What 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' really told you

Last updated 2013 October 17 09:05 UT

The tacky health-scare magazine self-styled "journal", What Doctors Don't Tell You, has been getting a little hot under the collar recently about things that it claims it is reported to have said but didn't really say. It's also been making some rather surprising assertions about other things. Some of these are clearly silly "couldn't be bothered to check"-type errors, others are more than that. You be the judge.

This post will be added to as time and information permits.

The Claim	The Reality
McTaggart (said) her journal would accept no advertising - "we have to remain pure" -	Not only is approximately a quarter of each issue devoted to advertising (based on June 2013 issue), in February 2013, the Nightingale Collaboration reported that the Advertising Standards Authority had adjudicated against advertising in WDDTY to the tune of 54 CAP-Code breaches. This is in addition to eleven "informally resolved" cases (i.e. the advertising was acknowledged to be in breach of CAP-Codes and was amended voluntarily.)
"...the Nightingale Collaboration, a ragtag group who meet in a pub of the same name..."	Errr.. there is no pub called The Nightingale Collaboration.
"...the pharmaceutically backed organization [Simon Singh] fronts, 'Sense About Science'...."	Sense About Science is a charity. Its accounts are therefore open to scrutiny. Less than 5% of its funding comes from companies; none of these is a pharmaceutical company.
WDDTY complained: "The Times stated: we said vitamin C cures HIV."
"Five Live followed up with a television debate about our magazine."	Five Live doesn't do TV debates. (Clue: It is a radio station!)
"It's also apparent from the information published in The Times and in all the media following that not one journalist or broadcaster has read one single word we've written, particularly on the homeopathy story, and for very good reason: the article and the magazine containing it in fact have not yet been published."	Ummm -- WDDTY published their claims for homeopathy months ago! And bragged on Facebook about doing so!
(To the Times)  "You have no idea yet what we're going to write about, so how can you say we're going to write that homeopathy 'cures' cancer?"	Ummm... Maybe they were referring to a claim WDDTY has already made? (See above)
"Just to clarify yet another lie about us: we are not 'pro' or 'anti' vaccine."	From WDDTY, June 2013: "The safest interpretation is that the MMR increases the risk of autism by 5 per cent"
"Not one of the newspapers, radio shows or television stations bothered to contact us, even to solicit a comment,,,"	The Times journalist who reported on the campaign to get the magazine off supermarket shelves sent this email: And phoned twice:   (Having had no reply from the "Editorial" department, he next tried "Accounts and General Management")
"...the Swiss government decided that there is some proof of homeopathy..."	It did nothing of the sort! See Zeno's Blog for what really happened.
"For months, Singh, whose Sense About Science group has the sponsorship of the British Pharmaceutical Association..."	If the The British Pharmaceutical Association actually exists and is not just something else made up by McTaggart, it is not a sponsor of Sense About Science.
"[Waitrose] are not one of our stockists"	Curious. That's not what the distributor thinks:
"The letter being sent out by the Times to our readers..."	The Times is sending out letters to WDDTY readers? Really? Is WDDTY implying that the Times somehow get hold of the WDDTY subscriber database? Has anyone ever actually seen one of these letters?

What does become apparent is that WDDTY needs some sort of disclaimer on a lot of what it asserts!

Simple Test for the Efficacy of Homeopathy

Take the "Tetenterre Challenge"

• Homeopaths claim that their so-called "remedies" are effective. 
• By definition, something that is effective has an effect. 
• If something has an effect, that effect can be observed.

This offers a simple double-blind, randomised test for the claims homeopaths make:

1. An experienced homeopath selects sufficient quantities for a dozen provings of two remedies whose provings show them to have very different, preferably opposite, effects.
2. This homeopath selects eleven homeopath collaborators.
3. A researcher, using techniques determined by the homeopath, distributes the pillules of each remedy into a dozen separate identical new vials.
4. A placebo (physically identical "inert" pillules) are distributed into another dozen identical new vials.
5. The vials are individually randomly labelled by the researcher with identification numbers.
6. The researcher records, for each ID number, whether it holds Remedy #1, Remedy #2, or Placebo.
7. The vials are randomly grouped into threes, each group containing one vial each of Remedy #1, Remedy #2, Placebo.
8. The homeopath collects a package containing the vials (no contact with the researcher).
9. The homeopath distributes the groups of vials to his/her homeopath collaborators.
10. Each homeopath, conducts "provings" of the contents of each vial.
11. The homeopaths use the results of the provings to identify which vials hold the placebo and which vials hold which of the two known remedies.
12. The homeopath's identifications are compared with the researcher's records.

Any takers?

(Yes, I know that there are more holes in this than in a decent roquefort, but if homeopaths can't distinguish between "remedies" with this....)

Coins, Astrology, Pseudomedicine and Gun Control

You can try this at home!

I have just tossed a coin ten times. I got three heads and seven tails. Should I assume that this coin has a probability of 0.7 for tails and 0.3 for heads? Let's see.

That sample of ten times was one of a hundred such samples that I recorded when tossing the same coin 1000 times. Taken as a whole, I had 503 heads and 497 tails, giving a probability (to two significant figures) of 0.50 for each possible outcome. What should I assume now? That the other 900 trials were flawed, or that my penny has a statistically equal probability of heads or tails?

I suggest that reasonable people will assume that the cherry-picked ten times was a normal statistical "blip" and that the coin is, in fact, "fair".

Apologists for pseudomedicine, which include the present Secretary of State for Health, eschew the same reasoning when it comes to clinical trials. They focus on the equivalent of the trial that gave seven tails and proclaim that "some trials show that homoeopathy [or antidepressants, or some other pseudomedicine] works better than placebo".  Somehow they refuse to acknowledge that it is the totality of trials -- the thousand coin-tosses -- that must be taken into account, not just the few subsets that show a balance in favour of their pet species of pseudomedicine.

Similarly, those who subscribe to belief systems like astrology systematically ignore the many trials that demonstrate that, as a predictive or descriptive tool, it is no better than random chance and, instead, focus on those whose statistical-blip outcomes favoured the belief system.

So why do  so many otherwise intelligent people seem reluctant to apply the same reasoning to beliefs like astrology or the efficacy of pseudomedicine as they effortlessly do to coins?

The short answer is confirmation bias, probably reinforced by backfire effect. The unfortunate consequence is that those of us who are open to rational argument are unlikely to ever be able to convince those that are not.

Unfortunately, this also feeds into things like arguments for gun control, so it is unlikely that the recent appalling events in Connecticut will do anything other than polarise opinion even further.

And, following this argument to its rational conclusion, why did I even bother even to write this blog post?

I would be delighted to be shown to be wrong.