This is really appalling—“Doctor Yourself”:

DoctorYourself.com

World’s Largest HEALTH HOMESTEADING website

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your health.

What is this, hmm? This is the work of one “Andrew Saul, PhD”¹ and what a piece of work it is. Every piece of woo medicine you’ve ever read about is contained in this one website. Homeopathy? Yep. What about vitamin C as a cure for AIDS (and HPV! Double whammy on the sexually transmitted diseases there!)? Oh yeah, we got that too. Maybe throw in magnesium for epilepsy too.

But this is all run of the mill stuff. What about his assertion that “the germ theory was complete bullshit” to really throw the cat among the pigeons?

We do indeed have a proper nutcase here. And he appears to have a love affair with vitamin C. Really, there seems to be nothing it can’t be applied to that won’t be fixed within the week. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.) He’s even got a full guide to strong-arming your doctors into giving intravenous vitamin C.

Unfortunately I don’t really have the medical knowledge to go through this site page by page. This is a lifetime’s project for someone.

I’ll leave you with the knowledge that Dr (or should that be “Dr”) Saul is “Assistan Editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine”, which is probably about as well regarded as Homeopathy. Ho hum.

In Christopher Brookmyre’s superlative One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, he invents the concept of BDQ: Bullet Deadliness Quotient. Essentially it is the rule that you can’t go changing the rules halfway. If you want dangerous realism in your action movies, it’s got to stay that way, and not turn into “your John Woo movies: zillions of rounds goin’ off an’ the only thing they ever hit is glass”.

BDQ is a fine concept and just as applicable to science fiction. And Richard Morgan’s Black Man (called the cringe-inducing Th1rte3n in the US) fails to abide by its own rules.

Black Man is set 200 years hence. Genetic ‘variants’ have been bred for the classic undesirable tasks — compliant females for prostitution, aggressive males for soldiering. The central character is one of the latter, a ‘variant thirteen’, despised by practically everyone, not allowed to breed, locked up or sent to Mars for the safety of everyone else.

This would have been fine for the sake of the story if he’d just used the “genetically engineering super-soldier” approach. They are ten a penny and not really a problem. We’ve been doing that kind of thing with crops and animals for tens of thousands of years. But instead the author decided to resurrect hunter-gatherer man from tens of thousands of years ago.

The central conceit is that since they were hunters, they were naturally stronger and faster than the farmers that succeeded them. I’m not convinced of the argument, since that would suggest there would be massive genetic differences between us flabby office workers and the few remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer societies that still exist in Africa and South America. This is not an argument or evidence I have ever heard presented.

But taking that as a done deal, we also have to assume that these old genes actually coded for smarter people too, something I find even harder to believe. Human society demands technology and intelligence — I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that would be bred out as dangerous.

But finally, and most importantly, is how the author ignores all biological repercussions of the story setup. He claims to have got the idea from reading one of science writer Matt Ridley’s books. It’s a shame he wasn’t paying attention while he did so. Not only are we to believe that the variant thirteens are stronger, faster and more intelligent but they also have more effective immune systems. Despite being pre-agriculture they can also drink alcoholic beverages without serious side-effects. Consider that even the ability to process milk is a very recent development for Europeans it all seems desperately implausible.

Notably, for someone who cites Matt Ridley (author of Nature via Nurture), he ignores the effect of nurture and environment on people’s personalities. At only one point does one of the characters mention that these so-called uebermensch were given combat training and so on from an extremely young age. The effect this would have on a person’s nature is completely disregarded by everyone else.

The rest of the book was similarly disappointing. The story had about a dozen endings before it finally stopped, abruptly. The most interesting character was a female variant thirteen: this was so unusual that the other characters didn’t know such a thing existed. It was like the scene in X Men 2 when Wolverine meets Lady Deathstryke. And then just like she is killed in the movie, this woman promptly vanishes after claiming to be pregnant. The most interesting part of the book and gets ignored from then on… The writing was a bit on the florid side for me, too. I was cringing too regularly, which is never a good sign.

According to Darrell Huff, it’s easy to lie with statistics. But it’s just as easy to lie with any kind of science, for the same reason — there’s a lot of knowledge out there and most people aren’t familiar with the basics. So people can come up with intuitively plausible ideas like homeopathy using some quantum-theoretic means of healing, and many people will accept it.

Creationist lecturers make a living from this ambiguity: giving just enough knowledge to tempt the audience into making a leap to a fallacious conclusion. One of the examples the Intelligent Design creationists like is something called Information Theory, which they misrepresent and abuse readily.

Information Theory sounds like it might be about meaning and purpose. Of course, information in that sense is entirely in the eye of the beholder. (Imagine having a crossed line on the telephone while you’re talking to a friend. As far as you’re concerned, the other conversation going on is ‘noise’, while yours is ‘information’; the other people think the exact opposite.) There are no formalisms for deciding how useful something is. But the creationists don’t clarify what is meant by information; they just let you make assumptions because it suits their purpose.

In information theory, a message has information if you can’t predict what it says before you read it. So a dice with a single spot on each face provides no information — you knew it would show a 1 before you rolled. An ordinary dice is unpredictable, so when it stops you’ve learned some piece of information. This is how information theory regards information: as something which informs.

Whether it is interesting or useful is irrelevant. In fact, the most informative message possible is one which consists entirely of random numbers, since it has the most unpredictability.

As well as not defining what is meant by information, creationists then claim that information cannot be created. (This is why they bring it up: to show that complex DNA cannot evolve.) But from the correct definition given above, we can see it is very easy to create complex information. Any noisy signals — leaves rustling, background radiation — are fantastic sources of information.

They mean to say that structured, interesting information cannot be spontaneously created, so genomes require a designer. But in this regard, information theory is not helpful, so they lie about what it says and hope to create a convincing argument from the half-truths and fancy mathematical terms.

In further posts I’ll talk about the good stuff in information theory, and places where you’ll come across it. Tune in next time!

Just a short Beyond Parody today, as I’m really a bit stunned at this whole scenario. I’m really having second thoughts about putting it in this category, which I’ve been reserving for light-hearted stupidities.

But no matter, it certainly fits with the spirit of things. Never in all my life could I have predicted this. According to the state of Virginia’s laws on parental neglect, faith healing is a legitimate means of looking after your child:

However, no child who in good faith is under treatment solely by spiritual means through prayer in accordance with the tenets and practices of a recognized church or religious denomination shall for that reason alone be considered to be an abused or neglected child.

It’s beyond my limited powers of comprehension why this was considered an even half-way credible idea. That they are honestly advocating prayer healing as valid for anything — let alone cancer, diabetes or anything else life-threatening. — is absurd. What kind of crack are these people on?

So in the second example of things which just seem so far out there it’s a wonder people can take themselves seriously, we have the archetype of ‘science by press release’. Ben Goldacre has the full story about children’s brains gaining “three years’ of development in just three months”. Find out the, ah, details there.

I want to look at the story in general terms. Is there anything that doesn’t scream pseudoscience? So, a checklist:

• Extraordinary claims? Yes indeed. In three months these fat, TV watching 11-year olds were turned into book-loving Adonises, or something.
• Ordinary measures? Yes again. It’s that old favourite, omega-3/6 fatty acids. To turn into a genius, all you need is an amply portioned fish supper.
• Terrible statistics? Of course. With a sample size of four kids (honestly) it’s pretty impossible to determine anything from what they did.
• Uncontrolled variables? Naturally. If 4 subjects doesn’t seem like stretching scientific credibility to you, how about changing loads of things at once? Not only were the kids given a number of supplements they were also asked to cut down on fizzy drinks, fatty snacks and get more exercise. How do we know it wasn’t the games of football that caused the reported improvements in brain power?
• Self-promotion? I’m glad you asked that question: find out more on the researcher’s Channel Five documentary later this week…
• Good for whatever ails you? But of course! The great thing about snake oil is that it can be applied to any illness, real or imagined. The man behind these claims has three books on Amazon, all claiming the efficacy of these same supplements for a wide variety of afflictions. You can purchase Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Natural Way to Treat ADHD, and also The Natural Way to Beat Depression: The Groundbreaking Discovery of EPA to Successfully Conquer Depression and after that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Natural Way to Treat ME.
• Bypassing Peer Review? Sorry, peer what? This is important research that the public needs to know. Quick, call the Daily Mail!
• Science by Commission? Study funded by the TV company that’s making the documentary. I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

All we’re really missing is some form of celebrity endorsement. What better advertisement for the brain-boosting power of omega-3 fatty acids than Jade Goody or Tom Cruise? ;-)

I’ve decided to start a new category to put mind-boggling stuff in. Stuff (like the Conservapedia) which is beyond anything a keen satirist could come up with on their own.

For the first in this new series I would like to introduce GodTube, the Christian version of YouTube. Tagline: Broadcast Him. Presumably YouTube is too secular or something.

There are videos of “Christian clown training” (which you can parse how you wish); a presentation about September 11 and the Book of Revelations; and How to teach the controversy over Darwin legally.

This is truly the video equivalent of Conservapedia.

If I had the ability and know-how, I’d set up a science site called SmartieTube. Named in homage to the late lamented Smartie tube. ;-) But you could just go to YouTube instead…

Isn’t it wonderful how easily one can tell how stupid a newspaper article will be from just the first sentence? Today’s Sentence of Dumb award goes to Sarah Ewing of the Sunday Herald (Killer Cocktails, p32, Magazine, 07/01/07); the winning entry was:

Every one of us carries traces of chemicals in our bodies and as the use of chemicals in our everyday life has increased, so too have the cases of cancer, hormonal and reproductive problems and neurological disorders.

OMGZ! Teh chemicalz are coming!1eleventyone!1 Dangerous stuff like dihydrogen monoxide, I don’t doubt! Luckily prehistoric man didn’t have to cope with such terrible stuff, because they lived in a purely natural world. /sarcasm

To be fair to Ms Ewing she is trivially correct in what she says. Incidence of breast cancer was extremely low in the superheated mass of subatomic particles which existed just after the Big Bang. But since the appearance of chemicals in the universe it’s all gone from bad to worse.

I will spare you the rest of the article. Needless to say it can be characterised as a list of unsubstantiated claims with liberal sprinklings of experts claim and according to a recent study.

If you were paying attention to the field of pseudoscience a couple of weeks ago you’ll remember the story of the maths teacher who revolutionised division by zero and without a by-your-leave was teaching it to secondary school pupils. Not only was he subverting the standard procedure of childhood education (by teaching his pet fantasies as the next great Truth) he was also talking a load of cobblers.

His point rests on the unfortunate fact of there not being an answer for division by zero. In fact, it’s defined as not being answerable. In computer programming this has the unfortunate result of occasionally causing a problem or two. Division doesn’t get used in maths or programming as much as, for example, addition but it does pop up. What was your average score for all the games you’ve played? Well, add up all the scores and divide by the number of games.

But what if you’ve only just installed the software and the number of games played = zero. What then is the average, since we cannot divide by zero? This problem is easy enough to predict and avoid: we only calculate the average if there’s been at least one game played. Some circumstances are less easy to predict, and sometimes the programmer just plain forgets to check.

The result of division by zero is an error. This error is named Not a Number, or NaN for short. If the programmer commits such a faux pas then two things will happen. The program may follow Elvis and “leave the building”, which will often result in a little dialog box in Windows saying the program attempted a division by zero.

The other thing that happens — and this is, I think, more common in languages which don’t mind about well-typed results — is that “NaN” is rendered as a literal result. So the average score over the last zero games played is… NaN.

Just to illustrate the point, codeman38 kindly allowed me to use the weather widget shown. The person who wrote this obviously didn’t check for the presence of zeroes before dividing and the result is as you see — very silly.

This is as much as anyone needs to know on the subject:

I mean, my only problem with creationism is it being discussed as theory instead of as pointless solipsistic wanking.

From Slashdot. I lol’d (literally).

It appears that the Archbishop of Glasgow didn’t much like me taking him to task over his poor grasp of the facts, so decided to quote-mine me and another critic of his from the same letters page.

Note that he completely ignored the largest substance of my letter where I pointed out how very, very wrong he was; and how his arguments were just warmed-over arguments from the anti-embryonic research campaigners in the United States.

(And yes, it feels deeply satisfying to have riled a full archbishop all by myself!)