#stupidscientology or yes, not logic

I'd like to join in the twitter thing using that tag, but I don't have an account and I can't be bothered making one. If you have one I suggest that you tweet using that tag.

John Dixon a councillor in Cardiff (that's in Wales in case you don't know) made the following tweet when he was in London:

“I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”

Naturally CoS decided to complain. Ok, maybe they have the right to, but seriously. Would you really complain about that? Would you?

Now I knew that CoS was thin skinned. Clearly I didn't know how thin it was.

The article I linked to above states the CoS claimed that the comments "impinged on the right to religious freedom". I'd like to see their reasoning for that, especially considering that Scientology isn't a religion in the UK.

Reading the Google update page for #stupidscientology a few people have pointed out that an anagram for Scientology is "Yes, not logic". That probably explains the reasons for this complaint.

Overdose on homeopathic "remedies"?

The stunt has been done many times before by various skeptics, but it never gets old.

The BBC reports on the "mass overdose" conducted by members of 10.23.

I do take issue in some of the statements in the article though from various people, like the following:

The society's chief executive, Paula Ross, said: "This is an ill advised publicity stunt in very poor taste, which does nothing to advance the scientific debate about how homeopathy actually works."

Paula Ross is the Chief Executive of the Society of Homeopaths.

Science wise there is no debate. Study after study and meta-analysis after meta-analysis has found consistent results. Homeopathy does not work, at best it's as good as a placebo.

So essentially figuring out how homeopathy works is, in a nutshell, "look at all the work done on placebos".

But Paula Ross will never admit that, because she has a vested interest in keeping homeopathy on the shelves no matter how potentially dangerous the "treatments" are (I suggest you read this article by Simon Singh).

The other statement was this one:

"Boots UK is committed to providing our customers with a wide range of healthcare products to suit their individual needs, we know that many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want

I have a cough, does that mean if I went to Boots UK and asked for heroin would they give it to me?

"We would support the call for scientific research and evidence gathering on the efficacy of homeopathic medicines. This would help our patients and customers make informed choices about using homeopathic medicines."

There is plenty of research, and you don't need to look very hard to find it. A search for "efficacy homeopathy" gave 16100 results.

I did another search for meta-analyses and found many articles, some of which I will share with you.

From 1998, an article titled Efficacy of Homeopathic Arnica -A Systematic Review of Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trials by Ernst and Pittler concluded "The claim that homeopathic arnica is efficacious beyond a placebo effect is not supported by rigorous clinical trials."

Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy by Cucherat et al. in 2000 found that homeopathic treatments were slightly better then placebo, but also that there were too many studies with crap methodologies, while the ones with good methodologies found that homeopathy wasn't better then a placebo.

A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy by Ernst in 2002 found that homeopathy wasn't any better then a placebo.

I could go on, but I won't.

I don't know what happens in the UK regarding homeopathic treatments, but I'm sure if they had to go through the same testing as proper drugs then we wouldn't see people say rubbish like this.

In my opinion the Boots UK people are being wilfully ignorant. There is easy money to be made selling distilled water or sugar pills. The BBC article says that £12 million was spent on homeopathic "remedies" by the NHS. It's quite possible that the actual market is far higher. I don't think Boots want to give up that cash cow with trifling things like efficacy.

The evidence is there, but in my opinion it seems that Boots and the homeopaths don't want to look at it.

Eurovision Commentators: Aus v. UK.

I finally managed to get the UK version of the contest downloaded. Yes. It took me this long.

Thanks Telstra, if you hadn't continuously told my ISP that "the exchange was full" I would have a 2 Mbit connection and I would have gotten it about two days after the contest.

But enough about Sol Trujillo's former company.

The reason I'm writing this is because I'm waiting for some dictionaries to download, so I can't do the work I want to do, and I figured the Eurovision would keep me awake.

Australia sent their own people this year because Terry Wogan left and apparently SBS has something against Graham Norton. We sent Julia Zemiro and Sam Pang. The only really enjoyable thing was that they were wearing shirts that said "Terry Wogan isn't here anymore" and "Yes, we miss him too".

To be honest they weren't really any good. I'm finding Graham Norton far funnier, you're still hearing somewhat snide remarks from him about the other countries, and he can be genuinely funny (probably because he's a comedian...).

So Graham Norton wins.

The Royal Society Backs Creationism?

I must admit that this is probably the closest to home that the creation-evolution "debate" has been in quite a while.

Except that this is occurring in the UK.

For those that can't really be bothered reading the BBC, The Times, or The Australian then the bare minimum that you need to know is that Michael Reiss, a Church of England clergyman, biologist and Director of Education for the Royal Society decided to say that creationism should be taught in schools.

Now, according to The Times, a spokesperson for the Royal Society said the following:

A spokesman for the organisation, which counts 21 Nobel Prize winners among its Fellows, confirmed yesterday that Professor Reiss’s views did represent that of its president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and the society.

Note that it says that Reiss' veiws did represent those of the society.

However this release from the Royal Society says that Reiss was misquoted. The BBC has already picked up on this pointing out that Reiss does not believe that creationism is scientific in any way.

I am however of two minds when it comes to this specific statement:

"I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview'; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility."

I don't know if that is the best thing to do. As far as I can tell in the UK creationism isn't really a "worldview" and definitely isn't one in the scientific realm.

On top of that it still allows creationism to get that all important foot in the door. If you start teaching it in science classrooms as a "worldview" then you are still exposing children to a viewpoint that is unscientific. They might actually choose that viewpoint because it is the easier one to understand, since creationism is purely a "Goddidit" concept.

The Royal Society might not believe that creationism is science, but to consider that it should be taught as a "worldview" in science classes is pretty much saying "Lookee here at this other science-y thing. 'Tis so much easier to undestand."

And they will learn about it, and might actually adopt it.

Now, apparently the creationist viewpoint is held by about 10% of UK students. Unless the student brings up the topic we can see that even going about teaching it as a "worldview" means that 90% of the student population will be exposed to an idea that is completely harmful to our society in this day and age.

I said at the start that this was hitting rather close to home.

As I pointed out at the start The Australian has gotten their hands on it. I'm checking online as I write this, but if the local Adelaide paper (The Advertiser, like The Australian is a NewsCorp publication so there might be some story crossover), gets their hands on it the Letters to the Editor will be filled with another round of "creation-evolution".

This time though, and depending on which version they publish, the creationists will be able to claim "The Royal Society agrees with us".

It will hurt a little more in the side of Australian education and for a bit longer but probably won't get anywhere further. It never does, but any time given to the issue gives loud cries from the anti-evolution and ignorant crowd.

As a side note, this argument will undoubtedly be appearing sooner or later on creationist forums or places with a decent amount of creationists because of the appeal to authority it would bring. Darwin came from England, he was awarded a Royal Medal from the society, and now they say that "creationism should be taught in the classroom".

It won't matter what the Royal Society says, since we all know how honest creationists are.

Personally I don't think we've heard the last of this.

Oh look, it appears that the ID people have picked up on the issue as well.