The Royal Institution: Is this Building for the future? (Pod Delusion Ep. 172)

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Following on from a report in Pod Delusion Episode 171 as to why we should save the Royal Institution, following the story that it was to sell its home in Albemarle St, London, I wanted to present a case on why (primarily from a science communication point of view) we shouldn't - at least - not at any cost.

To get the full flavour of the arguments for and against, here is the advised reading list:

• Rebekah Higgitt: Heritage and the Royal Institution.
• Michael Brooks: The Royal Institution doesn’t represent my kind of Britishness in science.
• Martin Robbins: Royal Institution: ‘Nobody cares about your stupid history!’
• Tania Browne: The Royal Institution building should be saved for everyone.
• Prof Bruce Hood: Does Science Have a Soul? The Potential Sale of a Sacred Site of Science
• Stephen Curry: Do not read this blogpost about the Royal Institution.
• Kash Farooq - The Royal Institution: Can we just give it to the National Trust? Or the Science Museum Group? 

Here is the script (with a touch of advice from @kashfarooq)
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On last week’s Pod Delusion, James interviewed Mary Perkins regarding her campaign to save 21 Albemarle Street, the home of the Royal Institution.

I should start by saying that I’m pretty sure the Ri and Albemarle Street will survive - together and intact. Many famous and eminent scientists who I love and respect are fighting for it and it feels odd for me not to be joining them & giving it my support.  

I listened with interest and attentively to Mary’s report but remain entirely unconvinced that saving the current residence of the RI is something I feel  I can support, and in the next few minutes I want to lay out my arguments.

Firstly, we need to separate the argument for saving the RI from the argument for saving its home in Mayfair. The RI’s strapline is “connecting people with the world of science”. A few hundred years ago it may well have been a necessity to have an open access institute where people could come and share their science and research, but today? Who was the last ground-breaking scientist who felt the need to go to Mayfair in London to communicate their ideas with the public - (think of how much of the UK demographic in terms of geography and socio-economics that excludes). Just to be clear, the main issue isn’t about saving the RI. In reality, it seems to me that most of the good work that the RI do could be done more efficiently in a purpose built location.

Here are main reasons that Mary put forward as to why the location needed to be kept:

Faraday Research Labs  - Having a research lab in the one of the most expensive areas in London is not essential. The quality of research would be no different in another part of London or elsewhere in the UK. That’s not to denigrate the awesome work that goes on there, just that if it didn’t happen at Albemarle Street, it would still happen.

The Christmas Lectures – These could be done from anywhere, surely if the RI was genuinely interested in communicating science to kids outside of London they would take it round various UK cities rather than continually hold it in the famous if uncomfortable Faraday Lecture Theatre in wst London.  Even if the RI moved to another location, there is no reason why the lecture theatre couldn’t be painstakingly moved too, for those who feel somewhat religious about it, as if the essence of Faraday is somehow with them in that holy place, in the Cathedral of Science.

Ri Channel – This is collection of online videos of previous Christmas Lectures and the like which by its very definition does not require a giant expensive event space in London. 

These are things that people know the RI for, but none of them rely on the building. Science isn’t the hot topic in the heart of Mayfair, but it is on blogs, tweets, papers and pub meet ups which are happening all over the country without a dusty institute at the helm…

The main proponents for keeping Albemarle St argue from a sense of history and historical scientific value, but I’m not convinced that its place in history alone is enough to warrant survival at any cost. Perhaps a comparison to Bletchley Park is apposite – it was in dire need of funding and came close to collapsing, but successfully negotiated funding from public and private purses, not only out of sense of historic entitlement, but by laying out clearly its plan for the future and its plan for survival.

Secondly, Is the Ri doing what it’s supposed to be doing? My answer is – I’m not sure. I have a PhD, as does my wife yet neither of us during all our combined 3 decades of science education and work life came across the Ri in any format except the Christmas Lectures.  Maybe a sample of 2 is not enough, but I have a hunch we’re not alone. From my experience, UK science hasn’t needed the Ri for decades  - the Ri has continued “to be” but this is all it seems to do. It exists purely with the aim of existing. As if because it can throw some famous names on the table, it has a right to survive at all costs.  It was a once world-renowned important scientific keystone, but how relevant is it today?  If the RI sold off its premises and closed itself down would there be a loss to UK science education? In my opinion, nothing that couldn’t be taken up elsewhere. The main jewel in the RI crown ,The Christmas Lectures, could easily continue without it.

Mary skipped over the finer details of why the RI suddenly finds itself selling off the family silver in order to survive. Baroness Susan Greenfield was director of the RI. You may remember her for having some ideas about 

 "the damage that the gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains."

But ideas were all they were, as she refused to publish any evidence for her ideas, instead using her access to media to promote them and bypass scrutiny. This is completely at odds with the scientific method and how science works - demeans science to the level of untested ideas and uncritical relativism. This from a person who is supposed to be the head of an institute which claims to “connect people with the world of science”. (Have a listen to Episode 96 of the Pod Delusion for more of her antics). Any credible science promotion organisation should have been  embarrassed to have such an opposing force to robust scientific testing at its helm. I guess with Prince Charles as Vice-Patron, the RI has never insisted on their top brass being too on-message. 

Greenfield oversaw a refurbishment (with support of the governing council) of the RI home at cost of £22 million. The idea was to create an “event space” and “a fine dining experience”.  Nothing says inclusivity and the dissemination of science to the public like a fine dining event space in the middle of Mayfair.  As the downturn kicked in, the “event space” didn’t bring the expected cash, and the Ri is now saddled with £7m of debt and can’t currently pay its running costs. Albemarle Street doesn’t need rescuing because of underfunding, it needs it because of a failed renovation involving millions of pounds of charity money. 

So back to Mary’s Pod Delusion piece. She is asking us to sign a petition to get the government to bail out the RI for their risky financial project that went wrong so that it can continue to exist (nothing about the future, just to exist). Having spent the last number of years grumbling about bank bailouts, I would be a tremendous hypocrite to argue that it’s ok for the RI to be bailed out and not banks because science. More irritatingly, Albemarle Street is estimated at £60m – way more than their trifling £7m debts. They would still have a huge warchest to put towards actually engaging the public in science rather than maintaining a white elephant in the middle of London. Remember it’s a charity – value for money should be paramount out of respect to your donors.  Eminent Scientists like Bruce Hood have pressed the importance of inspiring buildings, a sense of history and places of science wonder which play a valuable part in the societal role of science, but ugly economics have to come in to play at some point.

Of course, I don’t want to see the RI fail or the site sold off, I want the RI to reinvent itself and for people to have the same awe and respect for the building as they did back during its heyday, but it can’t expect that of the public, it needs to do the graft and fulfil its desire of informing the public about science.

Mary asked us to help by joining the RI at a cost of £28 as associate member. Sure. Pay £28 so that the RI which burned through its own cash can continue to rent out space below cost and feed posh food to people in Mayfair under the guise of science communication? Ok so maybe that’s trolling a bit, but...

If you actually care about science communication to the public, rather than dewy-eyed history dressed up as scicomms, I’m willing to bet that pound for pound, your 28 quid would go a lot further if you donated it to the Pod Delusion. Last week’s show had a piece on upside down backbones in tetrapods and the ethics of cloning Neanderthals. One episode of the Pod Delusion introduced me to more novel scientific ideas than a lifetime of the RI. And it doesn’t have a holy building.

This is Dr*T, running for cover from angry scientists, for the Pod Delusion.

 

Pod Delusion: MAYA-POCALYPT-AGEDDON! (but I feel fine)

Podcast: Download

In an odd turn of events, I've ended up singing a sparkling one-off theme tune for this week's END OF THE WORLD SPECIAL Pod Delusion.

I wrote the lyrics and Professor Music himself, Milton Mermikedes slapped them onto a backing track of R.E.M's "It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)".

As it was all done in a last minute rush, with sub-optimal equipment ..*cough*.. the lyrics aren't as clear as they could have been had I had a decent piece of software. As a result, a few have asked what all the lyrics are, and so I've put them here for posterity.

A new thing for me - and a fun thing. Hopefully, it will be considered less preferable to the apocalypse. Apologies to Berry, Mills, Buck and Stipe.

T

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ITEOTWAWKI (AIFF) - Pod Delusion Version

It’s great, a lefty liberal, podcast, award-winning and not afraid
Partnered with the BHA

Sally Morgan. Psychic test. This week’s special guest.
Pussy riot sent down. Solar System Marcus Chown.

40 days for life, dead, Simon Singh, Libel Win.
Human cyborg clatter with Science Thing, Girl Thing

Faith in your face, represent Michael Gove in a government for
hire in a bad twitter joke.

Pineapple prophet, Robin Ince, threat of libel
breathing down your neck.

Crowd sourced reporting, Ayn Rand, begging slot. Look at that bold
claim.

Assange. Rape.

Uh oh, Jeez and Mo, let the GM crops grow, creationism.
Jesus saves, Starbucks save.
Workfare its shirkfare, listen to the Tory chair.
Tell me of the rapture and the Snoopers on the right.
Right.

Al-Khalili, Lovelace, Drew Rae, fail whale
Fuck You Daily Mail.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other side. Hitchens died. Continent is secularised.
Darwin. Obscenity. JAMES O-MALL-EY.
Elizabeth Lutgendorf, Stephen Fry and Hugh Grant.
Ban the burka, council prayers, Richard Dawkins, boom!
Use censorship. Membership.
More Pod Delusions, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Inkredulous : Episode 16

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:25:48 — 29.5MB)

Back again with another Inkredulous podcast, this time with George Hrab from the Geologic podcast, and MC of QEDcon 2011 and Jay Novella from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Podcast.

Jay Novella

George Hrab

You may have come across these rational heroes before - they are SO FAMOUS that they each have their own Wiki page, (I know!) so you can imagine it was a pretty daunting for a shmo like me.

Still, it was a total blast and, as seems to happen every time I record one of these things, immediately afterwards I have the fear that I was rubbish, but when the edit comes out, Andy (@inkredulosi) somehow makes it seem not so bad..... Here's a line from Jay that made me feel all warm and wanted :)



As always, the text is below, although the Honey Blues are greatly enhanced by George and his demon guitar-fingered noodling.

I MUST START BLOGGING AGAIN I MUST START BLOGGING AGAIN I MUST START BLOGGING AGAIN I MUST START BLOGGING AGAIN I MUST START BLOGGING AGAIN (ad nauseam)

Enjoy

T



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Here is my "Honey" blurb for Question 1:

This is the story of the weird coloured honey appearing and proof IF PROOF BE NEEDED that all women love chocolate…and it goes something like this.

I woke up this morning

Doing what I do

I went to my beehive

And all my honey was blue

I got the blues so bad baby,

All my honey has turned blue

And even stranger than what I’d seen

Some of my honey had turned green…

Andy, French farmers have recently been finding that their honey, which normally consists of sweet sticky sugary honey goodness, currently consists of sweet sticky sugary honey goodness and a large amount of highly coloured contamination. Cries of “Sacre Bleu LITTERALEMENT” could be heard throughout the town of Ribeauvillé as honey farmers stared in amazement at their jars of blue, green, and turquoise honey. For European listeners, Ribeauvillé is near Strasbourg and for the US listeners it is …like…. near Iraq.

Andy, honey is a natural product and bees, of one form or another, have been making honey for about 30 million years.  Which is about 30 million years (give or take a few thousand) before man was created by God, if US Senate Candidate Todd Akin (who sits on the House Committee of Science, Space & Tech) is to be believed. Indeed Mr Akin, won’t believe evolution, but probably would believe that Samson off of the Bible ate some honey which bees had made inside a Lion’s carcass, a lion which he had killed with his own bare hands a few verses earlier. No really, he did. Judges 14 – all true.

As I know you know, I keep bees myself and the honey bee life cycle is phenomenally interesting and, you’ll be surprised to know, very different from our human one  – for instance, it is matriarchal society made up of a Queen bee at the top, and worker bees lower down, all of whom are female. Fancy having a workplace with women at the top and all the workers women! It’s institutionalised misandry, is what it is. Every hive has a handful of drone bees whose only real purpose is to mate – they are effectively dungeon sex-slaves. After a drone has had sex with a queen, which happens mid-flight, his tiny little bee-cock detaches inside the queen and pulls out his abdomen, causing the male bee to die.

This has almost never happened to me.

So all the worker bees – and in this newstory, most importantly the ones who go flying about looking for nectar, - are all women. Their plan is to go out into the big bad world, using a combination of ultraviolet and coloured light, smell and random chance to find their food – pollen for now and nectar to make honey for winter. Once they find a good source, they can convey this information to other bees. If those bees also find the good source, they will tell more bees and so on so forth. If the source is big enough eventually, a high percentage of the foraging bees will end up at that source.

When the French honeyfarmers near Ribeauvillé came to collect their honey, it was various shades of blues and green. This meant that was a fairly big source of highly coloured nectar or nectar like product.

And so it turned out that the source was a biomass plant processing waste from a local M&M’s production facility, who had left the waste from the Mars factory uncovered, and the sticky, sugary chocolately mess had been hovered up by the hungry bees.  The bees then regurgitated this highly-coloured pre-honey, into the honeycomb and then fanned it with their wings to evaporate off some of the water to leave blue honey.

So there you have it. Weird coloured honey and proof all women love chocolate.

 

Infant Colic - A Whole New World of Manipulating the Vulnerable

Maybe the title oversells itself, maybe not. I'm writing this as a parent with no medical background.

As I mentioned in my last post, last Christmas I became a parent for the first time. Like probably every other parent since the dawn of time, my wife and I became over-joyed, sleep-deprived, ecstatic, irritable, jibberish-talking, mono-dimensional, indecisive, happy-as-its-possible-to-be, braindead and amazed all at the same time.

Probably also like every other first time parent, it felt like it wasn't just the first time for us, but for the whole of mankind. It turns out, I now know, that the total sum of 25,000 years or so of human knowledge on early day parenting is pretty much "Do what you think is right".

I had never realised how effective sleep-deprivation is at reducing the average human to a jibbering jelly-wobble of indecision in just a few nights - it is used as a torture method for extremely good reasons, as a prisoner can be reduced to basic functionality very quickly, and as result the practice is banned under the European Convention on Human Rights. Very soon, dealing with the three basic childcare functions (eating, sleeping and nappy-filling) becomes more difficult than that dream you have when you are on Mastermind answering questions about 12th Century Russia, and you realise you're only wearing your pants. Stories from the hilarious near-misses to the other horrific extreme are plentiful and at least in part caused by an otherwise well-intentioned but sleep-deprived parent.

On top of the zombified brains of the parents, it turns out that the innate language of the newborn is loud crying - it appears to operate on a many-to-one relationship with no assistance given in establishing what issue is caused the howling. The amount of crying varies a lot from one to another, but the scale goes from "A LOT" to "INCESSANT". Throw in sleep deprivation and you have the following:

1. Potential for marital discord, postpartum depression, Shaken Baby Syndrome, suffocation,  frequent visits to doctors and an increase in maternal smoking amongst other outcomes.
2. A huge and continual group of people, whose reasoning ability has been crippled, and who would do almost literally anything to alleviate the pressure they are under.

You can hear the marketeers of magic potions rubbing their hands.

Everyone knows what colic is and how it's dealt with. Except it turns out they don't, instead relying on perceived wisdom passed down the generation or osmosed from friends and adverts. My experience (from friends) is that having a baby screaming for what feels like an eternity for no reason on a fairly regular basis for those first few months is common and is just babies doing their newborn thing. This, in my experience, is difficult to deal with has two extremely painful psychological outcomes:

1. To have this beautiful bundle of happiness that relies on you for everything screaming without reason is surely indicative of BAD PARENTING and the noise hell is YOUR FAULT.
2. A responsible parent would DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. (The something is irrelevant, as long as it is being done.)

It's no wonder that there is a huge market for colic relief products - what self-respecting marketeer could miss out on the opportunity to medicalise a natural part of life and sell some placebos to such a vulnerable, inexhaustable strata of exhausted consumers who are actively looking for an elixir?

It's even better for snakeoil salespeople that colic is undefinable - the strict definition is "a condition of a healthy baby in which it shows periods of intense, unexplained fussing/crying lasting more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week for more than 3 weeks" but in reality it is a term given to any fussy/crying baby that seems to be crying more than the person would expect a baby to cry for. It resolves both the pyschological situations above - my baby has colic, and so I am not a bad parent and it is not my fault. More than that I CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Colic is historically assumed to caused by trapped gas somewhere in the innards - the babies tend to be stretching, bending, farting and burping whilst in the midst of a big yell, so it seems to make sense, but the truth is more likely to be a complex variety of causes and indeed it's poorly understood. This is only a minor inconvenience to the marketeers - people reckon it's gas, so they sell a product that treats the issue parents think their babies have.

It's worth noting that it was chiropractors claiming to treat colic that led Simon Singh to write in the Guardian in April 2008

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, [...], even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments

The quote lead to the BCA suing Simon Singh for libel, which resulted in the "Quacklash" (my own assistance is here), and lead to the BCA dropping the suit.

The Breastfeeding Network UK has provided an overview document here called "Assessing the Evidence - treatments for Colic" (2002) which covers most of the major products around - given the fact that colic is now considered to be a multi-cause issue, I'd be surprised if there was much new to discuss in the decade since it was written. Let me know if this is isn't the case. 

Unsurprisingly, the major products treat (either directly or indirectly) the problem of trapped gas -

- Simethicone (sold in UK under the brandname of INFACOL(R)) is the leading selling product and has been shown to be no better than distilled water. Of course, such a minor truth wouldn't stop them from claiming that the "Trusted help for infant colic is right here".

- lactase enzymes (brand name COLIEF(R)) that are supposed to assist with transient lactase deficiency have also shown to be ineffective, or at the very least have a small number of poor quality trials that sort of show a dubious effect in some cases.

As you can see from the pic, COLIEF(R) claims to Reduce the Hours of Crying. Any sleep-deprived, vulnerable parent with a colicky baby seeing this will read no further than the marketing strapline and head for the tills. Obviously, it doesn't make mention of the fact that the studies (which involved very small numbers of babies) only looked at those cases which were believed to have been caused by lactase deficiency and that previous larger studies had found no correlation between lactase deficiency and colic. Talk about cherry-picking...

Mrs Dr*T picked up a similar COLIEF(R) leaflet in her GP's surgery - the marketeers making sure they had access to as many de-sleepified automatons as possible.

More positively, the UK adverts watchdog has today ruled that both the website and the leaflet were misleading and the claims could not be substantiated. The company who markets COLIEF(R) in the UK, Crosscare Ltd, despite being in Ireland and technically outside ASA's remit, were told that they had to have adequate substantiation before they could make efficacy claims in future and the ad must not be used again.

In my view, putting misleading literature with dubious claims in a doctor's surgery to cash in on vulnerable parents is not very classy. In fact, it's pretty shitty.

Most of our friends have tried and used these dodgy products sometimes with anecdotal success - given the cause of colic is unknown, it's path of presentation is also unknown, as is it's longevity. It's easy to see how a confusion of causality with coincidence could occur - colic only tends to last 12 weeks in the majority of cases, it'll take a few of those to get you to breaking point and a few more trying various treatments. Throw in a handful of regression to the mean and you can see how you get the mix up. We tried the one of the products ourselves on the advice of the health visitor. I was apprehensive and did some research only to find the evidence found wanting. In truth, the psychological impact of "doing something" was extremely persuasive, and it was a battle of rationality over gut-feeling to convince ourselves that the treatment was pointless, and we were just psychologically manipulating ourselves.

(The health visitor went on to recommend cranial osteopathy (which deserves a blogpost of its own) - when I said that the NHS website says there is no evidence for it, she claimed that was because "the NHS don't provide it and they only want people to use their services". Indeed.)

We're through the worst of those crazy, fun, exhilerating, desperate days and the brain is currently doing an excellent job of rewriting history and making me think that it wasn't as bad as we initially remembered, which I guess is a good thing.

One thing it won't stop me doing though, is getting angry and vociferous about companies who are prepared to see weak, vulnerable, sleep-deprived parents as an acceptable demographic for their bullshit potions.

QEDcon 2012: Inkredulous Podcast Episode 12

Just realised I hadn't put this up here, even though the actual event was on 10th March. Well, that's kind of how things are the minute, being a new, first-time parent...

Inkredulous - Episode 12 (Play in New Window) 

I hadn't planned to do anything at QEDcon this year, just attend, as the recent arrival of Baby*T had efficiently hoovered up most of my free time (in a good way!). However, on the Sat, someone planning to be on the Inkredulous Podcast panel couldn't attend, and after asking almost everyone in attendance, Andy asked me if I would oblige.

Sunday morning was spent INCREDIBLY hungover, trying to cobble together something suitable (and hopefully funny) for the live recording. When I've done Inkredulous before, we've recorded about 3 - 4 hours of blether, in the hope of winnowing out an hour of passable material, so this was going to be a mission. To add to the pressure, Times columnist David Aaronovitch and TV magician Paul Zenon were on the panel, as well as Marsh from Merseyside Skeptics.

In the pained, hungover state I was trying to prepare in, I think my quality control gene was misfiring, and so hastily ended up with something that could have been offensive, sprinkled with a selection of cheap cock jokes. In the end, I think the audience was as hungover as I was, so perhaps we communicated on the same wavelength....

Oh, and being a new parent has exposed me to a world of bullshit science that I never knew existed. One day, I'll blog it, once I've had a good night's sleep.....

T

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Andy, there is a sickness in this land. A sickness that will lead to the inevitable destruction of global humanity. The Pope has voiced it and Our most senior UK catholic has voiced it.

This apocalyptic behemoth is not religion, which provides peace and charity throughout all countries of the world,

it is not racism which is largely non-existent as demonstrated by US republican politics,

it is not sexism, which apart from a few excitable loudmouth woman is largely an academic interest. I explained this to someone last night in the elevator.

It isn't the global arms industry, which is worth 1.5 trillion dollars/year, which helps sustain stability, and peace In difficult and testing circumstances.

it isn't hunger, famine, disease or pestilence or natural disasters

no, in fact this evil that will explode the cornerstone of society is

THE GAY.

Apparently some of these diseased people want the same rights as normal heterosexual people and want to get married! Married Andy!

When will the lunatic leftie liberal fringe in this country realise that when you choose to be gay you are choosing a lifestyle with reduced rights. Rights are for Adam and Eve not Madam and Eve. (a twist on an old favourite)

The sacraments are God-given and not up for being changed by men, willy nilly, and I use the phrase advisedly. It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know The Gays will be wanting to have the same rights at other religious events. You know, things that right-minded people would baulk at - dignified funerals and such. Sickening really.

Marriage is about children, Andy. Which is why old people aren't allowed to get married and I should also point out that the pope also says cohabiting couples and sex outside marriage are both quite evil, but at least they follow the "manufacturers instructions" and don't become genital-jailbreakers.

That's why today, a letter from UK's highest catholic, a man in a skirt - I pass no comment - is being read out in churches pleading to its parishioners for more intolerance, to be more homophobic, more exclusive, more hating, and ultimately more irrelevant.

This is yet another example of religious people exhibiting their unhealthy predeliction for dictating what other people do with their fizzy bits.

In fairness, it's just gay men probably. Given these religions are entirely men, it's possible that lesbianism is a *cough* "tolerated evil", I don't know. But it does seem to be all about the outer danglies.

Can you imagine the effect, if the church had, as they have in this case, assembled their efforts, made loud proclamations, got letters read out in all churches, and used their media contacts to investigate and bring justice to the hundreds of people abused at the hands of the paedophile priests within that same organisation? Would that not be a more edifying effort?

Rather than bring justice to those who they have sinned against, they'd rather promote intolerance and hatred of gay couples who want equality. This from the mouth of a man who wears a dress - to be fair,  it's not a dress it's called a cassock. A word that comes from the union of ass and cock.

I personally don't think that gay marriage is something that will uproot civilisation as we know it, but given that it is 2012 can any of you prove that it wasn't this that brought down the Mayans?

Food for thought.

What would you do if you were a celebrity Burzynski supporter?

Firstly, a quick redux.

Stanislaw Burzynski runs a clinic in the US which claims to be able to cure people of cancer. The treatment costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars although any evidence that the treatment has even the slightest effect is extremely hard to find .

I first heard about this story via a very moving and brave blogpost on The 21st Floor about the Hope For Laura campaign. This story follows a similar heartbreaking narrative to others, where someone has been diagnosed with some form of cancer at a horrifically young age, and a groundswell of goodwill and love erupts from those close to them desperate to help in whatever way they can. Places like the Burzynski Clinic can offer the miniscular glimmer of hope that they need to concentrate their efforts towards a goal. Other stories such as Billie Bainbridge have also been in the media in recent weeks.

Depending on the situation, a celebrity may end up promoting the cause - the campaign can be given a huge boost by celebrity endorsement and in my view, this is one of the most important roles that celebrities can play in return for their exulted status. Peter Kay put on extra gigs recently for Billie and also an EBay auction in aid of Billie included a guitar donated by Radiohead.

[For the full ongoing story of libel threats & the complete lack of evidence for what looks and sounds like quackery, Josephine Jones has a comprehensive list of blogs covering the story from many angles. A few key ones that I'd recommend are from Andy Lewis: The False Hope, and The Burzynski Clinic Threathens my Family, and also TiD buddy Rhys Morgan's Guardian Comment is Free piece.]

If you haven't come across this story yet, you can probably very quickly see the pitfalls - huge, disastrous and painful pitfalls that belie anyone not carefully appreciating the different situations that each person is in.

It's pretty clear to me from the complete lack of evidence, the aggresive libel threats, the fact it's not available on the NHS, the fact that Cancer Research UK say there is little solid evidence, the fact Burzynski also sells his own range of vitamin pills etc etc etc that this is not a treatment worth pursuing, and some of the blogposts above have discussed the thorny issue of whether false hope is better than no hope.

My own thoughts on this story come from a conversation with Mrs Dr*T about celebrity endorsement. (There are many other angles of morality and pyschology which are dealt with elsewhere). As I said above, this is a really positive thing that celebs can do (they get repaid in terms of goodwill, which will translate into sales of tickets or merch, but that's an acceptable agreement, I feel. It's an interesting point whether raising lots of money for an individual rather than a group or disease is the most efficient way to progress). Most of them are not trained scientists, and it takes a fairly disciplined sort of person to not immediately do what they can to help a dying child, but first putting in some research time to reach a rational decision.

To try and avoid the personalisation, let's imagine that a well-known celebrity with plenty of media purchase is asked to do a benefit gig/stunt/interview/whatever in aid of a person with cancer who wants to try and get enough money to go to the Burzynski Clinic.

After agreeing to do it, a fairly high profile story gets aired about how the clinic does not have robust evidence for its practices, and there are concerns that it is nothing more than expensive snake oil. (Stephen Fry, Ben Goldacre, Graham Linehan and many many others have been tweeting about this over the last few days).

The celebrity is made aware of this directly by tweets and conversations, which leads her to think about the benefit gig/stunt/interview/whatever that she did in aid of the patient.

If the tweetstorm is right, this is a pretty grim situation. She has an immediate choice - blank out the criticism, stick to the story. Bury her head in the sand. This is the one I think will be most common with the celebs. I should add that there's room in there for a lack of understanding on behalf of the celeb.

Let's say she doesn't blank out the criticism and does understand, but either does some research and takes some advice and feels she's done something that will do no good except fill someone's pockets with cash at the expense of painful goodwill. The ethics get altogether more fudgy. Our conversation led to the following options:

1. Don't give the money to the patient, give it to Cancer Research UK (e.g.) instead. Explain to family why. Risk massive backlash from media by not keeping promise to dying cancer patient.
2. Do give money to patient. Explain to family about the clinic and that if she'd known then what she knows now she wouldn't have done the event. Suggests spending the Cancer Research UK or improved quality of remaining life. Family still have choice and I reckon would probably still spend the money at the clinic.
3. Do give money to patient but on the proviso that it doesn't go to the Burzynski Clinic. Explain to family about the clinic and that if she'd known then what she knows now she wouldn't have done the event. Suggests spending the Cancer Research UK or improved quality of remaining life. Risk mediastorm about broken promises and attaching strings, not to mention legality.
4. Give the money to the patient and say nothing but make sure not to get caught again in the future. Everyone is happy apart from the celeb who knows that they have actively helped in funding something they feel is extremely dubious.

Mrs Dr*T and I settled on (2) after flirting around a bit with (4). Neither are satisfactory in entirety, because in both cases the money will most likely go to the clinic.

I'm interested in other options we haven't thought of - feel free to add them below.

T

Bureau of Investigative Journalism - New ideas, old habits?

This post is a venture away from the usual (and more recently intermittent) blogposts about dodgy quacks, silly products and efforts by deluded people who like to think the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are merely 'guidelines'.

On this blogpost, I'll mainly be behaving badly and stamping my feet with childish impetulence.

It appears (note: appears) that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) have done some excellent investigative journalism (for that is their name) and released this story about the Ideal Spine Centre in Canterbury. From another angle it appears (note again: appears) that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have gone onto Google, found my blogpost written in 2008 about the very same Ideal Spine Centre and used one of my blogposts as fill out for a story about a Thinking Is Dangerous quack favourite.

It is my thought that the first opinion is possible, but (as I'll try and show later) very doubtful, whereas the second is very reasonable. Very reasonable indeed.

Some backstory - firstly, the TBIJ's history and raison d'etre can be found here. [That's a link to information on their website - you can almost smell the irony]. Secondly, the story itself is a bit of a corker and the overarching good out of the whole thing is that the suspicious goings on at The Ideal Spine Centre in Canterbury are being exposed to a wider audience.

For instance, Dr Farthing, or to give him his full medical title, Mr Farthing, has a disclaimer on his website

"Dr. Farthing is not a Chiropractor, Osteopath or Medical Doctor"

. No, no. He is a 'wellness' Doctor. Welcome to Quack Comedy central. Throw in an Advertising Standards Authority adjudication and the blogpost wrote itself.

Interestingly, the blogpost also has the record for the most comments of (I think) any blog on this site. TiD was (if I recall rightly) the only blog at the time that ran the story. [Less common now, I reckon, due to number of bloggers around and also the immediate 140 char blogs that can disseminate news and nonsense so efficiently via Twitter, but in the heady days of 2008 - surely the golden age of blogging - terrific blogpost fodder was as abundant as Passenger Pigeons]. This point is important, as it meant that anyone searching for The Ideal Spine Centre or its details found either the Ideal Spine Centre's website, or mine.

It is not my plan (nor have I the time) to put in a factual blow by blow account of the similarities in the two posts, because although I would like to do all the worthy things that a wounded e-martyr could do, I'm not sure it would change or help anything.

As such, here is my succinct treatisette.

A google search of "Ideal Spine Centre" (without quotes), "Christian Farthing" (again without quotes) and a number of other searches brought my blogpost up consistently as the 3rd result on Google, underneath the Ideal Spine Centre's own webpage. (This has changed slightly due to TBIJ coverage, but it is still 3rd/4th/5th etc).

I want you to imagine you have a snippet of information leaked to you by a local who wants you to run a story on The Ideal Spine Centre. Being part of TBIJ you begin to journalistically investigate and so, run a google search. You find the first post outwith of the Centre's own website to be a blogpost providing the whole backstory to your leaked tidbit.

Do you:
a) ignore it and go and find the exact same information from primary sources?
b) Read it and use it to find all the primary sources are beautifully linked and excellently expounded with dynamic wit, contact the blogger and ask permission to use it or at the very least link to it?
c) Read it and use it to find all the primary sources are beautifully linked and excellently expounded with dynamic wit and use the information without any reference or hat-tip.

It is up to you to answer the question to your own satisfaction.

(I would have thought if they had done some digging they would have found a myriad of dubious things not on my blogpost, like the disgraceful website NHS Health Resource (Yes - NHS! which apparently stands for the Nationwide Health Service), but a quick look at who.is shows the Ideal Spine Centre is the registrant. But maybe they didn't look hard enough or think that it was worth mentioning. And it wasn't on my blogpost. I'm just saying.)

But there are two issues here:

1. The concern about whether or not material was lifted from a blog and used without a hat-tip.

2. The response by TBIJ when I enquired about it.

They are very separate and although the first may be a misunderstanding, the second shows TBIJ in my mind to be no better than their tabloid dead-tree main stream media counterpricks.

When I first noted the similarities, I satisfied myself that I wasn't being too silly and precious about a 3.5 year old blogpost and wrote a very measured and polite comment on TBIJ website. Other comments that were after mine have since appeared, but mine have been censored. This is the sort of thing people like Nadine Dorries does to ensure no critical comment appears on her blog [if you want to satisfy yourself of my non-hypocrisy, please check the myriad of anti-Dr*T comments on this site].

I then contacted them on Twitter (@TBIJ) - once again, I twut a few times with no response.

I then emailed the author of the article, Melanie Newman, outlining my concerns.

I was told my blog was a third party collation of information she already had. I immediately emailed her back thanking her, and asking if she had read my blog before writing her article. I finished the email saying that I felt cooperation was a much stronger force than individualism, and we had the joint end goal of getting the story exposed.

No response.

A day later I sent a reminder but like The Sundays' song, here is where the story ends. No engagement. No response. Ignoreland.

Conversation dead. So it goes.

This (in my limited understanding of intertubery) is how people who don't 'get' the transition between main stream media and online bloggery operate. I don't know if Melanie will have a change of heart and engage (I'd dearly like that to happen) or whether they'll publish my comment in a few days or whether next month I'll get a tweet from them. In any case, to me at least, they've demonstrated they haven't adapted yet to online life, and (more embarrassingly I'm sure) they can't handle a wimpy part-time blogger politely whinging, without freezing up and closing rank.

I'm writing this all just to document the event and to suggest in passing that bloggers (what blog for free out of pastime, pleasure, provocation or petulance) will always be different from people who write stuff on the intertubes and get paid for it.

I'd also be interested to know if I am a lone moaner, or if this is a recurring behavioural pattern.

Post Script - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Policy on stealing stories is here. They're happy enough for you to do that, providing you link to them and all the links to the story. That's a really good policy.

Hat-tip to the Whitstable Skeptic.

EDITED TO ADD (Tues 22nd Nov): The BIJ page now has a link to the my blogpost. After a lot of helpful retweets of this blog on Twitter, I got an email from the Editor saying they wouldn't link to the blog as there was no need to, as the journalist "couldn't recall" reading my blog.

After a few exchanges I gave him a phone. It wasn't a very pleasant conversation, (due seemingly to me being sad, pathetic, aggressive and not understanding nuance) but we got a compromise in the end - a tiny link on the BIJ webpage, which was all that was requested right at the very start. They could have avoided the whole blown-up event by taking this extremely small step in the first place.

I asked why my comments had been censored on the BIJ article - it seems the Editor does not like anyone making any negative reference to their journalists on comments (I didn't) despite there being a pretty negative one there right now from an angry chiropractor. Ho hum.

Maybe it was a good thing, maybe it wasn't, but perhaps there's at least one more journalist that will keep a more accurate history of their sources from now on. ENDS