BBC Breakfast Promises to do Better

The BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU) has just published its final rulings on my objections to two items featured on BBC One’s Breakfast News last year. These were the credulous promotion of Ecowatt’s miraculous water heater and the ‘Sound’ Learning Centre’s advocacy of Lightwave Stimulation (LWS) therapy for the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Homeopathy and the Absence of Evidence

The apologists for homeopathy are upset again: this time with Professor Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh’s new book.  Why? Because once more homeopathy is exposed for what it is: a placebo.

Dr Damien Downing, the ‘Medical’ Director for the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), seems particularly put out.  So much so that he has released a rather silly press statement.

After some empty carping he suggests that Ernst is not a very good scientist and then goes on to wrap himself in the flag of good science, ”The scientific method ‘consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses’ (Wikipedia) - not of unsubstantiated dogmatic statements. Science has no room for dogma.”

This is one point I can agree with: setting aside qualms at the philosophical naïveté, science should have no room for dogma.  However, Downing seems keen on peddling homeopathic dogma himself. 

Seduced by Water

Water has a powerful allure.  It’s essential to life on this planet: our bodies are around 60% water, by weight.  It has many well documented anomalous properties, when compared to other chemically similar compounds. The undoubted importance of water imbued it with mystical powers in the minds of the ancients; this persists in unschooled modern minds - sometimes wrapped up with misapplied or misunderstood science.

Hence we have the unfounded, but sciencey sounding, idea of water memory wrapped up with the magical thinking of homeopathy; the perennial attraction of water as an energy source and, the topic of this post, the many misunderstandings of Viktor Schauberger (the bearded chap in the background of the image above).

Will Little Green Men Save The World?

I’m becoming increasingly interested in how dwindling stocks of fossil fuel, the economic expansion of some of the world’s most populous countries and concerns over the environmental impact of man-made CO₂ are making people vulnerable to wild claims about miraculous energy sources.  It’s not that these concerns aren’t valid; it’s that people would like a solution that allows ‘business as usual’.  Unfortunately, life isn’t like that.  Wishful thinking doesn’t make problems, or the laws of physics, go away.

The Power of the Vortex

In my professional life I spend a lot of time thinking about vortices in fluids; the drag they induce and the noise they create.  They are common in every-day fluid flows and yet can be quite beautiful.

In their beauty and the compelling way they seem to represent order springing from chaos, there is a trap: the unschooled or unwary can see them as either mystical or unexplained by science. 

Lost In Translation? Part II: Kuhnian Incommensurability

In part I we saw that the partisan incommensurability many CAM proponents and apologists like to invoke is vacuous: self-refuting.  Therefore, it should not be surprising that this does not figure in the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn; it only appears as a straw man in the work of Kuhn’s critics: or a facile philosophical redoubt for those who want an excuse to believe in the demonstrably false.

Lost In Translation? Part I: What Is Incommensurability And Why Should I Care?

I have some family and friends who are well disposed towards CAM in general and homeopathy in particular.  I’ve noticed that discussions of the relationship between their views and science are fraught.  At times it’s because they don’t really understand the CAM ‘therapy’ or science; at other times it’s like we’re talking in different languages.

The latter can be thought of as incommensurability: the lack of common units of measure shared by concepts that we’d like to compare.  Apparantly, this idea reaches back in time to Pythagorean geometers who had the notion that any two lengths were measurable by multiples of some common unit, hence are “commensurable“. One of their number subsequently discovered that this is not so, legend has it that the discoverer of “incommensurable” quantities (irrational numbers) was killed by his fellows.  Incommensurability is only a little less controversial today!

The cry of “incommensurable” is often heard when CAM modalities are threatened with a fair test of their claims, it’s become a standard ‘defensive’ gambit.  How valid is this defence along with the common invocation of the work of philosophers like Kuhn?

Would You Really Trust This Man With Your Wellbeing?

Given the recent, temporary, closure of Andy Lewis’ excellent quackometer blog by the supine ISP netcetera I just thought that I would offer some observations.

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

I’m beginning to think that complaining to the BBC might just be more than a slightly disturbing hobby: it may even get some results.  First, BBC Radio 4’s Questions, Questions programme actually ran a correction piece after the dowsing debacle (I must make it very clear that my whinge was only one of many).

Now I’ve just had some reassurance that there may be some action in the offing resulting from the Editorial Complaints Unit’s (ECU) recent damming indictment of BBC One’s Breakfast News’ endorsement of a bonkers colour ‘therapy’ for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Here’s the relevant part of a letter I received today from the head of the ECU:

A Bad Day at the Office

The BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU) has upheld the main thrust of my complaint about the coverage of Ecowatts’ so-called Thermal Energy Cell by the Breakfast programme.   Just in case you have a life and have not been following this saga, here’s the story so far.

A small UK company called Ecowatts has been hawking around a magic water heater that they claim gives out more (heat) energy than it consumes (electricity).