PodBlack Cat

My fellow Translucent Science bloggers, who have long been keeping a keen eye on the Dore developments whilst I’ve been busy travelling for research purposes, have all the buzz for you on what’s going on with the British Chiropractic Association vs Simon Singh.

But first - there’s a brand new review out in the Wall Street Journal on Trick or Treatment today, all about the history and trends regarding alternative medicines, by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst:

…Based at the University of Exeter in England, [Dr. Ernst] leads a research group that has spent 15 years studying alternative remedies, trying to separate snake oil from science. Mr. Singh, his co-author, is a science journalist whose books include “Fermat’s Enigma” and “Big Bang.” Together they conclude, after cataloging the evidence, that most of the popular forms of alternative medicine are “a throwback to the dark ages.” Too many alternative practitioners, they say, are “uninterested in determining the safety and efficacy of their interventions.”

…”Trick or Treatment” includes a brisk history of our evidence-based approach to medicine, tracing the development of the modern clinical trial from its earliest days, when scurvy was shown to be caused by insufficient vitamin C and bleeding was debunked as a medical cure. Unfortunately, the evidence of clinical trials is largely ignored when it comes to alternative medicine.

So, why is it so? The answer is thus:

“Alternative medicine is not so much about the treatments we discuss in this book,” the authors write, “but about the therapeutic relationship. Many alternative practitioners develop an excellent relationship with their patients that helps to maximize the placebo effect of an otherwise useless treatment.” To bring all treatments in line with rigorous science, an “excellent relationship” between doctor and patient is a good place to start.

As for all the other fuss that’s started - Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association after writing an article in the Guardian, which you can find in full here thanks to Gimpy’s Blog. As you can see, “The libellous Simon Singh article on chiropractors” includes evidence and links for the elements that Singh refers to, kindly supplied by Gimpy:

Singh: You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, 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.

[These claims are found in the following documents from the BCA website, Happy Families and A Real Pain in the Back.]

I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

[All details on Ernst's research on chiropractic can be found on PubMed here. Simon Singh has indeed co-authored a book with Professor Ernst.]

Holford Watch has more on the issue as it unfolds and is regularly updating on their blog here:

At the time of writing the British Chiropractic Association’s website does not carry any stories about this legal action. However, this does answer the questions raised on UK Sceptics since July 3rd about where Simon Singh’s article had disappeared to from the Guardian.

But in terms of piquant-ness, I think I like Ben Goldacre’s miniblog summation of it all the best: ‘Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, crass, revealing, and pathetic.’

Considering all the monsters in the press recently, I guess it was inevitable: ‘So, why were we so willing to be into weird things?’

Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What’s harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.

The bottom line, according to several interviews with people who study these things: People want to believe, and most simply can’t help it.

“Many people quite simply just want to believe,” said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University. “The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations.”

...”Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn’t explain,” says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. “It’s basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn’t understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens.”

There’s a little further about studies on religion and paranormal beliefs in the article, well worth checking out the different studies they profile:

Another study to published in December in the Review of Religious Research, shows that those who go to church “are much less likely to consult horoscopes, visit psychics, purchase New Age items,” and so on, Mencken said. “However, among those Christians who do not attend church, there is a much higher level of participation in these phenomena.”

Speaking of Ben Radford - have a check of the little feature on the page that he contributed to: “10 Unexplained Phenomena”!

Dear Gawker,

I rarely read your site, because I have better things to do with my time and I admit, I’m so out of the hipster-self-indulgent-zeitgeist that I consider the works of bands like The Postal Service and The Magnetic Fields akin to being water-boarded. I don’t even think Christopher Hitchens deserves it that bad.

But if ‘Aussie‘ is used in reference to Temuera Morrison, when talking about who played the guy who was cloned to make all the stormtroopers, expect a comment.

He’s a New Zealander.

By the way, I enjoyed regularly pointing out “Stumbles McBlasterson” to my students when I taught Star Wars: A New Hope. Went down a treat every time.

Sincerely,

PodBlack Cat Blog.

So, it’s Monday, and in a few days I’ll be on the road, again. Spot that recurring theme over the last few months or so on this blog? Here’s a few more directions I’ll be heading in, so you have a heads-up on how this blog will go from this week onwards. When I can, I will blog, but I will be travelling internationally.

So, for the past year, I’ve been working as a research assistant and I’ve finished my part with collecting qualitative data in the rural and remote areas in my state. There’s certain to be more in the future though. The research involves the impact of the Raising of the Leaving Age legislation (examples you can see here) and engagement and retention in schools.

By the way - the picture is winter in one of the regions I was researching in. Lots of lovely sun, beach and even a few walks on the shore. So perhaps this post is kind of on the theme of ’summer’, despite it actually being winter here!

If the law requires young people to be either in an educational setting in some form - which includes doing a traineeship, an apprenticeship in a business or workplace, doing full time TAFE or attending high school completing their WACE or possibly preparing for tertiary entrance, as many have traditionally done in the past… in fact, having a full-time job is also considered ‘education’. You’re learning to work, after all.

One issue is that many parents and indeed, many students, are under the impression that it’s ‘just stay in school’, which isn’t the case. As long as you’re doing ’something’, you’re meeting the requirements. You’re either getting paid, getting a record of employment or getting a piece of paper/s that says you’re using your time and getting credit for your acquired skills.

But ‘engagement’ in learning isn’t just turning up to class. ‘Retention’ isn’t just being on the morning roll-call. The psychological theory behind what we are studying draws on several aspects of positive psychology and a variation of Bloom’s taxonomy. Some of this will be presented in papers in a few conferences, later this year.

Of course, there’s a great many other issues that have been unveiled, from resentment at there not being enough opportunities for all career-paths; short-staffing of teachers; limited subjects on offer due to many reasons (not just fewer staff); jobs being more plentiful in one region but not another; students working more than one part-time job as well as attending school full-time in order to help out their families; uncertainty about university places available; cost factors involved, and of course, the travel.

Travel has been a big one for me too when getting an education - I used to take a two-hour round trip every day for university and would often get a lot of my work done on public transport (irritating a lot of fellow students for knowing the text we were studying that day, because I had plenty of time to read it, read the commentary, perhaps read an article on it and annotate it whilst crushed in on early-commute carriages en route). But I was passionate about my studies and did this for four years, whilst many of these teenagers have less conviction and certainty about the relevance of what they’re doing, for five years of ’study’.

And I’m sorry to say it - but high school can seriously suck. I taught for ten years, as well as reflecting upon my own high school experiences, and saw every day despair, frustration, bullying, isolation and confusion, mixed in with occasional helpings of joy, friendship, support and glimpses of a future beyond being another uniform in the crowd and a chance to speak one’s mind and be respected for it rather than being ‘just another obnoxious, mouthy kid’. My own experiences of high school led me to research on how to improve educational settings, such as the influence of environmental factors, curriculum, learning differences and catering to different abilities.

Could critical thinking be taught in schools? Could skepticism be a part of that? Isn’t it true that these elements of instilling common sense and consumer awareness are beneficial to all areas of education? Then why aren’t there more programs in teacher-training and more time in a crowded curriculum to cater for this?

I cannot help mentioning that the past year has hammered home more than ever Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ - the necessity of physiological well-being, safety, love and belonging. The irony of asking a young person about their self-esteem when they are hiding bruises and unsure if they have a home to go back to that night. Teachers talking about supplying an entire school with a regular breakfast when the kids usually have no idea where their next meal will come from. A young woman giving up her inner-city job to return back to the community she left, in order to care for the newly orphaned young cousin who has no other relative out of jail or sober enough to take on the responsibility.

Don’t get me started on young pregnant teenagers either. Can a mother of two, at the age of sixteen, easily get back into the system when she’s missed several years of school due to the responsibilities of child-rearing? What full-time job or traineeship will really match those other demands on her time?

Phil Plait: My mind is still not entirely made up if this sort of thing is good for women or not; it may be that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.

I guess it was the story of a young woman who told me that she wanted to become an astronomer that led me to check out the recent comments on the Bad Astronomy site, especially since I recommended that she check out the site herself. Funnily enough, I have yet to meet a young man interested in astronomy, but I have met at least five young women in both my job and in my research who are intrigued by the possibility of Australia succeeding in getting the Square Kilometer Array and what it might mean for the state! By the way, PhD opportunities in Radio Astronomy are being advertised here: ‘a limited number of high-value PhD scholarships to graduates from outside Australia and New Zealand.’

Yes, I think that there needs to be more discussion about women and opportunities, something that I have had more experience of with my research in rural and remote areas. I do think that limiting to a few examples of sites proposing them as ‘the norm’ on subjects like skepticism does no one any favours - which is why I contribute to women in science Blog Carnivals like Scientiae.

I read those bloggers contributions when I want to get not only an insider’s view on what it really means for women in science and what policies and politics they have to deal with on a regular basis - and there’s quite a significant number of them, in terms of bloggers and opinions! A subgroup of skeptics hardly represents women in science, nor does one site represent all female skeptics. I certainly don’t see that myself, with my own blog and my opinions. So, I read around.

I guess when it comes to the issue that the BA wrote about on ‘do[ing] what I can to promote equality of the sexes in my own fields‘ - I really only have to point out these earlier posts of mine, as I tried to do on the comments on the BA site (and I bet it doesn’t come across as particularly legible when I wrote it at speed!):

Girls Got What? Competitions, Science Careers And Benefits

She’s Already Got Science - Women, Skepticism And The Need For More Research

This Is All You Got In This Size?

Mind The Gap?

Honestly? They’re not really posts that relate to skepticism. Nor are they really posts about my own work on superstitions and gender differences. That’s because I essentially consider the challenges of equal opportunities in science careers not really ’skeptic’ issues, nor do I really see skeptic blogs going into them in much depth - why should they? Haven’t they got more than enough issues that concern both genders already? Issues to do with paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs? Sure it comes up (as I demonstrate myself) - but I’m not fooling myself that it’s as easy as it seems.

Besides, as I said in this post, there are MORE than enough vocal, proactive and contributing women in skepticism (who are sometimes not even from a science background - in fact, skeptic history is really quite impressive in terms of women-run conferences and the like), who are indeed being heard, published, promoted and printed in a variety of publications, podcasts, radio and shows. It kind of makes the rallying look redundant and absurd when the bigger problem in society - is how science careers don’t even seem to halfway match the enthusiasm that skeptic groups have for women’s contributions to skepticism.

So, I personally try keep the two issues separate. Or at least, ponder why there isn’t a call for more skeptics in general or more focus on issues that influence both genders such as parenting, education, consumer rights and health and beauty claims.

Perhaps my post should have been named ‘She’s Already Got Skeptics Supporting Her In Spirit… but Where The Hell Are Continuing Opportunities For Gender Equity in Science?’.

Since I recently commented also on Pharyngula on the influence of teachers, I should emphasise a new teacher’s group on Google for further networking on the issues of getting critical thinking and skepticism, into not only tertiary but secondary and primary schools. The Group is called: Critical Teaching.

You can find other links in my ‘Educational Resources‘ page, of course. Links to educational outreach goals is also something that you can also see in the ‘Nerd Girl’s pages:

The mission of this program is to show a wide audience of young women and young men how successful these students are as they work together to design and construct an engineering system. The project will showcase the young women’s talents, diverse backgrounds and engineering skills. The team will build an energy efficient automobile and will drive it down the East coast, visiting local communities along the way and sharing their experiences with K-12 educators and students. As well, they will interact with professional women engineers who will consult on the project.

You might have missed that element, with all the links to the ‘hawt-ness’, perhaps… How many people clicked on the link to ‘Curriculum’ rather than the link to the ‘cheesecake’? *sigh*… Eh, I’ve written it all before, and I guess I’ll just keep on writing it…

But in the meantime, I’ll be preparing to be with a great many other skeptics at the next Dragon*Con, where I will see intelligent, influential women in science and skepticism. I’ll be there for their presentations, women of the likes of ‘Swoopy’ McCarthy, Stollznow, Gay, Campbell, Lipman Brown, Burns, Mauldin-Kinney and Ray, along with men of the likes of Plait, Shermer, Randi, and so forth.

They won’t be marginalised nor silenced - it’s not ‘the done thing’ with skeptics, in my opinion. In fact, as recent news has shown, the Center for Inquiry has made great steps towards encouraging young people with theedger.org and Camp Inquiry. Although it’d be great if more skeptics highlighted some of the legitimate non-profit groups who are dedicating their primary efforts towards promoting equity in science… if they really do genuinely consider it.

‘Cathy’ from comments in the post: ‘I am interested in reading some research findings on why so many girls are anti-physical-science (and anti-science-fiction), and I appreciate duffytvs’s reference to Dr. Sax’s books. I do feel that educational systems shoulder some (not all) of the blame for girls’ bias against math and science, and Dr. Sax seems to agree.’

Despite all of this, I will still ponder how many of the young women I spoke to will hurdle the barriers of society, social norms, economic disadvantage, geographical isolation and competition to achieve their goals. I addressed this somewhat in my post ‘Mind The Gap‘ - and I am still not convinced that condemning educational systems or saying that it is their burden to shoulder will automatically solve all the problems I’ve listed…. and those that are still part of the ‘hidden curriculum’ and not mentioned.

In short - there’s just so much more to the picture than challenging with a ‘nerd girl’ name. I’ll be talking about it myself, at the upcoming Skeptics’ Conference in Adelaide.