1st book recommendation

Badscience by Ben Goldacre.

Pharmaceutical companies and alternative health folks can both be very bad for your health! This is a book about medical science- but the principles generalise out. It shows why the scientific procedure is necessary and how, through ignorance and darker motives, it is being subverted by different factions.

Read it and leave your comments below. Enjoy!

Freshly squeezed conspiracy theory anyone?

The term conspiracy theory has become a very loaded one. Many people automatically dismiss anything that comes after that has been said, and there are others that seem to fall into the uncritical acceptance of whatever comes after too. Both attitudes are lazy. We can only judge anything after carefully looking at the evidence. Even then we must always be aware that we might not have the full details. Practically we may be required to base future decisions on any information we learn and so we have to take a balance of probabilities. Do the counter arguments to the case you are looking at make sense- are they logical, possible and do they hold together in a congruent story? Do they deal with every part of the issue or avoid detailing some parts? We should also remember that we, as human beings, are very selective in our attitudes. We tend to look for things that support our current positions rather then be open to all evidence. Many people are unaware of this- possibly denying it when it is raised? For us, as ordinary citizens, we may have to accept that we don't have the necessary information to draw a definitive conclusion and so must make do with leaving the question open. Its far better to say that we don't know than to follow the trend of having to have something to say on everything. I guess pubs would be much quieter places if that happened! When you have experts and/or people in positions of power on both sides of a discussion things can get very confusing. We have to contend with the following- potential lying, different interpretations of evidence, the experts' propensity to be selective like everyone else and, sometimes, whether these people are actually experts at all...like humanities graduates writing science columns in the media. All in all, getting to the bottom of a conspiracy theory may not be that simple. I am open to the idea that conspiracy theories are story lines that cultures invent to make sense of events, but that doesn't mean that all of them are false. Making a checklist of all the contentious issues and then looking at the available evidence will help to make it clear which ideas there is strong evidence for, which ideas there is evidence against and which ones have to be left open. I'll leave you with a question relating to the assertion that a plane crashed into the headquarters of the US military. Go back and look at the original footage of the aftermath..prior to the collapse of the weakened section. one side of the argument ascertains that, as there wasn't the expected plane debris on the lawn, then the official story is wrong. A group on the other side, with a simulation, shows the whole plane disappearing into the building structure. If the official side argument is correct, and here is the question, where are the long holes in the structure where the wings went in? No holes where they went in, no debris outside. What's left? Did the wings actually fold right back at ninety degrees and enter the hole tucked up nicely against the fuselage- which nobody has claimed yet I'm pleased. So when you've watched the clip, examined the surroundings on it, let me know what you Think!

Architects of our own troubles?

Most people I speak to are worried about extremist Muslims.. a lot of them confuse ordinary Muslims with the extreme groups. That's as daft as lumping all of us in with the extremist right wing fundamentalist Christians! But how did the extremists in the Arab world get to be how they are today? Now that is interesting.....

In the last century, when the Muslim world was becoming more secular and nationalistic, the West got worried. Why? Well it was the nationalistic part that caused problems. While the US wasn't too worried about its own oil supplies they knew that their "allies" were heavily reliant on the Middle East oil and nationalism worried them because of possible threats to supply. The West went into its, all too common, mode of supporting the enemies of their deemed enemy and, lo and behold, over time giving them enough power that extremist Islam became a force to be reckoned with. A major key player in this is the "client state" of Saudi Arabia. This undemocratic country is an ally...but it is full of extremism. Don't be out on the streets when its prayer time or a whipping awaits you! If you look at the situation in Pakistan with the rise of extremist educational establishments then ask where the money came from to build them...A very good book to give you an insight into the situation in remote Pakistani areas is "Three Cups of Tea".

Unfortunately nothing will get better until short term political goals are placed within a broader long term humanitarian outlook. The system, and arguably the human nature that leads to the systems we design, might not be able to make that change unfortunately....

Anecdotes

Someone tells you they went to a holistic health practitioner and got better..that's an anecdote. Scientists don't like them because they are isolated instances that haven't been rigourously examined. This is a very good reason because other things might be happening like:
1) the person might have got better anyway- many people take things for minor ailments when they are at their worst and, generally, they will be getting better from then on in regardless.
2) the person is having a placebo effect- a wonderful thing but not what they think is happening!
3) people are very bad at judging things, being aware of multiple causes and hidden effects. If you feel good after a spiritual healing session where's the evidence that having someone pay you a lot of attention for an hour hasn't been the cause of your mood lift?
Where the experts can, and sometimes do, go too far is when everything that is an anecdote is automatically dismissed. Just because something hasn't been through a randomised blind trial doesn't mean it doesn't happen as per the anecdote. Both sides can be very bad thinkers!

Even scientists dont always get it right

A classic case is the discovery of the major cause of stomach and duodenal ulcers by two Austrailian scientists in the early 70s. At least one scientist prior to them had seen the bacteria that the Aussies eventually got a Nobel prize for discovering. The fact that the medical community resisted their findings for many years- resulting in plenty of unnecessary operations still being carried out (with the attendant risks)- is down to genuine sceptism and bad logic, as far as I can tell. The bad logic arises when a discovery is written off because of preconceptions of the disbelievers. I had heard that many dismissed the bacterial pictures taken by the two as artefacts- which are contaminants introduced to the slide (this may well be a problem today with zoonotic diseases). Now I dont know everything that happened but it seems to me we make many mistakes like this:
1) because a problem may be caused by multiple factors we may dismiss a factor if that isnt present in our own analysis...missing multiple causes (and even the main cause in the case of the ulcers)
2) we dont try easy cost effective solutions that might prove the case we are presented with...perhaps antibiotic trials way back in the 70s on a small scale would have helped build the case..of course there would be type, combination and dosage issues to work through but antibiotics are cheap and commonly prescribed for more minor problems for longer terms (doxy for acne for example)
Having said this science is still the best method we have for verifying things about the world around us. A randomised double blind controlled study with large numbers of people being the best medical and health test we can perform on any alleged cure. this brings us onto the problem of "anecdotes" in the next post.....

You're not entitled to your opinion!

Unless of course you have a preference for something like a style, colour or item- any other opinion has either evidence backing it up or it doesn't. If it doesn't have evidence then the only logical view to take is one of "I dont know". Why does everyone have to have an opinion on almost everything? I have studied deeply many many things and the only thing that proves certain is how little access to empirical evidence we have as ordinary citizens. Even in science there are lots of cases like this, where the majority dismiss something because of preconceptions that turn out to be wrong. The bacterial cause of stomach ulcers being a case in point. So lets all get on better and stop pretending we know more than we do....