Practice: Acupressure
In 15 words or less: Pressing on specific spots on the body stimulates healing.
Initial reaction: Seems pretty unlikely.
What it really is: In traditional Chinese medicine, they believed that the body was animated by a magical force (or energy?) called chi. There's something to do with yin and yang there, too, but it's all pretty self-contradictory. Anyway, the idea is that disease is caused by an unbalancing of yin and yang, possibly caused by an obstructed flow of chi. Manipulating certain points on the body redirects the flow of chi, curing ailments.
In acupuncture, you stick needles into the points to change the flow of chi.
In acupressure, you rub the points using one of about a dozen techniques. There are special wooden balls, or you can use your fingers, or your thumbs, or a martial artist with a 12th degree black belt can poke you and you'll die 3 days later from chi disruption.... (A similar thing led to a great storyline in Ranma 1/2, however, so I guess the practice isn't totally worthless.)
Occasionally, a small electrical current is applied to inserted needles. That does have a sort of plausible mechanism for doing things locally, but even then, it doesn't work as claimed by practioners.
Why they still say it works: No one can seem to give a good reason. It's a "prescientific" system, which I guess exempts it from having to actually work? The only even slightly possible reason I've ever heard is that it stimulates blood flow. But in that case, the specific points shouldn't matter, right? And going for a quick jog should, by that logic, cure even the most horrible diseases.
Why it doesn't work: There's no reason for it to work. You're not animated by magic. This might have been acceptable thinking 2000 years ago, but now? Get with the times.
Practitioners can't even agree on where the needles should go, or where they should rub. They don't agree for which conditions it might work. They don't agree on... well, on anything. That alone should indicate that it's a big sham.
A number of recent studies on a variety of conditions (arthritic pain, repetitive motion stream, for example) have showed that acupuncture with fake needles is no more effective than acupuncture with real needles.
The existence of chi points is resoundingly ruled out by other studies, which found that it doesn't work for back pain or nausea, either.
That's not to say there there is no effect. Of course there is the placebo effect... but fortunately, that works even if you tell the patient that you're using a placebo. There's no need to stick needles into people and risk infection, and there's definitely no need to pretend you know something about medicine when all you're doing is giving a glorified massage.
Resources: More information than you could ever want is at Skepdic.
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Medicine that doesn't work -- homeopathy
Practice: Homeopathy
In 15 words or less: Like cures like; taking a very small amount of something bad cures related ills.
Initial reaction: Might work sometimes, similar to antivenins or vaccines.
What it really is: Say you have a headache, maybe caused by clogged sinuses. The homeopathic cure is to take something else that causes headaches--almost anything, no matter how unrelated--and dilute it in water by a factor of 1020 to 10200 (or sometimes more). The claim is that the more diluted the solution is, the more effective the cure will be.
Why they still say it works: Water has a "memory" of what chemicals it used to contain. Sometimes the word "quantum" is thrown around, too.
Why it doesn't work: This is going to be a long one.
Homeopathy started with a doctor in the days when they still used leeches to cure colds and were afraid of witchcraft. They used very dangerous medicines in those days, some of which had a reasonably high probability of killing patients. So this guy started diluting his medicines and noticed that more of his patients recovered. Hallelujah! He didn't compare the recovery rate of people taking homeopathic medicines to the rate of people who took no medicine at all (though he might have discovered the placebo effect if he had), and instead came up with the conclusion that "like cures like."
Sadly, water has no memory. Liquids are chaotic things, where the atoms are bouncing around like crazy. That's why they can flow. There is no internal structure that could possibly hold a memory of what was in there before.
And even if that was true, why should taking a poison that gives you a fever relieve a fever caused by a virus? It's like stepping lightly on an infected toe and hoping that that will stop it hurting. Obviously it's not going to work.
Then there are the dilutions. Some people arguing against homeopathy will say that not one molecule of the original "medicinal" ingredient is in the final solution. I disagree with this: there is almost always going to be some contamination from one dilution to the next, from not wiping the rim of the flask carefully or whatever. Anyway, say you use mercury as your ingredient. Do you think there's any chance that not a single atom of mercury ended up in that solution from some outside source? No. Even if you use distilled water, you're going to get a few atoms of whatever was originally in it. So the solutions aren't as diluted as they claim, and this contamination ruins any chance of a memory effect.
Say you did a dilution of 10100. You are claiming that for every atom in your original solution, you have effectively placed it in 10100 atoms of solution, and then taken a sample from that. How big is 10100? It is about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as many atoms as there are in the Universe.
On the other hand, the amount of the medicinal ingredient actually present is incomprehensibly tiny. 18 grams of water has 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in it. If you're saying that there are only a few atoms in there, and that those are making a significant difference in the behaviour of that solution, then... well, if you had $60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in the bank, would saving a couple bucks on your new car be a priority for you? You could never even spend that much money, no matter how hard you tried. The antivenin/vaccine comparison is ridiculous.
So, the reasons it doesn't work are many. The medicinal ingredients don't have any reason to work. The dilution factor is too big for it to be plausible. There is more contamination than claimed.
And of course, it's easy to test. Down a bottle of homeopathic pills. It's been done many times, and no one has ever overdosed.
Reources:
There is a good article and many resources at QuackWatch. There is a line there which I find particularly amusing.
In 15 words or less: Like cures like; taking a very small amount of something bad cures related ills.
Initial reaction: Might work sometimes, similar to antivenins or vaccines.
What it really is: Say you have a headache, maybe caused by clogged sinuses. The homeopathic cure is to take something else that causes headaches--almost anything, no matter how unrelated--and dilute it in water by a factor of 1020 to 10200 (or sometimes more). The claim is that the more diluted the solution is, the more effective the cure will be.
Why they still say it works: Water has a "memory" of what chemicals it used to contain. Sometimes the word "quantum" is thrown around, too.
Why it doesn't work: This is going to be a long one.
Homeopathy started with a doctor in the days when they still used leeches to cure colds and were afraid of witchcraft. They used very dangerous medicines in those days, some of which had a reasonably high probability of killing patients. So this guy started diluting his medicines and noticed that more of his patients recovered. Hallelujah! He didn't compare the recovery rate of people taking homeopathic medicines to the rate of people who took no medicine at all (though he might have discovered the placebo effect if he had), and instead came up with the conclusion that "like cures like."
Sadly, water has no memory. Liquids are chaotic things, where the atoms are bouncing around like crazy. That's why they can flow. There is no internal structure that could possibly hold a memory of what was in there before.
And even if that was true, why should taking a poison that gives you a fever relieve a fever caused by a virus? It's like stepping lightly on an infected toe and hoping that that will stop it hurting. Obviously it's not going to work.
Then there are the dilutions. Some people arguing against homeopathy will say that not one molecule of the original "medicinal" ingredient is in the final solution. I disagree with this: there is almost always going to be some contamination from one dilution to the next, from not wiping the rim of the flask carefully or whatever. Anyway, say you use mercury as your ingredient. Do you think there's any chance that not a single atom of mercury ended up in that solution from some outside source? No. Even if you use distilled water, you're going to get a few atoms of whatever was originally in it. So the solutions aren't as diluted as they claim, and this contamination ruins any chance of a memory effect.
Say you did a dilution of 10100. You are claiming that for every atom in your original solution, you have effectively placed it in 10100 atoms of solution, and then taken a sample from that. How big is 10100? It is about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as many atoms as there are in the Universe.
On the other hand, the amount of the medicinal ingredient actually present is incomprehensibly tiny. 18 grams of water has 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in it. If you're saying that there are only a few atoms in there, and that those are making a significant difference in the behaviour of that solution, then... well, if you had $60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in the bank, would saving a couple bucks on your new car be a priority for you? You could never even spend that much money, no matter how hard you tried. The antivenin/vaccine comparison is ridiculous.
So, the reasons it doesn't work are many. The medicinal ingredients don't have any reason to work. The dilution factor is too big for it to be plausible. There is more contamination than claimed.
And of course, it's easy to test. Down a bottle of homeopathic pills. It's been done many times, and no one has ever overdosed.
Reources:
There is a good article and many resources at QuackWatch. There is a line there which I find particularly amusing.
In 1994, the journal Pediatrics published an article claiming that homeopathic treatment had been demonstrated to be effective against mild cases of diarrhea among Nicaraguan children.... There was no public health significance because the only remedy needed for mild childhood diarrhea is adequate fluid intake to prevent or correct dehydration.Dehydration is the one and only condition that homeopathy might have a chance of treating!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Science in popular fiction - The Lost Symbol
Recently, I have been reading The Lost Symbol, the latest book by Dan Brown. You have likely heard of this book; it sold about a zillion copies in its first few days. It is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, which sold many zillions. (The movie version of the latter introduced the supremely talented and elegant Audrey Tautou to North America, which promptly overlooked her for the latest American Idol floozy. So she decided to only do movies in France, which is probably for the best, really.)
As you can possibly tell, I am in a bad mood. I have wasted nearly an hour of my life reading this book already, and with 400 pages to go, I will have to spend another 4 hours just to say I finished the book.
Okay, so maybe it will turn out okay. I thought The Da Vinci Code was great, probably helped a lot by the fact that I had the version with colour pictures of all the landmarks. Angels & Demons, the first book in the series, was reasonably fun, but the science bits were terrible. Really terrible. 2000s Michael Crichton-terrible. But at least they didn't play into the story too much. They just established that maybe it was okay for a particle physicist to be religious. Fine. Oh, and the female lead had completely overthrown the established laws of physics, but that was mentioned in passing just to make her look cool. I get it. She's hot, and smart, which is also hot. Angels & Demons moved on to the story of blowing people up.
The Lost Symbol takes things a step further, though. Instead of just making up some fake science for us to choke down, Dan Brown does something awful. He takes a branch of ridiculous pseudoscience and not only legitimizes it, but makes it an integral part of the story. (So far as I can tell. Maybe he'll abandon it soon and get back to telling me about how some arch or another actually represents some part of the female anatomy.)
The "science" in question is called noetic science. Some people (weasel words, I know, but I'm too lazy to tell you just who) like to capitalize it: Noetic Science. The Institute of Noetic Sciences "conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness." They define noetic science as
You should be rolling your eyes, sighing heavily, and if religious, saying, "Good Lord."
The reason this irks me is that when people learn what I study, I commonly get asked questions regarding the connection between quantum physics and philosophy. Now, I'm not a quantum physicist, but I've read hundreds of papers, worked through graduate level texts, and even experimented with efficient ways of performing the calculations. So I think I have a reasonably good idea about how this stuff works. But when I explain to people that no, Zen Buddhism did not predict quantum phenomena, and no, homeopathy can not possibly work because quantum theory does not work that way, and yes, the Universe exists independently of whether or not you look at it... well, they get upset.
In his book, Dan Brown write a near carbon copy of a conversation I have had. And in the book, the scientist gives in to the woo-woo supporter and goes on to turn his ideas into world-changing research. Now, to my mind, this is a clear case of the scientist going crazy and building herself a fantasy world in which she is important, and if she were the main character, I would be happy to interpret the book this way. However, because she is not the main character, the things described for her are objective... meaning the author is taking the premise that this is possible.
I'd rather read about super-intelligent slugs, because they are more believable.
Here's one offending passage (with some comments interlaced):
Stop right there! No, no, no. Just no.
Tell it like it is, sister.
See what I'm saying? He's actually supporting this crap.
Here's the difference between ancient philosophy and modern science. Some ancient philosopher or another said everything. They took all the possible ideas, loaded them into a shotgun, and spun in circles, firing blindly. Take a concept vague enough, and it's bound to coincide in some way with a fact. But a scientist looks at the facts first, then makes testable predictions. Quantified... you know, with numbers and math and stuff. And then we test it, and see if it's true, and modify it as need be.
In particular, science talks about very specific things. We can say, "if I take measurements near this atom, here's how likely I am to spot an electron within a certain distance of the nucleus." And that's all that quantum theory applies to. It doesn't mean that waving a crystal over your orange juice will help you cure your cold. That's witchcraft.
In this particular example, quantum entanglement is the idea that you can figure out some information abut one particle by measuring a specially prepared related particle. You measure one, and instantly know something about the other. But that's all it is. It's got nothing to do with how much you love your pet rock. Tao did not predict this. He didn't know what an electron was. The concept is highly insulting to real scientists.
I could spend days tearing apart the bad science in The Lost Symbol, but I won't. I'll just mention the two that follow this passage. Peter says that polarity (what he describes as "positive and negative charges of the subatomic realm," though there are other meanings within physics) was "the 'dual world' described by Krishna." Garbage: if Krishna had said, "there are two things and they attract each other and that attraction obeys an inverse square law," then I'd listen. But just saying, "there are two sides to the world" doesn't mean squat.
Then he goes on to say that Heisenberg and Schrödinger said that they got the basics of quantum theory from Hindu mystic writings. Absolutely ridiculous. They got their ideas from hundreds of years of hard work by thousands of scientists before them. The Uncertainty Principle comes from Newton's laws of motion and 250 years of research into mechanics, matrix algebra, Fourier transforms, the development of noncommutative algebra, .... You get the idea.
Basically, if an idea doesn't make definite testable predictions, it doesn't mean anything. And that's why this upsets me. Millions of people will read this book, and instead of going and learning about DNA and genetics like they did after Jurassic Park (which took liberties, but at least it used real science as a basis), they're going to go online and read about how they can change lead into gold by staring hard enough at it. And believe it.
And I'll have to put up with ever more uneducated people telling me that I don't understand quantum theory as well as they do.
The bottom line is that if noetic science--excuse me, Noetic Science--saves the day, I'm going to headbutt this book until either the 500+ pages break, or my skull does.
**************************************************
As you can possibly tell, I am in a bad mood. I have wasted nearly an hour of my life reading this book already, and with 400 pages to go, I will have to spend another 4 hours just to say I finished the book.
Okay, so maybe it will turn out okay. I thought The Da Vinci Code was great, probably helped a lot by the fact that I had the version with colour pictures of all the landmarks. Angels & Demons, the first book in the series, was reasonably fun, but the science bits were terrible. Really terrible. 2000s Michael Crichton-terrible. But at least they didn't play into the story too much. They just established that maybe it was okay for a particle physicist to be religious. Fine. Oh, and the female lead had completely overthrown the established laws of physics, but that was mentioned in passing just to make her look cool. I get it. She's hot, and smart, which is also hot. Angels & Demons moved on to the story of blowing people up.
The Lost Symbol takes things a step further, though. Instead of just making up some fake science for us to choke down, Dan Brown does something awful. He takes a branch of ridiculous pseudoscience and not only legitimizes it, but makes it an integral part of the story. (So far as I can tell. Maybe he'll abandon it soon and get back to telling me about how some arch or another actually represents some part of the female anatomy.)
The "science" in question is called noetic science. Some people (weasel words, I know, but I'm too lazy to tell you just who) like to capitalize it: Noetic Science. The Institute of Noetic Sciences "conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness." They define noetic science as
Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the "inner cosmos" of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the "outer cosmos" of the physical world.
You should be rolling your eyes, sighing heavily, and if religious, saying, "Good Lord."
The reason this irks me is that when people learn what I study, I commonly get asked questions regarding the connection between quantum physics and philosophy. Now, I'm not a quantum physicist, but I've read hundreds of papers, worked through graduate level texts, and even experimented with efficient ways of performing the calculations. So I think I have a reasonably good idea about how this stuff works. But when I explain to people that no, Zen Buddhism did not predict quantum phenomena, and no, homeopathy can not possibly work because quantum theory does not work that way, and yes, the Universe exists independently of whether or not you look at it... well, they get upset.
In his book, Dan Brown write a near carbon copy of a conversation I have had. And in the book, the scientist gives in to the woo-woo supporter and goes on to turn his ideas into world-changing research. Now, to my mind, this is a clear case of the scientist going crazy and building herself a fantasy world in which she is important, and if she were the main character, I would be happy to interpret the book this way. However, because she is not the main character, the things described for her are objective... meaning the author is taking the premise that this is possible.
I'd rather read about super-intelligent slugs, because they are more believable.
Here's one offending passage (with some comments interlaced):
Her brother ran a finger down the long shelf of cracked leather bindings and old dusty tomes. "The scientific wisdom of the ancients was staggering... modern physics is only now beginning to comprehend it all.""
"Peter," she said, "you already told me that the Egyptians understood levers and pulleys long before Newton, and that the early alchemistsdid work on a par with modern chemistry,
Stop right there! No, no, no. Just no.
but so what? Today's physics deals with concepts that would have been unimaginable to the ancients.
Tell it like it is, sister.
"Like what?"
"Well...like entanglement theory, for one!" Subatomic research had now proven categorically that all matter was interconnected... entangled in a single unified mesh... a kind of universal oneness. "You're telling me the ancients sat around discussing entanglement theory?"
"Absolutely!" Peter said, pushing his long, dark bangs out of his eyes. "Entanglement was at the core of primeval beliefs. Its names are as old as history itself... Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman. In fact, man's oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his own interconnection with all things. He has always wanted to become 'one' with the universe... to achieve the state of 'at-one-ment.'"
See what I'm saying? He's actually supporting this crap.
Here's the difference between ancient philosophy and modern science. Some ancient philosopher or another said everything. They took all the possible ideas, loaded them into a shotgun, and spun in circles, firing blindly. Take a concept vague enough, and it's bound to coincide in some way with a fact. But a scientist looks at the facts first, then makes testable predictions. Quantified... you know, with numbers and math and stuff. And then we test it, and see if it's true, and modify it as need be.
In particular, science talks about very specific things. We can say, "if I take measurements near this atom, here's how likely I am to spot an electron within a certain distance of the nucleus." And that's all that quantum theory applies to. It doesn't mean that waving a crystal over your orange juice will help you cure your cold. That's witchcraft.
In this particular example, quantum entanglement is the idea that you can figure out some information abut one particle by measuring a specially prepared related particle. You measure one, and instantly know something about the other. But that's all it is. It's got nothing to do with how much you love your pet rock. Tao did not predict this. He didn't know what an electron was. The concept is highly insulting to real scientists.
I could spend days tearing apart the bad science in The Lost Symbol, but I won't. I'll just mention the two that follow this passage. Peter says that polarity (what he describes as "positive and negative charges of the subatomic realm," though there are other meanings within physics) was "the 'dual world' described by Krishna." Garbage: if Krishna had said, "there are two things and they attract each other and that attraction obeys an inverse square law," then I'd listen. But just saying, "there are two sides to the world" doesn't mean squat.
Then he goes on to say that Heisenberg and Schrödinger said that they got the basics of quantum theory from Hindu mystic writings. Absolutely ridiculous. They got their ideas from hundreds of years of hard work by thousands of scientists before them. The Uncertainty Principle comes from Newton's laws of motion and 250 years of research into mechanics, matrix algebra, Fourier transforms, the development of noncommutative algebra, .... You get the idea.
Basically, if an idea doesn't make definite testable predictions, it doesn't mean anything. And that's why this upsets me. Millions of people will read this book, and instead of going and learning about DNA and genetics like they did after Jurassic Park (which took liberties, but at least it used real science as a basis), they're going to go online and read about how they can change lead into gold by staring hard enough at it. And believe it.
And I'll have to put up with ever more uneducated people telling me that I don't understand quantum theory as well as they do.
The bottom line is that if noetic science--excuse me, Noetic Science--saves the day, I'm going to headbutt this book until either the 500+ pages break, or my skull does.
**************************************************
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