The Millenium Project

Pakistan (28/8/2010)

Your immediate task is to go to the UNICEF web site and donate some money to the appeal for those affected by the floods in Pakistan. Off you go. We'll still be here when you get back.

It is interesting to note how various religious organisations have reacted to the disaster. Of the eleven charities recommended by the Australian Council for International Development as recipients of donations for this event, four are explicitly Christian and a couple of others were started as Christian charities but have since moved to being fully secular. All of them are working to help Muslims. Contrast this to the Pakistan Taliban who have announced that they intend to attack and kill aid workers trying to help Muslims. I might be an atheist, but I can respect religious organisations when they do good work, whatever their motivations. There are however some religions which are worse than others and some which have no right to exist at all.

AVN and OLG&R (28/8/2010)

Do you remember how the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing had asked the Australian Vaccination Network to show cause why OLG&R should not take action over the AVN operating without a valid charity registration and collecting funds which were not passed on to where they were supposed to go? AVN were given 28 days to respond, but they have apparently been too busy lying about the benefits of influenza, measles and chickenpox to get the paperwork done.

I always try to be helpful, so I sent this kind and gentle reminder email to Meryl Dorey at AVN:

Dear Ms Dorey,

This is just a reminder in case you have been busy and forgot, but your response to the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing was due last week. You know, where you had to explain why AVN kept asking for charitable donations for two years after your registration had expired and why you said that you were collecting for Bounty Bags when the people who distribute the bags had never heard of AVN and wouldn't want your propaganda in them anyway.

Just as an aside, the charities collecting for flood victims in Pakistan have put a very high priority on vaccination. Are you going to issue a media release criticising this approach and suggesting that donations only be made to organisations which promise not to vaccinate children. You did this for both the Aceh tsunami and the Haiti earthquake, so I look forward to you being consistent in your attempts to deny life-saving assistance to the victims of natural disasters.

Your friend,
Peter.

The OLG&R wanted an answer
days ago
Did you forget?

Homeopathy "research" (28/8/2010)

Yet another person has informed me about the prolific research demonstrating the efficacy of homeopathy. I wasn't sent to the original published papers, of course, but instead I was sent to a homeopathy web site which listed successes. One which caught my eye was a 1999 report of a study done in 1974 (yes, 1974, and apparently never replicated) showing the benefit of Staphysagria in the treatment of postcoital cystitis.

A clinical trial of Staphysagria in postcoital cystitis

Homoeopathica November 1999

by P A Ustianowski

Honeymoon or postcoital cystitis is a condition where there is a disturbance of bladder function in women who have recently started or restarted heterosexual intercourse, or altered their technique.
The symptoms of the condition are several, if not all, of the following:

burning of the urethra on micturition
urinary frequency
urinary urgency
hæmaturia and
hypogastric soreness

Research over the years has not shown any higher incidence of frank urinary tract infection, or anatomical deformity of the genitourinary tract, in women prone to postcoital cystitis compared to those not so afflicted.

In my capacity as Medical Director of London Nursing Homes Birth Control and Pregnancy Counselling division, I have had ample opportunity to study the pathogenesis and treatment of this debilitating condition.

The series consists of 200 women, between the ages of 16 years and 30 years, 25 per cent of whom were married. All the patients had started having regular sexual intercourse for the first time, or restarted it after a lengthy gap, during the last three months.

All the women who complained of symptoms of cystitis were examined clinically for possible foci of infection-especially in the respiratory tract and the pelvic organs, and their urine was examined chemically and microscopically. There was no sign of intercurrent disease in any of the affected individuals. In none of the cases was there any significant proteinuria, hæmaturia or bacteriuria.

The patients in the trial were all requested to empty their bladders as completely as possible within an hour before intercourse and half an hour after it.

Fifty percent of randomly selected patients were given individually wrapped doses of powder of Staphysagria 30c, and the other 50 per cent were given similar packages of powders of Sac lac (lactose)- indistinguishable in texture, colour and taste from the other powder-as a placebo. The patients were requested to dissolve their powders on the tongue every morning and evening daily for a month, at which time they were all seen by me.

At that stage, of the cases who had been supplied with Staphysagria 90% had completely lost all symptoms of postcoital cystitis, 8% were very much better, while 2% were unchanged. In the cases who were given the Sac lac placebo, 40% had completely lost all symptoms, 10% were very much better, and 50% were unchanged.

In some cases improvement would be anticipated after a month without any treatment whatsoever. Several investigators in this field are convinced that bladder emptying before and after intercourse is an all-important cornerstone of the treatment of this condition.

The statistics available above show a very significant difference in the results of treatment with Staphysagria as against Sac lac placebo. The only person who was aware of what the patients were supplied with was myself, and I was at pains not to disclose the treatment to the patients, or the nursing staff.

The family Ranunculaceæ in the plant kingdom contains several genera of great use in homœopathic medicine -such as Staphysagria, Pulsatilla and Aconitum. Most of the Ranunculuceæ used in homœopathic dilution have an effect on the balance between the psychic and physical spheres - restoring equilibrium in conditions of oversensitiveness and emotional lability. Staphysagria, or the wild delphinium, has for long been known as a remedy for frustrations, resentments, and the hypersensitivity consequent on them. Sexual intercourse can be construed, in some cases, as an insult or assault upon the woman. In many cases of postcoital cystitis, on close questioning the patient expresses her frustrations and resentments regarding intercourse. This is what led me in the first place to selecting this remedy for a trial.

This report on Dr Ustianowski’s trial first appeared in the British Homœopathic Journal of October 1974.

So, let's see what is wrong with this:

The study was not blinded.
There has apparently been no replication in the last 36 years.
Results are largely self-reported and subjective
No control was made for the use of water-soluble lubricants, which are known to help with this condition.
Are newly-weds likely to be so disciplined in their sexual activity that they can plan urination an hour before intercourse?
There was no control on the frequency of intercourse, or whether subjects simply gave up trying and waited until the women got better.
Position of the partners during intercourse can have a strong effect on the life cycle of the condition. Were subjects asked to report their variations?
Compliance with the urination regimen was self-reported
If the particular treatment was "a remedy for frustrations, resentments, and the hypersensitivity consequent on them" was it actually treating the cystitis or just making women feel better about intercourse, remembering that in 1974 the rate of pre-marital sexual activity was much lower than it is today so for many it would have been a novel experience? Also, those having sex outside marriage might have suffered from feelings of guilt for violating societal norms.
At least one of the usual symptoms of the condition, hæmaturia (the only one with an objective measure), was not present in any of the subjects at the start of the study, and all the other symptoms listed are subjective and incapable of being measured.
There should have been a no-treatment group to eliminate any placebo effect. This is a condition which can resolve itself as people become more comfortable and experienced with intercourse.
Everyone would have been trying hard to both get over the condition and to please the experimenter.
Were the 50 newly-weds split across the two groups? If not then relative sexual experience might have been a confounding factor.

That will do for a start, but the real clue to the uselessness of this "research" is in the second sentence of the final paragraph: "Most of the Ranunculuceæ used in homœopathic dilution have an effect on the balance between the psychic and physical spheres - restoring equilibrium in conditions of oversensitiveness and emotional lability". The "balance between the psychic and physical spheres"? Put another way, this means that the experimenter has no clue about how psychological factors might influence the outcome. And this is in a study to do with a problem that is highly personal, quite distressing, embarrassing to talk about and can cause feelings of diminished self-worth.

If this is a good example of research in the field of homeopathy then I don't want to see a bad example.

Something to make you vomit (28/8/2010)

I've just bought a new television set with a built-in HD tuner. When I installed it, the first channel I looked at to see if it was working was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 24 hour news program. Almost at once I was exposed to a polished turd named Glen Beck defiling the memory of Martin Luther King by preaching hate and bigotry to a crowd of rightards. The date chosen was the anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the location was the Lincoln Memorial, the site of King's speech in 1963. Beck claims that this was just an accident and a coincidence. Yeah, right. It was a calculated insult by someone who will be forgotten ten minutes after he is dead (except by those celebrating his death).

One nice thing is that Beck was only able to attract a crowd about one third the size of the one which heard King, and the population was a lot smaller in 1963. It was still too many, though, and it is worrying that the USA can have so many lunatics who are free to roam the streets.

Here's what I said in 2003 on the 40th anniversary of King's speech:

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (30/8/2003)
In 1963 I was studying French in high school, although I don't particularly remember spending any time thinking about the above quote. As everyone knows (because it's a cliché), it means "The more things change, the more they remain the same". As a bona fide baby boomer I am not supposed to remember much of the 1960s at all, but I do remember some things from 1963. I remember the pessimism about the state of the world and I remember the optimism that we relative youngsters felt about our ability to change things. This week saw the 40th anniversary of one of the most significant events of that year, an occasion when optimism was at its peak and real progress seemed imminent. It was on August 28, 1963, that Martin Luther King stood in front of a statue of Abraham Lincoln and told the quarter of a million people gathered there, and the rest of the world, about his dream. You can read the full speech here, but I would like to quote two passages which summarise its meaning for me.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

and

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Unfortunately, King did not live to see the fulfilment of his dream. Unfortunately, neither did anyone else. The evil, the hatreds, the religious and racial bigotries, the wars are still with us. The French journalist Ambrose Karr might not have thought that he was writing philosophy when he coined the title to this article back in 1849, but the forty years since King spoke in Washington have proved Karr right. The methods may have changed and the discrimination may take other forms, but there are still real gulfs built on imaginary differences, on who one chose for parents, or on which superstition is better than which form of witchcraft. Things have changed, but they are still the same.

Why me? (21/8/2010)

You know those $60 rubber bands that crooks tell you will increase your strength and balance? I might have to go into business selling them, because they look even more profitable than being a homeopath writing labels for bottles of water. For some reason I have been receiving emails from a manufacturer offering these things to me wholesale.

Here are some examples. (I apologise for the large images, but that is how the emails were sent to me - great big pictures instead of text.)

The first one - wholesale price of the $60 rubber bands - $1.17.

Number 2 - Lovely necklaces for $1.19 each (including a pretty box)

Number 3 - Even lovelier necklaces (I do like the necklace/bracelet combination for $2.35 - I could sell that for at least $120.)

And do any of these things work? Well, they certainly improve the strength of the retailer's bank balance, so I guess they do have an effect on both strength and balance. What they do for the purchaser is make them feel stronger and more balanced because their wallets will feel easier to pick up and won't pull down on one side of the body as much.

Have I mentioned that selling these things is committing fraud?

See more XKCD here

Do I have to say it 17,000 times? (21/8/2010)

Royal This microscope does not exist. Raymond Rife made a microscope that could magnify 17,000 times. Or maybe 60,000 times. It depends on which of Rife's true believers you are listening to at the time. The fact that the wavelength of visible light does not allow magnification beyond about 1,250 times is dismissed by true believers as an excuse given by orthodox physicists and lens makers for their failure to reproduce Rife's work. The next thing you get told is that all of Rife's notes were destroyed (sometimes even by Morris Fishbein, evil editor of JAMA) and his microscopes trashed to protect the conventional microscope industry. When you point out that Rife's notes are available on the web you get told that everything is suppressed and that is why you can't buy books setting out Rife's designs. When you give them the titles of the books and the prices at Amazon they revert to telling you about how nobody knows how Rife managed to get magnification with visible light beyond that achievable by electron microscopy because all his notes and his microscope were destroyed by the Fishbeinites. If you get lucky, as I did this week, you can be told in the same message that there was only one microscope and it was destroyed but there were five microscopes and two of them still exist, hidden away so Zeiss and Olympus can't copy them.

Sadly, I didn't have the £14,400 needed to buy one of the trashed and destroyed microscopes when it came up for auction at Bonhams of London in November 2009. I've always wanted to own something of which only one existed and was destroyed except that five were made and two still exist. But does it magnify 60,000 times? I'm afraid that information is suppressed, like the existence of the microscope itself and its design.

Do you get the feeling that I find conspiracy theorists tiresome?

MLM scamsters beware (21/8/2010)

The days of pyramid scheme operators and other scamsters promising great wealth to scheme participants could be coming to an end in Australia. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has just issued its first ever public warning about "business opportunities", following an investigation into a scheme to distribute products to supermarkets. Of course the MLM companies with competent legal advice will not be affected, as they will continue to claim plausible deniability and only make grandiose claims through their "representatives", "distributors" and "independent business operators" (who are, of course, not representatives, not distributors and nothing like independent at all).

The story started in 2006, and here is how it was reported in The Border Mail:

Putting hearts into charities

30 Mar, 2006 08:00 AM

A group of retirees have put their hearts into charity to benefit the Border and surrounding community.

HeartLink Australia, a not for profit organisation, launched a range of cheap products at the East Albury IGA yesterday.

The products, including household, gardening, hardware and pet food, are made by volunteer retirees and any sale profits are given to local community groups.

HeartLink executive director Vicki Lowe said the products were already being sold around Victoria and were now crossing borders to NSW and South Australia.

“We'll start in Albury by introducing six products to the East Albury IGA, but eventually this will expand to include about 25 products,” she said.

HeartLink gave the Albury Meals on Wheels group a cheque for $300 as part of its official launch

Fast-forward to April 2010, and the Victorian Consumer Affairs office had this to say:

Laurence Glynne Hann and Vicki Ann Lowe – Court action – 30 April 2010

Court action by Consumer Affairs Victoria against two promoters of a bogus business opportunity which claimed to raise funds for charity, has secured more than $45,000 compensation for four Victorian consumers.

The Ballarat Magistrates’ Court ordered Laurence Glynne Hann, 69, of Henty, and Vicki Ann Lowe, 54, of Maryborough, to compensate investors a total of $45,500 for breaches of the Fair Trading Act 1999.

The court found Mr Hann and Ms Lowe made false, misleading or deceptive claims in regional newspaper advertisements about the benefits of participating in a business opportunity they promoted.

Mr Hann was also found to have made false or misleading claims about the profitability of the venture and both were found to have breached the Fundraising Act 1998 and the Business Names Act 1962.

The scheme used a series of unregistered business names, including “Heartlink”, “Heartlink Australia”, and “The Retiree Group.”

Investors were asked to buy $5000 contracts for the packaging or distribution of household and domestic products, including shampoo and conditioner, cleaners, confectionery, pet care goods, gardening and automotive products.

Mr Hann and Ms Lowe misrepresented that the proceeds of sales of Heartlink products would go to charities and falsely claimed that Heartlink was a non-profit organisation. The couple were not registered fundraisers or associated with a registered fundraiser.

The four investors paid up to $22,000 to participate in the scheme, which Mr Hann and Ms Lowe claimed to have the potential to earn investors up to $2000 for 3-4 days work per week.

Investors did not derive the advertised benefits because Mr Hann and Ms Lowe:

failed to deliver any, or any sufficient quantity of goods to investors
failed to supply goods or services within a specified or reasonable time
supplied goods which were materially different from those agreed to.

In addition to compensating investors, Mr Hann and Ms Lowe were ordered to publish a public notice detailing the court orders in the Ballarat Courier and Swan Hill Guardian newspapers.

Hmm. They "misrepresented that the proceeds ... would go to charities". That should be a warning to the Australian Vaccination Network, who at the time of writing this have six days to explain to the New South Wales Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing why they were claiming to be a charity when not registered and were collecting money for a specified purpose and not passing the money along.

Now to the ACCC warning, which applies to anyone offering a "business opportunity".

Distribution scheme 'business opportunity' draws ACCC's first public warning

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued its first Public Warning Notice.

The Notice has been issued concerning the conduct of the following corporations:

Halkalia Pty Ltd, a corporation whose principal place of business is Smithfield South Australia, and whose sole director is Mr Norman Lander
Heartlink Enterprises Pty Ltd, a corporation whose principal place of business is Broadford Victoria and whose sole director is Ms Vicki Lowe, and
National Semi Retired Group Pty Ltd, a corporation whose principal place of business is Springvale Victoria, and whose sole director is Mr Laurence Hann.

The ACCC can issue a Notice if it has reasonable grounds to suspect the conduct may breach certain provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974; is satisfied that one or more persons has suffered, or is likely to suffer, detriment as a result of the conduct; and is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so. A key consideration for the ACCC in issuing a Notice is whether it considers there is an imminent need to inform consumers so they can avoid suffering detriment.

In this matter, the ACCC suspects the companies breached the Act by making misleading claims about the income from the business opportunity the companies promote, that is, delivering Heartlink-branded household products to independent supermarkets.

The 'part time delivery business' is advertised in rural, regional and metropolitan newspapers and claims earnings of between $900 and $2,000 per week for between three to four days' work. The ACCC considers the companies have no reasonable basis on which to claim these income projections and the conduct may constitute contraventions of the Act.

The Public Warning Notice follows complaints from individuals who paid between $10,000 and $30,000 for a business. The majority have earned no income and none have reached the projected figure.

An example advertisement is shown:

The ACCC is warning the public that the advertisements may be misleading and that individuals who pay money for the advertised business opportunity may derive no earnings from the business.

PW 01/10

Release # NR 170/10
Issued: 20th August 2010

I don't suppose this will stop those annoying notices which don't mention Herbalife but give a phone number to call for great riches that I see on power poles and traffic light poles, but at least the ACCC is starting to get proactive and issue warnings. This follows the first public warning issued by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission about the Australian Vaccination Network earlier this year. It's about time that people who make outrageous claims are exposed and the public officially warned to think before opening their wallets to these charlatans. I would still like to see some of these crooks locked up, but putting them out of business is a good start.

See more Atheist Cartoons here

Gettin' nekkid (21/8/2010)

There has been another optimistic breakthrough in the scientific proof of acupuncture. Or has there? The latest edition of that fine magazine Australasian Science is on the newsstands and winging its way to subscribers even as we type. As usual it contains the Naked Skeptic column written by me, and this time it looks at a study published in Nature Neuroscience purporting to demonstrate that acupuncture works in mice to reduce pain perception. I was rather underwhelmed by the research, and you can read my comments here.

I'm not the only writer for the magazine and each issue is filled with interesting and useful articles written by experts in a style which allows non-scientists to understand the issues. If your local newsagent doesn't carry it you should pester him to get it in (if you live in Australia, of course) or you can subscribe through the magazine's web site.

John Edward isn't psychic? (21/8/2010)

Someone felt the need to correct my statements about the claimed powers of that fraud John Edward.

From: "Raul daSilva" Subject: Not in debate but for clarity Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:13:57 -0400

I have not known John Edward to declare himself a "psychic" but as a "spirit medium". Since I have had ample personal evidence of this phenomenon as evidential I have no arguments with anyone who claims they have extradimensional contact then prove it beyond any doubt.

Do not confuse the term "psychic" with "spirit medium". Spirit mediums are not prophets (nearly no one is) nor are the average people they contact who are no longer in this wavelength frequency.

But what did I find on Edward's own web site?

It looks like Edward thinks that Edward is a psychic.

You can go here to see everything that has previously appeared on the front page.