Posts filed under 'Bad Scientists'
This December, all eyes will be on a small vocational training centre in Lambeth, where the Society of Homeopaths will be celebrating World Aids Day by holding a conference on how best to treat HIV/AIDS with magic water. For just £55, you can participate in discussions with homeopathic luminaries Jonathan Stallick, Hilary Fairclough and Harry van der Zee (although criticism is apparently not tolerated). This event has not gone unnoticed by opponents to pseudoscience, as Nick Cohen discussed in last week’s Observer. This week, the alternative medics responded, led by Paula Ross, Chief Exec of the Society. She said:
…it should be noted that the symposium will be looking at complementary methods and approaches used by experienced homeopaths in helping with the symptoms of HIV/Aids.
So, not about curing AIDS then. That would put them in contravention of their own charter, which states registered members should “avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease”. Of course, there’s little hope seeing them enforce this rule when members of their own Professional Standards Committee fall foul of it. It’s important then that Ross pushes the idea that homepathy treats the symptoms, not the disease. But do her speakers share the same outlook?
Jonathan Stallick is the author of AIDS: The Homeopathic Challenge, which mentions the “AIDS nosode” as a useful remedy. A quick search for information on the AIDS nosode turns up this book by arch-quack Peter Fraser, who seems to believe that AIDS is a consequence of the electronic age (and similarly, the invention of the printing press was responsible for syphilis). And yes, he claims to be able to treat AIDS, with methods so ridiculous I can’t bear to repeat them.
Hilary Fairclough has funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to bring the homeopathy to people living with AIDS/HIV in Botswana, where she says, through the work of her clinic:
Symptoms were alleviated, immunity boosted and suffering relieved.
It’s hard to know exactly what she means. Symptoms of AIDS or opportunistic infections? Immunity to what boosted? To HIV? It’s pretty horrible to think many of these people will go on to infect their partners or children with an incurable disease because they were given mysticism and water instead of prophylactics and education.
Harry van der Zee will be talking about his mate Peter Chappell’s revolutionary cure – sorry, I mean treatment – for HIV/AIDS. Vital Remedies says:
[Harry] travelled to Malawi in 2004, interviewed dozens of AIDS-patients that had previously been treated by Peter, documented their cases and compared these with their previous case-records. The conclusion … was clear: PC1 for HIV/AIDS works in all cases
So there you have it. These are the people treating “symptoms” of AIDS – seriously deluded folk who show some love to desperate people, get them back on their feet and call it a “treatment” for AIDS. It’s not a treatment. Every single one of those people is still infectious, every single one of them will still die from complications of the disease. And thanks to the homeopaths, an opportunity to manage the disease, educate, prevent and treat was instead spent giving out useless water. These people are the worst homeopathy has to offer. They should be treated with utter contempt, not lauded in South London symposiums.
November 4th, 2007
There’s very few people in the country who can’t be aware of the ongoing drama surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the UK child who vanished from a hotel room while on holiday in Portugal. She has been missing for over five months now, and any hope of finding her alive is almost gone.
One of the saddest aspects of situations such as these is the fertile ground they lay for any number of crackpots, charlatans and frauds, and McCann’s disappearance is sadly not exempt. Today’s Observer reports that retired South African police superintendent Danie Krugel located McCann’s remains as buried under the beach at Praia da Luz, the resort where her family had been staying.
How did Krugel discover this?
Based on a combination of Madeleine’s DNA sample and GPS satellite technology, Krugel’s findings were taken so seriously by Portuguese detectives that officers twice searched the beach.
This would be Krugel’s “Matter Orientation System (MOS)”, a mysterious device that uses quantum technology, the same stuff used to power PWB’s £500 crocodile clip, John Hutchison’s fake anti-gravity machine, and a possible method of turning yourself into a horse. Other than that , little is known about the MOS because Krugel won’t allow it to be examined by anyone. Inexplicably, this is reported by the Observer as a “forensic” test. Worse still, the Portuguese authorities apparently acted upon this “information”.
Nothing upsets us more than the thought of an abducted child, but perhaps some things should. Psychics, clairvoyants, remote viewers, dowsers, and charlatans such as Krugel seem mostly harmless when dishing out “readings” on premium rate phone lines. Assuming the role of serious detective, however, makes them despicable vultures of grief, preying on the most desperate sections of society. Shame on Krugel and his ilk.
October 7th, 2007
Alexis Dubat is an expert on terrorism who has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent figures on the subject – or at least he was, up until last week. French and American news outlets have had to reassess much of the reports filed by Dubat afetr it was revealed that not only did he lack a claimed PhD and experience with the French defence ministry, he also fabricated interviews with Kofi Annan, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg. Click here for the full story.
September 18th, 2007
Various sources are reporting the bizarre case of Dr Joyce Pratt, a GP in Westminster who told a woman seeking contraception advice to drink holy water and seek out an exorcism. Dr Pratt told the patient, known only as Mrs K, that she had been possessed by an evil spirit and that her mother was a witch plotting to kill her. Full story
July 11th, 2007
Paul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist who studied Lamarckian inheritance, who in his lifetime found fame and success and subsequently disrepute and death, in a story involving evolution, Nazis, suicide, India ink and the humble Midwife Toad.
Continue Reading May 15th, 2007
While I’m busy moving house, please enjoy this classic SciencePunk article. Normal service will resume once I get my “office” unpacked.
Ulysses Morrow was a newspaper editor, inventor, and geodesist, who was asked by his friend Cyrus Teed to scientifically prove that the surface of the world was concave. Not only did Morrow accept this challenge – he succeeded in proving the inward curve of the Earth’s surface. This became known as the Naples Experiment.
Continue Reading May 2nd, 2007
Backstory: a company called Monadith, who claim to be able to cure smoking with bioresonance therapy, came to my office to present their nonsense. Anticipating their arrival, I organised a hit group of skeptics to attend, armed with revealing questions.
I think it went rather well.
Around noon, two Monadith reps set up in a tiny room in my office. Both Polish, both female, both young and pretty. Ripping into the reps was clearly going to be harder than I thought. Crowded into the room were ten of us – of which a full SEVEN were on my science hit squad!
The reps (we never did get their names) played two videos – a woefully uncritical BBC report on bioresonance, and a clip from science experts Richard and Judy espousing bioresonance (both of which Ben Goldacre has blogged about in the past). Then… well, actually, that was it. After the two videos, it was question time.
I have to say it made my heart swell with pride as my science hit squad launched into the women. I could barely get a word in edgeways. The poor duo were grilled for 40 minutes, the most brief of summaries I shall outline here:
“You said this treatment gets rid of the nicotine in your body, but nicotine leaves the body in 24 hours anyway. So how does this treatment have a continued effect”
“After 24 hours it is up to you to make the decision not to smoke.”
“How did you calculate the 90% success rate?”
“With statistics!”
“Er, yes, but after how long did you contact the smokers?”
“After one week we rang them to see if they still wanted to smoke”
“So the treatment is only successful for a week?”
“After that, if you decide to smoke it is your choice”
“Why don’t the NHS use this?”
“They don’t seem to want to, they say it doesn’t work but won’t research it”
“It’s not up to them to disprove your claim, it’s up to you to prove it”
“err….”
“When you take a ‘diseased’ reading pattern, how do you know what my healthy pattern is in order to cancel only the diseased part of the vibration?”
“I don’t understand…”
“Is there any clinical proof that this works?”
“No.”
“Who is this Polish doctor?”
“er… I don’t know. I’ve worked here for four years and I don’t know”
“If it is used to cancel pain, why doesn’t the pain come back as soon as the machine is turned off?”
“err….”
“Does the practitioner have a medical licence?”
“He has diplomas, yes”
“Ha, yes, but is he licensed to practise medicine?”
“In Poland, yes”
“Is he licensed to practise medicine in the UK?”
“No…”
All in all, we gave the ladies a rough time, and often they needed to converse in Polish (the one with more technological knowledge spoke less English). They sweated it out like troopers, and at the end asked if anyone would sign up with no real confidence in their voice. Seeing that these two were just the hand of the fraudster, and knew nothing more than what was on the leaflets, we lightened up. We explained that we wanted scientific evidence, and they brightened somewhat and promised to send us clinical proof. I am very much looking forward to that. On the way out, my friend asked one of the three potential customers what she thought. “Bloody ‘ell!”, she breathed “I’m going out for a ciggy!”
As we left for lunch, the concierge of the building had a stack of Monadith flyers on his reception. “You won’t need those”, my friend said, “it’s a fraud.”
“No”, he said adamantly, “it works. My friend hasn’t smoked since. You can’t tell me it doesn’t work”. Any feelings of success were, unfortunately, fleeting.
As I walked to the grocer stand for some lunch, I was handed a flyer. QUIT SMOKING it said. RENEWU! AS SEEN ON RICHARD & JUDY!
March 9th, 2007
Gene Morrison was a prominent forensic psychologist who provided expert testimony in hundreds of court cases over almosy thirty years. However, Morrison himself ended up behind bars when it was discovered that his only qualifications were off-the-sheld diplomas bought from a sham university.
Continue Reading February 22nd, 2007
As I’ve been either drunk or hungover for the last two weeks, I haven’t the strength to write a new article. Please enjoy the following classic from the archives.
Cyrus Teed was an eclectic physician who liked to experiment with dangerously high levels of electicity. One day, he was badly shocked and passed out. When he came round, Teed proclaimed that he had been visited by a divine being who had informed him that he was the messiah. Teed set about using his scientific knowledge to redeem humanity, changing his first name to Koresh, the Hebrew word for Cyrus.Fuelled by divine grace (or perhaps electrically-induced mental instability), Teed denounced the idea that the Earth revolved around the sun and devised a new universe model, which he termed Cellular Cosmology. This states that humans live on the inside of the Earth, with their heads facing the centre and centrifugal force, not gravity, keeping everything in place. The sun is battery operated and stays still, but appears to move due to refraction. Teed enlisted the help of Ulysses Grant Morrow and together they carried out a number of experiments attempting to prove the concave nature of the Earth’s surface.
Teed’s theories, grouped with his ideas on alchemy, immortality, celibacy, collectivism and more, were termed Koreshanity, which he began preaching in New York. He attracted many followers, who formed the Koreshan Unity. Small communes sprang up in various cities, and in 1894 Teed took his followers to Estero, a small Florida town, to form his “New Jerusalem”. They developed the town, erecting buildings, landscaping, and bringing electricity to it and the surrounding area. Attempts to run candidates for local election were unsuccessful.
The community began to break up after Teed died in 1908 following a beating by the town marshall. His followers, believing he would be reincarnated, refused to bury him. Instead they propped up his body in a bathtub and waited for Teed to return to life. Several days later local health officials intervened and forced his burial.
January 2nd, 2007
Sergeant James Shearer was an auxiliary nurse in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. Whilst stationed in France, Shearer designed and built a machine which he christened Shearer’s Delineator. The Delineator was a small box which could be pointed at a patient. Pressing a button produced a diagram of the patient peppered with small holes which denoted the presence of disease.
Continue Reading November 27th, 2006
Hwang Woo-Suk first appeared on the world stage in 1999, announcing that his team had cloned a dairy cow. Curiously, this breakthrough was presented via press release rather than submission of scientific paper – a tell-tale sign of pseudoscience.
Continue Reading November 10th, 2006
Masaru Emoto is a Japanese pseudoscientist who claims that by directing positive or negative thoughts at water we can affect the shape of the crystals that form when it is frozen.
Continue Reading October 31st, 2006
Rene-Prosper Blondlot was a French physicist working at the turn of the century at the University of Nancy, France. In 1903, he announced the discovery of N rays, a form of radiation which turned out to be non-existent.
Continue Reading October 27th, 2006
Charles Redheffer appeared in Philadelphia in 1812, exhibiting a machine of his invention at $1 per person admission. He claimed that the device produced enough energy that it could power itself and still have some left over (making it a perpetuum mobile), and lobbied for funds to build a larger version.
Continue Reading October 17th, 2006
Cyrus Teed was an eclectic physician who liked to experiment with dangerously high levels of electicity. One day, he was badly shocked and passed out. When he came round, Teed proclaimed that he had been visited by a divine being who had informed him that he was the messiah.
Continue Reading October 5th, 2006
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