs the back of this book had a load of bullshit cures but ones that were traditional in the countryside. So, when a doctor had no hope of helping someone and the drugs weren’t available they could “prescribe” some bullshit stuff that would keep the population happy and subdued. Nothing was really known about this outside of China.

Then, in the early 1970s there was a US diplomatic mission to China and one of the people got ill. There were operated on but also had some bullshit TCM applied to them and when the western media heard about this they completely overlooked the actual medicine and focused solely on the TCM that this person received. They then claimed it was a miracle and maybe this ancient wisdom has something behind it. Before this time there wasn’t much in the western consciousness about TCM. After this time it exploded and has been here since. TCM doesn’t work and was rooted in a government lying to their own people to cover up the lack of real medicine. Amazing that we have so much of this is western culture now.

You can check this story yourself from the place I got my information. I first heard about this on Skeptoid. A short podcast that looks at things that aren’t real. It covers lots of different topics. I would encourage you to listen to the podcast or read the transcript. It’s worth knowing where this bullshit TCM comes from. Also, there is, of course, a Wikipedia page that covers the Barefoot Doctor.

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Angels Within

http://the-angels-within.co.uk/index.htm

This communication was drafted in May 2016. I have left it so long to carry on writing this that the website is gone, it is no more. There is nothing there. But, thank goodness for the Internet Archive we can see what this website looked like. It is all amazing.

I can’t remember how I found out about this website. It might have been part of Bullshit Saturday, I’m not sure. I’ve decided to blank out the name on this site as that seemed the right thing to do.

Look at the gloriousness, Angel Practitioner, Heal Yourself, Blocks in your Mind, Listen To The Whispers. Every part of this is amazing. I mean it’s all wrong but it is amazing. I can assure you the last thing you want me or many people to do is listen to the whispers.

Let’s get some things sorted straight away. Reiki is bullshit level 2. It’s utter rubbish and doesn’t do anything. I would describe it as “touching someone”. That’s all it is. I could even be that the masters of reiki don’t even touch because they can channel their energy flow so well. what crap. If I didn’t have morals then maybe I would become a practitioner and charge people plenty of money for my services. It’s pretty easy to do.

So, I remember that looking through this website it turns out there are different levels of Angelic Reiki and this got me excited. I mean, it must mean there are exams or tests or practicals? There must be some way of measuring this mode of healing that mean you can progress from one level to another. I desperately want to know more. I looked at the links on the website:

Angelic Reiki Levels 1 & 2

2.5 days GBP252

  • A complete Karma Cutting and Angelic Clearing prior to initiation.
  • Angelic Reiki Levels 1 and 2 attunements to the Angelic Kingdom of Light through Archangel Metatron and The Sarim. This includes an attunement given by 30 Archangels, the chief Celestial Angel Princes.
  • Allocation of a Healing Angel or Angels to work with you on a permanent basis
  • Practical ‘hands on’ experience in the healing methodology involving healing as a channel, healing with intention, healing with an Ascended master, Galactic Healers and the first steps in multi-dimensional Healing.
  • Working with Chakras, Colours, Crystals and Flower remedies.
  • Attuning the tools of your trade.
  • A Master Crystal to hold the divine Angelic Healing Codes.
  • An Angelic Reiki Practitioner Certificate
  • A detailed Manual and much more

So, for GBP 100 a day I can attend this course and learn about the THIRTY Archangels. Did you know there are 30 of them? I didn’t. I must be very lacking in my angel lore. I should really start at the top of the list shouldn’t I? Karma Cutting and Angelic Cleaning – sounds like taking drugs and a colonic irrigation. I’d be quite tempted with this. I wonder what this involves? I’m so curious and yet I think I would die laughing if I actually attended this course. Angelic Kingdom of Light – I really want to know what this is about. I think it might be time for a deep rabbit hole dive on the internet but I’m slightly afraid I would forget to have lunch. Allocation of a healing angel – I doubt very much that angels are happy to be allocated, told what to do. I’m be interested to see if I get that grumpy angel who is just sarcastic and doesn’t really want to be there. Ascended master, Galactic Healers, multi-dimensional healing – this is glorious. I mean they are words and those words do mean things but I doubt that they mean what these angel groupies think. If this all works and is legitimate [it’s not] then all these people should be rushing to help cure all those people dying of Covid 19 at this moment. The Excel arena in London should be full of fucking alternative medicine people to help this world. But it doesn’t work does it? It’s all bullshit and deep down these people know that. That’s why they aren’t visible right now because they know the stuff they peddle to the unknowing doesn’t fucking work.

Chakras, Colours, Crystals and Flower remedies – all bullshit. All peddled by people who either are liars or deluded. This sort of stuff is gobbled up by those wanting the easy answer. People who use this stuff and spend real money on this usually think that a bad illness can be cured with a cup of tea. They struggle with the real world and the fact that it’s all so hard. Hoping that rubbing your foot will cure your liver illness is easy isn’t it. It means there’s an obvious cure or even an obvious cause. It makes things understandable. It possible stops things being so scary. But it’s also bullshit and that’s why it’s dangerous. Much like everything in life we seek simple answers for complicated issues and it means it’s easier for us to comprehend. It’s also why incompetent leaders get elected because they seek approval from our basic desires of simple answers.

A Master Crystal to hold the divine Angelic Healing Codes – I want one. I really want to know what this is and how do you tell a Master Crystal from a lower ranked Crystal? Amazing. You’d also get a manual and a certificate for your time. I wonder how this course is assessed? I wonder how you know you can do this? It’s amazing. Not only that but there are more levels:

Angelic Reiki Master Workshop – Levels 3 & 4

3 days GBP450.

  • Revisiting healing techniques learnt in the 1 & 2 workshops. Opportunities to share healing experiences
  • Healing through 3rd eye contact used in Atlantis
  • Healing with soul group energies
  • Healing with energies of the Divine presence & the Divine Blessing
  • During this workshop all participants will move into the area of healing that will become paramount on this planet during the next few years
  • 13 symbols are given in this workshop, which are a gateway to the multidimensional healing. The symbols given will be activated to Angelic level through the 7 levels of form and divine form by Archangel Metatron.
  • Full Attunement to Angelic Reiki 3rd Degree Level
  • Full Attunement to Angelic Reiki 4th Degree Level
  • Gifts of Higher knowledge given by The Sarim, The Angelic princes of the Angelic Kingdom
  • Healing Practice sessions
  • Advice how to teach Angelic Reiki Workshops and how to carry out Angelic Reiki Attunements
  • A Comprehensive Master Teacher Manual
  • A Certificate of Training achievement to 3rd & 4th Degree in Angelic Reiki

I guess this course starts off correctly with a revision session. Then we get this gloriousness: Healing through 3rd eye contact used in Atlantis – I have no words for this. I know what I think the 3rd eye is but I don’t think that’s correct. I wonder if I don’t know enough about this stuff to be able to judge now? Is this mental healing? I don’t know, but it sounds amazing.

Soul group energies, Divine presence & the Divine Blessing – they should just teach this in the first place. If you just need to have a chat with someone else to improve your healing then why don’t you jump straight to that?

13 symbols are given in this workshop, which are a gateway to the multidimensional healing. The symbols given will be activated to Angelic level through the 7 levels of form and divine form by Archangel Metatron – I am fucking dying right now. This is so beautiful! I’ve looked up Metatron and it turns out that they are the greatest of angels. This angel is so great that it’s not mentioned in the Pentateuch and only briefly mentioned in the Talmud. It’s almost as if they were just making shit up back then.

Higher knowledge given by The Sarim, The Angelic princes of the Angelic Kingdom – this is another one I’m going to have to look up. I clearly don’t know enough about angelic lore to attend these courses. It’s so wonderful! I’ve just googled this and it would appear that there’s “confusion” about what the Sarim are. They might be goat-demons or they might be part of a twelve winged seraphim. What utter shit. It’s so good it’s amazing.

I loved this site when I first saw it four years ago and it still makes me smile. If they, the reiki people, can give out certificates for levels then their skills should be measurable which then means we can, perversely, measure it. If we can measure it then we can know what it is and we can use it to heal and cure people in reality. But, you know what? It doesn’t work and so that’s why there are no reiki machines in hospitals.

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I’m Calling This One Now

[I found this draft from December 2016! So I thought it was the time to get this one published properly. There are a few other drafts on my site and maybe I’ll get them released over the next few weeks.]

Bullshit.

That’s clearly what this is. But I owe more of an explanation to you all.

Here are my thoughts:

The first 30 seconds were pretty good. I didn’t really hear anything wrong in there. All those words and meanings were correct.

“In addition, medicine often fails badly in resolving chronic conditions . . . . “, notice how they don’t say “cure”, notice how all those conditions are remarkably complex and there aren’t any single solutions to them. Also, cancer isn’t one disease, it’s thousands. These are the sorts of problems many people will live with and have to learn to manage those issues.

“Now, patients and practitioners in the UK are turning more and more to a complementary therapy . . ” firstly, numbers please. I don’t think that is the case. But they are selling things here so they will use persuasive language. “Complementary” also means DOESN’T WORK. Things that work in medicine are called MEDICINE and not any other bullshit.

“Safe and gentle solution . . . “, because they legally aren’t allowed to say CURE. When complementary therapists say “safe” and “free from side-effects” they also mean free from “effects”. Everything that you do or take has side-effects on your body. We all love paracetamol and ibuprofen but too much and you’ll fuck yourself over. Even the boring drugs have side-effects. Everything has side-effects. Want to know what doesn’t have side-effects? Something that does nothing.

“Widely used for over 50 years in Germany . . . ” is an appeal to authority and history. It doesn’t mean it works. Do you know what, if this German invention worked don’t you think they would be exporting it all over the world?

Look at the people in white lab coats trying to add authority to the video. Ha ha.

“Bioresonance” it might be a real thing but it is sciency sounding and so can’t possibly be made up. It’s exactly why all the Star Trek technical language really means things.

“Quantum physics and biophysics”, AMAZING! I hadn’t watch this video for four years and they’ve gone full Quantum. Don’t you just love it when this happens. Can’t wait to see what they say.

All cells and pathogens radiate electromagnetic waves in particular frequencies. Wow. I’m not sure they do. Sure, we can read brain waves because there is definitely electrical activity in the brain but I don’t think that’s true for all cells. Most cells communicate on a chemical level and so they can’t radiate EM waves or if they do the power output is so small that it’s far lower than any form of background EM and so unreadable. If we did radiate EM then we’d interfere with all the electrical devices in our houses. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen. They’ve been clever here because they are mixing stuff they hope people won’t understand to sound plausible. But it’s bullshit.

Bioresonance can figure out which frequencies belong to pathogens and bad things and neutralise them. How? Doesn’t say. What about “good” bacteria?

“55 countries worldwide . . . ” appeal to popularity.

“report remarkable improvements in their health and well being . . . ” self-reported outcomes are the worst. What about science trials? “Well being” doesn’t mean anything legally, it’s not defined in any particular way. You can say it and not get sued because it doesn’t mean a thing.

“non invasive, drug free, no known side effects . . . ” means it’s DOESN’T work. But it sounds nice doesn’t it. If you are desperate and you think the doctors are letting you down and someone has a, not-cure, a solution then you might be willing to spend your money.

“Safe for babies and vulnerable . . ” because it doesn’t work that’s why.

“Used in China . . . .” appeal to popularity and history etc. The whole Chinese alternative medicine thing is terrible. It stems from after the second world war when the government wrote a pamphlet for doctors which had things at the front that would work – drugs – and because of shortages it also listed things that wouldn’t work but would give the impression that doctors knew what they were doing – Chinese alternative medicine. It’s all based on lies.

“Increasingly popular with vets and equine specialists . . .” because selling just to people won’t make enough money.

Ann’s testimonial isn’t worth shit. Testimonials are the worst form of evidence. The plural of anecdotes isn’t evidence it’s just anecdotes. So I actually didn’t listen to anything she had to say. It’s not worth it.

And there we have it. Bulshit. So I headed over to their website to see what is going on. There is so much there I am going to have to save it for another day. I hope it doesn’t take me four years to get around to writing about it! Let’s see what happens.

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Infrastructure Dec 2019

Since early 2014 I have written communications on here detailing the kind of equipment I have in the house in terms of internet-networking-stuff. The first communication, January 2014, detailed the set up of the house. I then updated this in February 2017 with the expanded view of the network. There have been some changes. I go through phases of trying to simplify the equipment and getting it to work in the easiest method possible. This is needed every now and then as when items are first set up the quick method is used and this might not be the best. Changes happen over time.

Infrastructure 201912
Infrastructure 201912

The principle changes to the system are the addition of a smart lighting system and the network that runs on along with a wired connection to the lounge cluster running with a gigabit switch. The original 10/100 switch now runs clusters B, C and D. I will admit that the picture isn’t that pretty but given I’m not a graphic designer and I also don’t really care what you think I’ll leave it as it is. I will also admit that this is the second import of that picture because on the first one I forgot to add the AV amp [disaster!].

Other minor changes to the network are the removal of the freesat box and a complete reliance on streaming services, I wrote about that in this communication a year ago. I have no wireless television signals connected to the television, be that a satellite signal or via the television aerial on the chimney. I also now have home voice control via the Google boxes, it’s nice telling the house what lights to turn on. I have written about that but I can’t find it, see my explanations here.

The Clusters

A – The, so called, gigabit computing cluster. This is basically a PC which is now old and a NAS drive which stores all kinds of media and files. The wireless printer is in this cluster but it’s not really gigabit, you know what I mean.

B – The ADSB receiver. I send MLAT and ADSB data to 360Radar. I use a Raspberry Pi connected to a tuned aerial and decode the data before sending it to the cloud somewhere. When this system was wireless there were occasionally issues with the Pi connecting and so I now have it wired through an ethernet over power line connection. This connection runs greater than 100Mbps which is good enough.

C – The lights. I can control the lights in the house either by speaking, using the PC or via a connection from my phone. I can also control them when I am remote from the house. This is handy as I can get the lights on before I walk into the house. I could have this set using location settings but I’m not going to do that. Some lights come on at sunset and shortly before sunrise which is pretty neat. I also bought a light switch which is near the front door for the olds to use.

D – House sounds. The Sonos system is pretty impressive still and used everyday. The Sonos can read songs stored on the NAS or even stream podcasts and radio stations via the internet. While I haven’t set up voice control on this, I can but I don’t like the interface, I can control this system using the PC or phone.

E – The lounge cluster. Yesterday I wired this in using a network cable to which I attached RJ45s. I had to do this as the cable had to fit through a hole in the wall which is smaller that the connector. It was an interesting learning experience fitting my own cable. I also bought a gigabit switch for the lounge and now the devices in there can link to lumps in the computing cluster at high speed. I didn’t have any streaming issues but I just wanted to know that it was future-proof for a little while anyway. The lounge has a smart TV [it’s not that smart as I bought it before decent firmware], Blu-ray player, PS4, Amp and Nvidia Shield streaming device for watching stuff.

F – The wireless cluster. This is basically everything else. There’s a phone, an old tablet and also the Google home pieces. There is a normal Google home and two minis. These are placed strategically around the house to allow for voice control to work wherever you are.

I guess I’ll write another of these in a few years time when I consider the network to have changed significantly. Until then, happy buying of technology.

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What Value – Life?

Where this communication ends up I don’t know. It’s a theme I’ve been thinking about for a while now and I’m not sure what my conclusions are. I think about this whenever I watch a film with an aircraft crash or if I visit the Survival Equipment chaps at an air force base although it doesn’t just apply to flying stuff. Let’s see what happens.

There have been two crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft where everyone on board was killed. Straight after the second airlines started to stop using the aircraft and then eventually the FAA and CAA decided to withdraw the airworthiness certificates of those aircraft. The underlying thinking here is that you can’t have an aircraft type which regularly crashes killing people. It is a requirement of the manufacturer to correct any faults in the aircraft type. Society has a lower limit to what it expects the death rate for flying to be, whether most participating in that society understand that or not. The regulators have stepped in. Another pressure is that the market would stop choosing the 737 Max and Boeing would die if they didn’t make the changes. Society and capitalistic market forces require the product to work well. Human life has a value and should be cherished.

I’m old enough to remember the Herald Of Free Enterprise ferry disaster. I can still remember my dad telling me about it when he picked me up from cadets that evening. I remember feeling sick. I’m not sure why this affected me more than an aircraft crash but it did, maybe because I’d never heard of a ferry disaster before. There were issues with the ship’s operation procedures and the resulting investigation made recommendations which improved the safety for ferries in this country and around the world. The ultimate thinking here was that human life has a value and we should do all we can to preserve it.

In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger [rather the Space Transport System] launched and then blew up about a minute into its flight. This killed all seven astronauts on board. Nasa stopped all flights and investigated the disaster. There are, I guess, many pressures here: government funding, shuttle cost, human life, public relations, the cold war. It was deemed necessary for the programme to be paused while changes were made to ensure the safety of the astronauts. The lives of these people was important and nobody wanted to experience the “ultimate sacrifice”. To those youngsters out there who need to know, there is a phrase in my circles: “Space is hard”. Yes, space is hard. It’s complex and difficult and there will be sacrifices [just think about that word there!].

It would seem that companies like to try and cost cut to maximise profit and so the market forces only come to bear after a particular problem catches them out. So human life to companies is cheap, until they have to make changes I guess. My evidence for this is the General Slocum disaster in New York. A fire caused the Slocum to be abandoned. Most members of the public on board couldn’t swim, it wasn’t a common thing in 1904. Some of the life preservers were wired in place, maybe to stop them being stolen. The life preservers were meant to have cork of a certain volume in them to maintain buoyancy on humans. This cork was meant to be solid chunks and the amount was measured by mass. The life preserver manufacturer had chosen to use granulated cork as it was cheaper, but because it didn’t meet the mass requirements they then used metal bars hidden in the vest to bring the mass up. When humans jumped into the water the cork bubbled out of the vests as it wasn’t in large lumps and then the people were dragged under the water by the metal bars. 1021 people died that night. I guess afterwards there were investigations and corrections put in place to save this happening again on this scale. The city decided that human life is precious.

In the 1960s the Chevrolet Corvair had a design flaw that meant its handling could be unsafe. The company only started to rectify this after the problem was made public and even then it initially decided that the extra safety features should be “optional” and a paid extra on the model. This time a company succumbed to public pressure and eventually the Corvair was produced with suspension similar to contemporary designs. In this case human life was deemed to be precious but only after the flaw was made public and pressure was applied to the company.

When I visit the Squippers on an RAF base it becomes quite clear that the whole purpose of the military system is the protection of life of people within that particular branch of the military. The safety equipment designed to help a fast jet pilot in the case of a problem is impressive. The aim is to preserve the life of the pilot or aircrew in as many situations as possible. It doesn’t always happen but effectively the aircraft is expendable and the life is not. The motivation for this could be that aircrew are hard to find and cost a lot of money to train but the principle is the same, there is a value to the human life and it should be preserved.

So, governments and companies place a value on human life and it is generally seen to be a bad thing for people to die because of bad design or systemic issues with the rules and management of a system. If there are rail crashes then they are investigated. All shipping accidents are investigated and rules put in place to make sure those type of accidents either don’t happen again or the risk of them happening again is reduced to an “acceptable” level.

The rules governing the use of roads by people with vehicles have developed over time and change on occasion to make the roads safer. Deaths on UK roads have decreased over time and seem to have settled to around 1100.

There are probably many factors in this. I mean, when I was a child seatbelts WEREN’T compulsory to wear. Can you believe that? It was decided that people could choose for themselves whether to wear a seatbelt or not. There is only one problem with that: people are stupid. The best thing for a car would be to wear a five point harness and make sure it’s tight. But that is quite a hassle. Volvo invented the three point harness and gave away the technical rights to the whole industry. This means we have seatbelts in cars that, while they aren’t the safest, they are the best balance between safe and convenient.

When you get into a car you ACCEPT the risk that driving on the roads brings. You accept the balance between getting somewhere in comfort and the risk that you might not arrive. Now, you might not be aware of this, but it is what you should be thinking. Driving, or to an extent existing, means you implicitly accept the associated risks. If driving was an activity supplied by a company you would have to sign a disclaimer each time you decided to go somewhere. You decide to accept the implicit social contract every time you do something like driving or getting on a train etc.

The value of human life is not measurable. Current society tries to do the best for the people within that society. It tries to educate. It tries to help. It tries to save.

Except it clearly doesn’t.

Individuals on the whole are largely selfish and lack empathy. I mean this from a point of view of looking at individuals within a system. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about a single person within a system, within society. Our system of collectivness means that we each have our freedoms within that social construct. We chose what to do with our own lives [we don’t really as free will is an illusion but that’s for another time], we can spend money how we want, we can arrange our time how we want. There are restrictions within that. I hope that everyone pays their tax [they don’t] and many of us have to work to get money to pay for the things we use but generally we have a certain amount of freedom.

This freedom leads to us not caring or thinking about others as much as we should. We all vote or feel empathy for the latest finalist on Britain’s Got Talent because their gran died when they were young and the zit on their nose lasted for ten years but we lack the empathy for people around the world who have oppressed lives. We don’t care collectively about the thousands of people dying in wars [Yemen] or those being abused by their own governments or those systematically killed through religion or lack of action of governments. We don’t care about the critical underfunding this country has had for over ten years now causing deaths and poverty on a massive scale. We don’t care about people more than one degree of freedom away from us. We don’t seem to care about people dying. Why do we lack this empathy? We don’t seem to care about the child-rape cabal headquartered in Rome.

It seems that some systems and social constructs are there to help us survive. They are there to save life and preserve humans. Lives are values in a social structure. But, as individuals, we seem not to care. Maybe it is too much for individuals to take on the world and do the “right thing”. There is only so much an individual can do to make changes.

In this country people still vote Tory even though their policies over the last ten years have led to the UK having a need for FUCKING FOOD BANKS. Let’s get this straight. FOOD BANKS. Places where people who can’t afford FOOD can go and get food. FOOD BANKS. There’s a lack of empathy for these people. As long as I am comfortable I don’t need to think about the lives of others and help them.

Damn, I’m not sure where this is going. My starting point was that human life is precious and yet in so many ways we don’t value it and people are dying through so many preventable causes but it’s not visible, so we don’t know or care about it. Maybe I need to lay out my arguments a little better. This communication seemed to end in a rant about selfishness and lacking empathy. It started well but ended up as a grumpy old lefty moaning.

I’ll come back to this.

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EM Warnings

You know how it is. You are having a short break on a motorway drive and pop into the service station for a drink and a comfort break. It is the adverts directly above the urinals which seem to show the worst of mankind. I’ve written about this before in a communication about shaming farts. This time I was at Southwaite Services just south of Carlisle. I saw this advert above the urinals:

5G Bullshit
5G Bullshit

You are very welcome to go and read the stuff from the following links if you wish:

I have some things to say about all this. Let’s start off with some science about electro-magnetic radiation. This is a form of energy that extends from long wave radio waves to gamma radiation. It is a very large spectrum and our visible light takes up part of it.

Long wavelengths can travel a long distance and through lots of stuff. We use them for communicating with submarines and ships a long way away. Radio waves we are familiar with and they carry information like TV or audio signals. Infrared we feel as heat radiated from objects. Visible light humans can see, some animals can see higher frequencies but not us. All of the wavelengths/frequencies mentioned so far are called NON-IONISING RADIATION. Each photon doesn’t have enough energy to knock an electron out of its orbit in an atom and so up to violet light can’t caused any molecular changes, they, by definition, can’t cause cancer. They might warm you up a little but that is all.

All the stuff in the ultra-violet and beyond is the nasty stuff. It can cause cancer because each photon contains enough energy to knock electrons out of their orbit and therefore could cause molecular changes. This could cause a DNA change in your cells and, if it happens right/wrong, then could cause cancer. Here’s the easy bit:

UV Rays cause cancer. UV is BAD for you.

When you get an X-Ray at the dentist or hospital the radiographer or dentist will leave the room when the photograph is taken. Why do they do that? Because being exposed to X-Rays is bad for you. Each X-Ray you have increases your chances of cancer by a little. But, the information gathered from the X-Ray can do far more good than the increase in risk of cancer and so we elect to have them done. It’s similar to going somewhere by car – you know you will get there in a short time and in comfort but we balance that with the risk of being involved in an accident, the benefits outweigh the risks.

Right. Point number One. Radio and Micro waves can’t cause cancer. The worst they might do is cause a very slight heating which is less than what you get by exercising and is easily carried away by your blood.

Next, the slightly tougher issue. EM sensitivity. This is the situation where people are convinced that their health is detrimentally affected by EM radiation enough for them to notice. I have to be quite specific in the language I use here because the illness that people feel from this is real. The cause of it is not. I do not want to be dismissive of their illness, they feel what they feel and they blame it on all the EM in their surroundings. People with EM Sensitivity do feel what they report and so the illness is real. It’s just not caused by electro-magnetic radiation.

There have been studies completed where patients who claim EMS have been put in a shrouded room and then told when a wi-fi transmitter is turned on and off. They then report their symptoms in line with when they know the transmitter is on. Here’s the thing: they report symptoms even when the wi-fi transmitter is NOT turned on but they are told it is. Their symptoms are psychosomatic. This is not to belittle their illness but to point out that the cause is not what they think it is. Read this over at Science Based Medicine.

The people who claim that 5G will ruin lives are wrong. They are scaremongering and therefore adding to a problem that doesn’t exist. They are pushing ideas out to people who are sensitive to suggestion and causing more problems than they can fix.

I am still quite convinced that the amount of EM radiation humans absorb is mostly from natural sources, the sun and radio waves from stellar sources. Being in the home means that you will absorb a certain amount but go outside and this home-based absorption is insignificant. See this page from the World Health Organisation.

If mobile phones and wi-fi caused lots of issues with human health then where is the epidemic? Mobiles phones and wi-fi is everywhere and I don’t see the epidemic anywhere. For around thirty years these technologies have existed and we aren’t getting ill.

5G will be safe.

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Forts Position

On Saturday I went to visit the Redsand Forts. There are a couple of things I’d like to note for you.

Firstly I use the opportunity to calibrate the altitude on my Garmin Instinct watch. I usually give it a go each month, just to make sure it’s working properly. While out near the forts I used the calibrate with GPS option and I got an altitude of -2m. Initially this confused me but then I realised that I was close to the sea but during low tide, therefore I was likely negative AMSL, so -2m seemed about right.

Garmin GPS
Garmin GPS

The above picture is my position as saved by the Garmin Instinct. I didn’t even know that was an option but I noticed it while I was calibrating the altitude. I saved the position and then was able to display it on my phone. There’s a Garmin app called Explore and I like the functionality.

While out on the sea I also used Google Maps to see where I was.

iPhone GPS
iPhone GPS

I took this screen shot a bit before the Garmin one and so you can see I am slightly further east than the previous picture. I don’t think either of these was taken at the Redsands Forts complex as I was too busy watching.

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TankChip

On my recent trip to the Lake District I had breakfast in The Filling Station cafe. It’s a lovely little cafe with nice food and a classic soft rock playlist that could shock you.

  • Jack and Diane(John C-M)
  • Jump (Van Halen)
  • New Sensation (Inxs)
  • I come from a land down under (Men at work)
  • Stuck with you (Huey Lewis and the news)
  • Alive and kicking (simple minds)
  • Manic Monday (the bangles)
  • I died in your arms tonight (the cutting crew)

At that point I stopped recording what played. It’s almost the same content as my Hits 4 album from 1986. There is also Now That’s What I Call Music 6. These were my first foray into compilation albums. I expect I recorded them onto tape to listen to on a “walkman”.

So, in the cafe they have a free motorbike magazine and as an ex-biker I perused this rather than spend time staring at the mess and disaster on my phone twitter account. Nothing in the magazine was a particular surprise, it looks as though bike technology has moved on quite a bit since my 2001 Super Blackbird and bikes now seem pretty expensive. They are definitely a middle-class weekend thing. It’s not sensible to have one that is your only form of transport as mine was. Racking up over 12,000 miles a year on a motorbike is expensive in terms of servicing, tyres and depreciation. I digress.

So, in this magazine I spotted an advert for TankChip. It struck me as bullshit almost straight away but I am willing to see what evidence there is. Here’s the advert:

TankChip Bullshit
TankChip Bullshit

The advert seems to claim that by adding this device to the petrol tank you get more power, performance and acceleration along with an improvement in economy. Now these are some pretty impressive claims. I mean, a device that is cheap and can be added to any petrol tank and improves most characteristics of your engine? It’s almost as if it worked then manufacturers would be adding it to your tank anyway. It’d be a pretty impressive device. IF IT WORKED.

It doesn’t.

On the web page about the technology involved there are zero specific claims about the tankchip. There are plenty of claims and sciency sounding things but not one single claim about the chip itself. go and read it and see if it actually says anything about the chip. There are no testable claims.

So, here’s what happens. You see this advert, believe it, and purchase a crappy piece of plastic. Then you put it in your tank. From that point onward you are pre-disposed to see an improvement. You have paid money. You expect it to work. It will work, in your observation. What happens in reality is that it doesn’t work.

It’s like buying a nice wine. You look at the bottles and decide which one will taste nice. Then you pay plenty of money for that and, surprise!, it tastes nice. More expensive wines taste better than cheap ones. Expensive TVs look better than cheap ones because you are bought in to them.

So, riding your motorbike you expect results and so, unconsciously, drive a little more restrained but also it’ll feel like you are accelerating at a better rate, your engine will feel smoother, because you expect it to. You end up believing that this tankchip has made a difference when in reality nothing has changed. Expectation is a powerful thing.

Another clue that this is a scam is that they offer a money back guarantee. So, you buy this thing. Two things probably happen. You convince yourself it does work or you decide it doesn’t work but either forget about it or are a bit embarrassed you bought it in the first place. Either way, it’s quite likely you won’t bother to get your money back.

I have emailed the company for some information about the testing they performed and here is the response.

Can send you a some extracts from recent tank.chip customer emails when in the office.
As far as testing documents I’m not sure what you are looking for exactly.

So, I explained what I wanted. Testimonials don’t tell me shit. People’s thoughts are the worst way of collecting data because of all the biases of the human brain! That’s why we have science.

Since adding a tank.chip to my Royal Enfield 500 Bullet, performance wise it is more responsive and most importantly the engine has much less vibration at speed, which can be an annoyance when riding a single cylinder retro machine. I don’t know what or how it does it, but wow it sure does. An excellent product.
Barry H, Lincolnshire

I have purchased a tank chip, it seemed a small price to gamble! I am pleasantly surprised. Touring Wales on my Street Triple R ABS my average mpg has gone from its usual 56-58 mpg (at touring speeds) to 64.4 mpg (readout from the dash). That gives me at least an extra 20 miles from my 3gallon tank. Many thanks for a product that really works.
Clive T-B, Essex

Here’s what I asked for:

I was after a more serious test, such as some dyno testing or third party test of the product. Maybe something by a magazine?

Here’s the response I got back. It is a bank holiday weekend here so I expected to wait a little while:

Fast Bikes were setting up a dyno test but not heard anything.
Quite a few bike dealers and tuners repeat buy so I guess they have tested.
We won’t send out our data just yet for a number of reasons but will put something on line in the coming months.

I’m happy to wait for the details and if they get sent to me I will amend this communication. I doubt that any serious testing of this device will give any information or evidence that it works. If it did, then all manufacturers would already fit it. I did see one thread that it may actually include some lead which used to be added to petrol in the olden days to help with combustion and reduce “pinking”. Then we knew that lead poisoned people and campaigners worked to get it removed from petrol.

This device is very similar to the fuel magnets my father gave me about 13 years ago and they secured my descent into skepticism and you can read about that in this communication from six years ago!

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Therapeutic Massage

A short while ago I wrote about the Maidstone Sports Injury Clinic and Wellbeing, it was advertised at a gym in Maidstone. I explained that most of the stuff offered probably doesn’t work.

Today I look at Therapeutic Massage because I don’t really know what it is.

The Maidstone Wellness thingy has a page on the Massage and it explains what it is:

Therapeutic Body Massage works the soft tissue of the body, where knots, tension and muscle tightness can be found. It is from working into and around these areas that Therapeutic Body Massage can help ease stress and muscular tension.

To me that sounds like a massage. It seems that someone will massage you and you will feel better. I don’t think I have a problem with that unless there are specific medical claims made on the same page.

Guess what? There aren’t any specific medical claims. All the benefits are a bit shit and vague so that we don’t have to worry about them:

  • Reduction in muscle spasm, pain and tension
  • Release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers
  • Promotes relaxation, therefore reducing stress and anxiety
  • Improves blood circulation
  • Improves lymphatic drainage
  • Improves mobility

I guess if you stimulate someone then you create more blood flow and most of these claims are probably not too bad. Whether that does any good I don’t know.

I’ve had a look in PubMed, here are some of the results discussed:

Comparison of blood flow changes with soft tissue mobilization and massage therapy.
Comparison of blood flow changes with soft tissue mobilization and massage therapy.

Now, my comments. Firstly this was published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine so that automatically means it’s bollocks. However, here’s what they found: someone’s calf when rubbed with something warmer than air temperature warms up. The killer line in this study is “a rise in temperature THEORETICALLY indicates increased blood flow”. Amazing!

Therapeutic massage of the neck and shoulders produces changes in peripheral blood flow when assessed with dynamic infrared thermography.
Therapeutic massage of the neck and shoulders produces changes in peripheral blood flow when assessed with dynamic infrared thermography.

I have the same criticisms for this paper. The journal is bollocks and the whole process is bollocks.

The anatomical study of the major signal points of the court-type Thai traditional massage on legs and their effects on blood flow and skin temperature.
The anatomical study of the major signal points of the court-type Thai traditional massage on legs and their effects on blood flow and skin temperature.

This one is from a different journal, this time the Journal of Integrative Medicine, which is a bollocks journal. Note that in the conclusion they state that the results might not be clinically relevant. Quelle surprise.

This next paper seems more realistic although the abstract is barely abstract it does say that it’s all a bit vague really.

The mechanisms of massage and effects on performance, muscle recovery and injury prevention.
The mechanisms of massage and effects on performance, muscle recovery and injury prevention.

Well, it seems that massage and blood circulation are common claims but there isn’t really anything to it as no-one is able to define what circulation means. This is classic alternative “medicine”. They make deliberately vague claims because those claims aren’t medically recognised terms and therefore don’t need medical evidence.

I reckon that having a massage won’t do you any particular harm. It might even make you feel better and more relaxed. Much like reading a book or having a glass of wine. I doubt there are particular health benefits to having a massage but if it feels good, do it.

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Tales Of Investigation

Perusing a website for a castle I noticed that they organise sleep-overs or rather not-sleep-overs in the most haunted room in the castle.

Muncaster - spooky photo
Muncaster – spooky photo

Apparently there’s a scientific team based at Muncaster Castle who investigate paranormal activities. Now, I will admit that paranormal claims should be investigated. I am happy to dismiss them out of hand but I also think that these things should be investigated. Claims of things moving noises heard should be tested. I very much doubt there will ever be any true evidence towards the existence of ghosts. Back to the team investigating Muncaster.

I can’t find anything about who they are or what they publish. Nothing. Oh well. It’s a great piece of marketing by Muncaster who charge about GBP500 for a night in the castle for six people.

I guess scientific research means a team put loads of cameras and measuring devices around the castle. I don’t think these are necessary as people claim to have felt real effects of ghosts so sensitive measurements shouldn’t be needed. The effects of ghosts should be obvious. But “researchers” look at more and more sensitive equipment which means they are more likely to be affected by noise in the measurements than anything else. This noise will be held up as evidence of tiny effects of the supernatural.

As I’m heading to the castle today I’ll let the three of you who read this know if I see anything I can’t explain.

I downloaded the T&Cs for the ghost vigil and I was amazed at point 12:

12. Please note that stories about the Tapestry Room are not fabricated or “made-up”. On occasion very strange
things seem to happen in that room at the dead of night.

This is almost Trumpian in its language and use of quotation marks. Does the castle renege on its part of the contract if these stories are not true?

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Listening

The internet and the companies on it are a good thing. I can know whatever I want within seconds. The world wide web is a force for great good. But, much like our social circles we tend to only look at things that confirm our own beliefs and reinforce everything we already think. It’s like newspapers and television channels. If you are liberal in your thoughts it’s reasonable to assume you would read The Guardian or Independent. If you are right wing then you might read The Times or Telegraph. If you are just plain crazy then you might read the Daily Fucking Mail.

Now, most of my friends share the same thoughts about society as I do. Some don’t and it’s always great fun to have conversations and discussions and arguments with them. It would be impossible in life to only spend your time with people who agree with you. You need to learn to accept what people think, even if they are clearly wrong.

I was almost going to turn this communication into a discussion about logical fallacies. You can Google that phrase and see what you find. It’s important to understand logical fallacies and how to spot them. I’m quite good at spotting some but I still don’t really understand the Straw Man argument and I keep reading about it and listening to people explain it.

So, this communication is about listening to opposing views. I have done this on twitter and follow some people who I would really rather not. I try to read what they say and do my best to understand them. I force myself to try and understand from their point of view. It’s a bit like reading the Daily Fucking Mail which I do occasionally to see what poisonous shit they are saying now.

So, one of the first people I started to follow to listen and see what they say was Deepak Chopra. He is often ridiculed on podcasts that I listen to. Here are a few of his tweets so you can see what sort of thing this knobhead says.

Now, I haven’t even read the article. It’s enough to annoy me that he claims consciousness isn’t in the body. Where the fuck else is it going to be?

What does this mean? They are words, but none that make sense.

When I see stuff like this and people retweeting this it pisses me off loads. How can people like this bullshit. I don’t understand. One of my issues is that I find it hard to see why people believe this bullshit. To me it is quite obvious how and why things work. We have explanations for all this stuff. We are finding out more and more as time goes on. We understand. We don’t need this waffle to help us cope with this one life we have. Now, I start to understand why people I listen to make fun of this man. Perhaps I’m jealous? Perhaps I think those who find peace in this shit must have contentment and happiness that I do not. this is a force for making people happy and calm. But then, it’s not really is it? People with faith and belief still hurt and have shit happen to them. They are still sad when people close to them die, they aren’t joyous because the soul lives on. Believers still feel pain but also have a veneer of lies to clutch on to, to comfort them.

I often think of this:

So, onto another tweeter I follow. Perhaps that should be twit. I am not sure. I try to be polite but sometimes I just give up and think these people are fucking arseholes. Ken Ham has spent millions creating an Ark in Kentucky. Let’s see what he has to say:

Sure, the biblical worldview values all human life, unless you are gay, transgender, divorce, have an abortion, don’t believe, are foreign, wear mixed fabrics, have sex before marriage, have an affair and so on. Fuck You Ken for saying this. I also don’t understand his first sentence. What the actual fuck? Evolution leads to euthanasia? How? This man just doesn’t understand evolution, which is rather sad. This man believes the bible is the literal truth. My problem with this is how can someone clearly intelligent [he has raised funds for his Ark and runs several organisations] believe that stuff?

Sure, God’s word is the best evidence. But we don’t have god’s word. We have words written by men, in a book, almost two thousand years ago. This book says it is true, therefore it is true. Awesome logic.

An ark! Noah’s ark. In Kentucky. Purporting to be the truth. Nothing to mock there.

I have to admit, I don’t understand “sin”. It seems to be breaking the rules from a book. It’s worse than breaking the law, I think. I’m not sure. Perhaps “sin” is what old celibate men decide it is. That sounds about right.

The number of times I have read this and tried to understand what it means! Arrrrrgh.

I’ll leave it there. Time to move on to another person I follow on twitter. Pastor Alex Rivas describes himself as “Son of God. Researcher. Leader. Prophet. A human being.” I don’t see much human being in the things he says:

I’m pretty sure bible says nothing about gay marriage, abortion or marijuana. If you can find the verse then please let me know. Obviously if you use the bible to support your ideas then you should surely follow all it’s principles. Leviticus 19:19 says:

You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.

Here’s another:

There’s NO evidence from the time of Jesus that he existed. NONE. Let alone that he was resurrected. NOT one thing. NADA. ZILCH. NOTHING. All we have are mistranslations of stories written about forty years after whatever happened. Yet we are to believe that these writings exactly reproduce the things that Yeshua said. I don’t understand how people who are so invested in the words of the bible haven’t taken the time and opportunity to look into the history of the bible. To understand from where the stories come. To read up about how this book they hold so dear came to be written.

Actually I do understand why these people haven’t looked into the history of their beloved book. It’s because they know it will destroy their faith. It will bring their world view crumbling down. It’s therefore best to ignore that. We don’t want to feel that the time and resources invested have been wasted.

Dana Ullman MPH CCH:

Homoeopathic meds have plenty of molecules, just none of the “active” ingredient that they claim.

That’s good. Homoeopathy is nothing. Seriously, it’s nothing. Anyway, Dana Ullman has MPH and CCH after his name. What does that mean? Right, MPH is Master of Public Health [not a medical degree] and CCH may be a homoeopathic post graduate degree thing. I’m not sure. Do you know how I introduce bullshit medicine in the school where I work? I explain what homoeopathy [and I spell it correctly] and I give pupils an understanding of the claims Homoeopaths make about how it works. I use official homoeopathy websites to describe the rules of homoeopathy. I don’t even get halfway through the rules before the pupils see it for what it is: bollocks.

If I want to create an air of authority then perhaps I should end everything I write with Ian Parish PGCE BEng (Hons) ACGI. Perhaps the world would like that and find my writings more impressive. I could, legitimately, sign off Plt Off Parish RAFVR(T). But I don’t.

I still follow these people. I still read their shit. I try to understand the world view they come from but I will admit that I struggle. I still find it incredibly weird that intelligent people believe these kids of things.

So, instead of wasting time on what these crazy people think. Here’s what science did today:

You see? Do you see what fantastic stuff we can do when we put our energies and minds to it. Science is fantastic.

As an aside, I love the fact that the Space-X barges are named after ships from Iain M Banks books.

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Hmmm. Snoring Cure?

So, stumbled across a snoring cure. You can see the website here. Now, I’m gonna call bullshit on this right now, but that would seem rather unfair to the company so let’s look a little closer at what they claim.

I have screen clipped their website and I will discuss each section. The main page looks like this:

Snoring1

This says that you wear the ring on your little finger and that it is a snoring treatment that is guaranteed to work. Apparently it’s also been clinically tested! They have made a very specific claim here that wearing this ring on your little finger will make you stop snoring. What else do they have to say?

Snoring5

This explains how it works. Or rather it doesn’t. All it says is that there are Acu-activators on the ring. A quick google shows that this isn’t a real term and isn’t used anywhere apart from the stop snoring website.

Snoring9

It’s not looking too good for this product and we’ve not even really started. I think they may be trying to imply that the things on the ring activate acupuncture points? This is irrelevant as acupuncture is clearly bullshit.

Next bit from the www.goodnightsnoring.com website:

Testimonials amount to nothing. The plural of anecdote is NOT data. I don’t care. 3500 years of history can’t be wrong can it? Of course it can. We now use medicine with evidence not rubbish about Chi and acupuncture points. Also, being mentioned in the Daily Fail is not necessarily a good thing. In fact if a medical “cure” is mentioned in the Mail or Express you can pretty much assume it’s bullshit.

Now, the website covers this with the following page:

Snoring7They claim that a good clinical trial was performed and the results were almost a miracle. This is good because if there is good evidence then I would be prepared to change my mind. The goodnightsnoring.com website doesn’t have a link to the clinical trial. I want to be able to read it and then change my mind. It seems that these are extraordinary claims and so it would be prudent to examine the evidence.

I searched PubMed. There was nothing about the Snoring Ring as being sold here. So I tried searching Google Scholar. Nothing again, just a paper about breast cancer. This was troublesome, my two main sources for scientific papers were showing nada. I decided to look using plain old Google. I searched for “snoring ring clinical trial”.

search1

From these results I wasn’t interested in the Snoring Ring website, there’s nothing on there. I also couldn’t care for a news article in the Daily Fail [they don’t know how to report science]. The other links were mostly places that sell the product and so have probably just got the blurb from a product information release. What interested me originally was the ASA link.

In 2012 a complaint was made to the ASA about the evidence for the claims that the Snoring Ring company were making. The complaint was upheld and the company were told not to make claims about the snoring ring. The so called medical trial was completed after this ruling by the ASA!

Also in the search results was a link to ANTISNOR, a company who produce anti snoring rings. Now, this company mentioned on this page a French company who had done the clinical trials.

In 2012, a French scientific research organisation, Proclaim (www.proclaim.fr), studied the effect of AntiSnor Acupressure Ring . . . .

The Proclaim website doesn’t exist. Even though ANTISNOR link to it. Oh dear, the trail has gone cold.

There are a number of RED FLAGS on the original website. The mention of the following aspects all cause concern. They don’t mean it doesn’t work, they just mean we should be sceptical until we have seen the evidence.

  • Money back guarentees
  • Testimonials
  • No links to the evidence
  • Publicity from the Daily Mail
  • Anecdotes
  • Non invasive and side effect free
  • Appeal to antiquity on the acupressure part of the site
  • No email address to ask for a copy of the clinical trial

So far, I’ve had some people say they think this work and no actual medical trials even though one is claimed. Back to Google.

Another link from Google heads towards Princeton Consumer Research. It appears that this company will undertake clinical trials for you and then allow you to use the results in your publicity. Here’s a Princeton Brochure with their claims. After finding this I found a company called Aspen Clinical Research. They had a pdf linked here and also Aspen-Clinical-Anti-Snoring-Ring-Media-Coverage1 from my site. This PDF essentially claims that the publicity they managed to produce for the Anti Snoring ring was brilliant. They seem to be more of a PR firm than a clinical trial firm. This makes me very wary.

Aspen Clinical Research even went so far as to persuade the press that there was a National Stop Snoring Week in 2014. This is depressing reading.

stopsnoringweek

I hadn’t realised there would be companies that are willing to be paid to undertake some form of research to legitimise PR claims and also produce media puff.

Both Aspen Clinical Research and Princeton Consumer Research do not seem concerned with legitimate medical trials, rather they concentrate on PR friendly trials to produce media results. Neither of the websites were searchable from their homepages. Also, both companies seem to be offering to pay participants. This can’t be a good thing, it would bias the results. All I want is a copy of the clinical trial for the Anti Snoring Ring and I can’t find it. What I have found are companies who provide easy results for PR.

It seems to me that these companies offer to do science the wrong way around and therefore they don’t offer science. It looks like the cycle goes:

  • You have a product and want to make specific claims
  • You will be banned from advertising if you can’t substantiate these claims
  • You PAY one of these companies to do a trial for you so you can then substantiate your claim
  • You then advertise claiming scientific proof.

The correct cycle should be:

  • Scientific research indicates that a specific product could work
  • The product is developed
  • A trial is designed and the details published before being conducted
  • The product is tested rigorously
  • The product is deemed to work, the product can be advertised with specific claims
  • The product is deemed not to work, the product can’t be advertised

I feel utterly depressed at the state of media manipulation and that there are companies that do this as their raison d’etre. Everything we see and hear is manipulated to sell products. I started this communication as a simple investigation into the evidence for a product as they claim. What I found was a collection of companies willing to provide you the evidence you want so you can claim what you want for your product that (probably) does nothing.

Anyway, I can’t get to the evidence for the Snoring Ring. I haven’t found the paper with details of the trial and so I am going to complain to the ASA about their website claims. Watch this space.

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Special K

Only a minor rant today about how effective advertising is and how our views of the world are shaped by what we are told rather than what we try to find out for ourselves using sceptical thinking tools.

Special K is a breakfast cereal made by Kellogg’s. The adverts on television promote Special K as a healthy alternative to other breakfasts and good for losing weight. Most of the adverts have a good looking woman in a red swimming suit enjoying life to the full. The message is clear:

Eat Special K and lose weight, be healthy and live a wonderful life.

As far as I can tell, Kellogg’s are perfectly able to make these claims because they all mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The adverts make no particular claims that would require evidence, so I [grumpily] admit that the adverts themselves are perfectly ok to broadcast.

If you want to find out more about the sexual views and (non) medical ideas of the man who invented Corn Flakes then please look here. I am going to look solely at the information I can find about Kellogg’s cereals.

If you want to lose weight then you need to follow this principle:

Calories in should be lower than calories out.

I’ve explained this before in this communication. Therefore you would expect that Special K has significantly lower energy content that other cereals made by Kellogg’s. Let’s see.

Special K Nutrition Panel
Special K Nutrition Panel

As you can see here, 100 grams of Special K contains 375 kcal. To burn that much energy off you would have to walk/run around 4 kilometres. Now, let’s see what Kellogg’s Original Corn Flakes contains:

Corn Flakes Nutrition
Corn Flakes Nutrition

I’m sorry this isn’t the actual panel from Kellogg’s but their website wasn’t working properly and I couldn’t get the information. Let’s read what this information tells us.

CORN FLAKES HAS FEWER CALORIES THAN SPECIAL K

Holy Cow! How does that happen? The adverts tell us one thing but in reality the truth is completely the reverse. I’m pretty sure that Special K tastes like cardboard too, so perhaps everyone should just swap to standard Corn Flakes. In fact when we look at the energy content of other Kellogg’s products we can see that there isn’t a great deal of difference in energy terms.

Crunchy Nut Nutrition
Crunchy Nut Nutrition

Special K with extra crap
Special K with extra crap

So, 100 grams of these cereals are all around 380 kcal. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference which one you eat. However, I am not sure of 100g of Corn Flakes LOOKS the same amount in a bowl compared to 100g of flakes with extra sugar coating. It could be that you will fill the bowl to the same level but end up eating many more calories because the coated flakes are more massive. This is a test I might do one day.

Also, I am not commenting on the extra sugars you will eat if you have sugar coated cereal. This is not a communication about how healthy a particular cereal is, it’s about the energy content and the impression given by advertising.

So, what should we learn from this? I think this shows clearly that advertising works extremely well at forming opinions about certain products and their effects on us in terms of health. ALL advertising claims should be taken sceptically until you have investigated them for yourself. Don’t dismiss or accept things straight away. It is perfectly OK for you to think or say:

That sounds interesting but I’ll form my own opinion once I’ve investigated it a little more.

In fact, that is generally a good approach to life itself.

 

One more thing. Anti-aging creams can legally ONLY advertise themselves as anti-aging if and only if they contain a form of UV sun protection. There is little evidence that any of the other stuff they put in creams will protect your skin from the 3/5/7 signs of aging.

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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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Dodgy Websites

Thank goodness for the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority). If we didn’t have them then the country would be full of misleading claims about products and services. However, there is an issue, adverts and websites can only be adjudicated once the ASA have received a complaint. This means that the misleading claims (lies) have to be made public before there is any action. Therefore most of the population aren’t aware of the fact that an advert might have been withdrawn. The damage will have been done. Perhaps adjuducations should be carried in a short segment at the end of the main TV news shows on ITV, BBC and Sky. This would cut some of the issues of publish and then retract, maybe making advertising even better than it is now.

If you are unsure of what sort of adverts have had adjudications then click here. This should take you to a page with the most recent rulings. Look carefully as this is a list of adverts and claims that have been ruled upon and not just those that are lies. Check the complaint to see what the issue was with the original advert.

The ASA also has a page of non-compliant online advertisers. The list is here. It will probably come as no surprise that a lot of these websites are for products or services that must be considered “woo“. If you can’t substantiate your claims then the chances are you are peddling bogus products or SCAMs.

I am proud to let you know that a complaint I sent to the ASA was acted on for print versions but the website of this company still (as of 7 Nov 2012) promotes amber necklaces for toddlers as a way of soothing teething pains. There is no good evidence that this works. The ASA page on this non-compliance is here. Avoid their products!

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