Anecdotal evidence

In How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results, Michael Shermer has some interesting thoughts on anecdotal evidence. He states that humans are more inclined to think anecdotally than to think scientifically. He puts this down to an evolutionary imperative to pay attention to perceived danger, with false positives (i.e. false alarms) being relatively harmless, but false negatives (perceiving there to be no danger when in fact there is) potentially fatal. According to Shermer the human brain is therefore not adapted to weed out false positives. This requires scientific thinking, which does not come naturally to most people.

Shermer describes how the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and correlation causation confusion led to anecdotes triumphing over science in the autism caused by vaccine controversy.

More on anecdotal evidence can be found in this Wikipedia article.

Brain Gym SA: Have they done the right thing?

Brain Gym South Africa has just had a national conference in Cape Town. Have they come clean and done the right thing? Did the bigwigs of the quacking granfalloon inform the rank and file of the organisation, as well as their unsuspecting customers, of the crisis of scientific legitimacy they're facing? If not, I would suggest that they now have a serious ethical problem.

Brain Gym has long been controversial and many observers have held it to be pseudoscientific nonsense and to lack evidence for effectiveness. The scientific evidence against core Brain Gym theories and claims is now very convincing. The past year has been an annus horribilis for Brain Gym International, it being exposed to be quackery by Dr. Ben Goldacre in the British press and its founder, Dr. Paul Dennison, being humiliated on British television. I've described the whole affair fully a previous post, Brain Gym faces a Perfect Storm!, links included.

The press exposé forced Brain Gym in Britain to make the following admission on its website:

"The UK Educational Kinesiology Trust makes no claims to understand the neuroscience of Brain Gym®. The author has advised that the simple explanations in the Brain Gym Teachers Edition about how the movements work are hypothetical and based on advice from a neurobiologist at the time the books were written."

The admission, however, now seems to have been removed from their website and I could find no indication on any Brain Gym affiliated website of these and other admissions and the events that preceded them. Brain Gym seems to be lying low and hoping that the storm will pass.

This is another admission published in the British Times Online:

"The creators of an educational exercise programme used in hundreds of schools in England have agreed to withdraw unsubstantiated scientific claims in their teaching materials. ... Paul Dennison, a Californian educator who created the programme, admitted that many claims in his teacher’s guide were based on his “hunches” and were not proper science."

Some years ago I challenged a Brain Gym practitioner at the then Witwatersrand Technikon, to reveal to students who were being subjected to Brain Gym, the pseudoscientific nature of its claims. He declined and admitted that any positive effect of Brain Gym was due to placebo and Hawthorne effects; also that suggestion played a role in any positive effect. He could thus not agree to my challenge. Predictably, he ascribed placebo and Hawthorne effects to the "unpredictable and mystical" influence of quantum physics. I questioned the ethics of bullshitting the students of a university of technology about scientific facts, but never received an answer.

I suspect that Brain Gym is now in the same quandary, it can't reveal its true pseudoscientific nature, as that would destroy any placebo-based positive effects. Its credibility is at stake as well. That's the price it is paying for quacking and for mispresenting itself as a science, when in fact it is very much an alternative and controversial form of therapy.

I've probably spent too much time on Brain Gym on the blog - hopefully this will be the last for a while. It was necessary because it is the most widespread and influential form of quackery in South African education. I shall continue checking Brain Gym websites to see whether they come clean, but I won't hold my breath.

Quackery in South Africa: The SCIO/QXCI

In July 2007 the South African press reported gleefully about strange diagnoses made by a rural medical doctor using a so-called quantum diagnostic device, the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI. The initial report appeared in the Beeld newspaper under the heading Man 'angry with wife's vagina'. Now I realise that the press often misquotes people and that sensational reports of this nature should be taken with a pinch of salt. To my knowledge, however, the doctor concerned has never publically repudiated the newspaper report. He explained to the newspaper reporter that:

One had to understand quantum medicine to correctly interpret the findings of the device

It could detect a virus's frequency if one had been in touch with someone carrying the virus

It could pick up HIV frequencies in the evening if one had contact with HIV positive people during the day

If the device had "read" you once, it could read you again even if you were thousands of kilometers away

The diagnoses made by SCIO/QXCI-device re. the patient (a 50 year old male) included:

Hepatitis C

Roundworms mostly found in horses

Other parasites that normally occur in India and Bangladesh

Vaginal problems

Prostate problems (the patient's had been removed)

Various other problems, including migraine, hart, back, eye and testosterone

According to the patient the doctor indicated that the machine probably detected vaginal problems because he was angry with his wife's vagina! To the press the doctor said that the vaginal symptoms arose because the system picked up frequencies of problems in the subconscious mind, or problems experienced by the women in one's life, like one's wife, sister or mother.

Up to this point it was just a single rural doctor who had made a fool out of himself. The report indicated, however, that more than 130 of these devices are in use in South Africa. Another report in the Rooi Rose, a women's magazine, indicated that many more similar devices are in use.

I'm neither a medical doctor, nor a physicist, but on just common sense reading of the South African SCIO/QXCI website, it was clear to me that it is total nonsense. While I can understand homeopaths and others from the so-called alternative health professions falling for this kind of nonsense, I find it inconceivable that conventional medical practitioners and others trained in scientific medicine do so as well.

Dr. Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch is normally a good resource when researching dubious devices and practices. He has an informative article on the SCIO/QXCI and its inventor, one William C. Nelson. It is clear from Barrett's article that the device's history is steeped in controversy and misrepresentation. The character of its inventor, Nelson, certainly does not inspire confidence in the what is so clearly a quack device.

Barrett concluded:

"The Quantum Xrroid device is claimed to balance "bio-energetic" forces that the scientific community does not recognize as real. It mainly reflects skin resistance (how easily low-voltage electric currents from the device pass through the skin), which is not related to the body's health. It is promoted with elaborate pseudoscientific explanations and disclaimers intended to protect its practitioners from prosecution. Use of the device can cause unnecessary expense as well as delay in getting appropriate treatment. If you encounter a practitioner who uses one, please ask the appropriate government agencies to investigate."

Medical practitioners, therapists and psychologists who use this device may find it instructive to read Barrett's article (if they did before they may never have acquired it in the first place). They should then realise the danger it holds for their professional reputations.

A further post on the SCIO with more information the scam can be found at Silly season: The SCIO/QXCI.