Apparently the document has now been released. For those unfamiliar with the case, a few summaries via news articles exist online:

Penelope Dingle was 45 years old when she died of colorectal cancer on the 25th of August, 2005. In the weeks and months that followed, her four sisters Christine Hearn, Annemarie, Natalie and Toni Brown were at a loss over what to do about her passing.

They were concerned that Pen, who had chosen alternative therapies to treat her illness rather than conventional medicine, had died needlessly and her death needed to be investigated.

… During the opening address, Counsel Assisting the Coroner Dr Celia Kemp said the purpose of the inquiry was to determine if there needs to be tighter controls on the homeopathic industry.

…A long time supporter of alternative therapies, she began to see homeopath Francine Scrayen for fertility assistance.

Dr Kemp told the inquest that in 2001, Pen complained to Ms Scrayen there was blood in her faeces. She was prescribed homeopathic remedies.

The inquest was later told it would be two years before Pen was diagnosed with rectal cancer.

At that point, according to cancer surgeon Dr Cameron Platell, she had a good chance of survival had she been treated with conventional medicine. But Pen decided to seek alternative treatments and refused chemotherapy and surgery to remove the cancer. — ‘Homeopathic remedies under the spotlight’ – by Claire Krol, Jun 16th, 2010, ABC News.

Although it was a local case, it got some attention internationally – such as featuring in this Darryl Cunningham cartoon, part of a forthcoming book, which is critical of homeopathy – as an example of ‘Stories of people abandoning real medicine in favour of quack cures are not hard to find.’

(There’s also an earlier cartoon about the MMR vaccines by Cunningham that is worth checking out too.)

During that year, I investigated a few other links as to the case, and discovered that the family members (particularly Mr Dingle) were active in terms of commenting on blogs (something I hesitated to engage with, since I knew there was an ongoing court case). Around this time, there were a variety of other stories being printed and I essentially thought I’d wait until the findings were released.

The journey from 2005 to 2010 has finally concluded. It features on the www.safetyandquality.health.wa.gov.au website [PDF] – Coronial Inquest Into The Death Of Penelope Dingle (nee Brown) – Alastair Hope, State Coroner of Western Australia.

As Andy D writes on his blog, ‘The report is detailed, depressing and damning‘.

It consists of a 100+ page overview of the history of Ms Dingle’s health, the various stakeholders as to her situation in terms of advice and the eventual findings as to who contributed to the situation.

Of particular interest is the part where private health insurance groups are called to order about how they contribute to such cases:

While I do not agree with the proposition that such alternative medical regimes should be outlawed, unless and until their supporters can provide appropriate and sufficient science base, any apparent legitimisation of these regimes could provide mixed messages for vulnerable and often desperate cancer suffers.

Evidence at the inquest revealed that homeopathic remedies are sold in pharmacies in Western Australia and homeopathic practitioners, such as Mrs Scrayen, have affiliation with private health insurance companies. In a context where health costs are increasing at an alarming rate and private health insurance companies struggle to meet the full costs of procedures, medications and hospital beds, it is a matter of concern that funds which which could be allocated to such fundamental health needs are being allocated to non-science based alternative medicine practitioners. –  Coronial Inquest Into The Death Of Penelope Dingle (nee Brown) – Alastair Hope, State Coroner of Western Australia, page 99.

The Coroner’s concluding recommendations are as follows:

Recommendation No. 1

I recommend that the Commonwealth and State Departments of Health review the legislative framework relating to complimentary and alternative medicine practitioners and practices with a view to ensuring that there are no mixed messages provided to vulnerable patients and that science based medicine and alternative medicine are treated differently.

In this case the choice for the deceased should have been a simple one between accepting the surgical option offered by Professor Platell or facing a painful death. That choice was made more difficult because the deceased was offered other “alternatives”.

Recommendation No.2

I recommend that the Medical Board of Western Australia finalise its document ‘Complementary alternative and unconventional medicine’ if it has not already done so and take steps to ensure that the document is promulgated to the profession and complied with.

This news item will most likely be covered in national and local news tomorrow – how much of it will have an impact upon this proposed document, I’m not too sure. There are many deaths that have not have had as much media attention as this one.

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This post, The Sad Saga Of Penelope Dingle Concludes – The ‘Vulnerable’ Prey Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine, originally appeared on She Thought on February 12, 2011.
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You may not have heard of Andrew Wakefield directly, but he gave momentum to the modern anti-vaccination movement.  There have been people opposed to vaccination since the beginning, using much the same arguments as today, but Wakefield gave them some scientific legitimacy with a paper he wrote in 1998 linking regressive autism and a gut syndrome he called ‘autistic enterocolitis’.  In the paper itself he admitted there was no evidence to link vaccines to these problems, but in a press conference he wasn’t so circumspect and blamed the combined MMR vaccine, recommending that parents ask for single vaccines instead.  Linking autism and vaccines created a panic and vaccination rates in the UK dropped below the levels needed for herd immunity,leading to a surge in measles cases and deaths.

Science by press conference seems to be something we now have to live with, but it misrepresents how science works.  In a press conference there is none of the nuance in a genuine paper and we only get the bits the journalists think will make a good story.  And because of the way the human brain works, we remember the original press conference and not the very long scientific discussions that follow it.  Because a scientific paper is not an end, it is a middle.  You have your hypothesis and do your experiment and think you have something interesting, and an editor and several reviewers agree and publish it.  But your results depend on how you did your experiment and how big it was and what other things you controlled for – in other words it only applies to a tiny slice of the big problem and it’s easy to make mistakes.  And that’s assuming your results are ‘real’ – all science results are probabilities and we have a built in probability, usually 1-5%, that they are due to random chance.  That may not sound like a lot when you are looking at one experiment, but when you look at the thousands that are published every year it means that a lot of them were coincidences.

So science is never, ever decided on one interesting result, even if that is what the public hears.

At the time Wakefield had his press conference it was reasonable to think that maybe there was something wrong.  There was in fact a concern about a particular type of MMR vaccine, using the Urabe mumps strain.  The Urabe strain is still used today in some countries, it is easier to produce than others but is associated with a higher level of complications.  This doesn’t mean that evil bastards use it, it means that all medical questions are complicated decisions about risks and benefits.  If you have high levels of disease causing complications and lots of children to immunise, you go with the quick one.  Once your level of disease drops and the complications from vaccines start to become more of a worry than the diseases, you can start using a strain that is more difficult but safer.  So in spite of the fact that his conclusions were controversial, researchers took them seriously and investigated links between the MMR vaccination and autism.

They don’t exist.

On the one side there was a single case series of 12 children that didn’t even look at vaccines, on the other are over 40 studies of different types, in different countries, covering thousands of children.  Instead of one tiny slice of the problem they combine to look at different aspects and all those tiny slices add up to an answer – there is no link between the MMR vaccination and autism.

The science was settled long ago in its usual messy, drawn out way, with many people adding pieces of the puzzle.  But fear of the MMR still exists like a ghost on the internet, a ghost that people worried about vaccines cling to and spread.  That is why Wakefield’s career in the last few years is so important, not because it means anything scientifically but because it shows there is no controversy and no reason to investigate.

Firstly Wakefield was investigated by journalist Brian Deer, who found that he had been paid over AU$600,000 by lawyers wanting to sue vaccine manufacturers as well as other worrying practices.  Thanks to this investigation the General Medical Council of the UK conducted an inquiry.  It proved 36 charges against him, including that he:

• Performed unneccessary, painful and dangerous procedures such as lumbar punctures and colonoscopies on children with autism.  In fact 12 charges were proved involving abuse of developmentally challenged children.
• Paid children at a birthday party to provide blood samples.  He later joked about the children being distressed.
• He did not have ethics approval for his experiments on children.

He was struck off the register and may not practice medicine in the UK and the Lancetretracted the paper, meaning it no longer exists as part of the scientific record.

Now in the last week comes the denoument.  There have been hints for a long time that there were discrepancies between the data in the 1998 paper and the children’s actual records, the reason the Lancet retracted it.  Now Brian Deer has shown that they are not accidental, mistakes or sloppiness, every single child in the study had their records altered in some way.  The data in the paper are different to the data in their medical records, with all of them altered to suggest a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.  This is not a case of incorrect research, research that was out by coincidence, that didn’t account for a confounding factor or didn’t include enough people.  He made it up.

In a beautiful example of poetic justice, the man who began the modern anti-vaccination scare by using the media has now been revealed by a journalist as a fraud who was paid to lie about a vaccine for a court case.  There are no questions, no concerns, no doubts.  There is nothing that needs to be explained or that parents should investigate.

He made it up.

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This post, Wakefield and the MMR for Parents, originally appeared on She Thought on January 16, 2011.
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You have no idea how much I hate such magazines. Most of the time, they’re either completely wrong or the advice is so generic, you probably learned it in third grade Physical Education class. As sucky as it may seem, if you want real information on health and dieting, your best bet is to get to a good source. A nutritionist or a textbook on nutrition will head you in the right direction, most of the time.

Here are a few pet peeves of mine that I think you should all look out for:

If one food is heralded over all, the diet is probably wrong. You know, the carrot diet, the grapefruit diet, the rice diet, it seems like it should be obvious that these diets are unhealthy. To a desperate person, looking to drop the pounds fast, though, they’re often willing to risk it. We like to think our health issues can be answered easily, without the invasion of a surgery or the hassle of a pill. We like to think that there is some magic wand, somewhere, that can be swung over our head and thrust downward to poke us in the eye with a cure that nobody ever would have thought of before. We wish it; we want it, but it isn’t there.

If one nutrient is demonized over all, you should probably question the animosity. Of course, it is nice to have something to blame for that extra fat shelf at the base of one’s spine, so why not find a single nutrient and BLAME?! BLAME! BLAME! Right now, the current trend is to blame types of carbohydrates for everything. Since the onset of the high-protein diet boom, the message that everyone is hearing is: CARBS ARE BAD, MMMKAY? (Not all high-protein plans demonize carbs, but what is important here is what people are hearing and doing).

The reality is that carbs serve many purposes in our bodies and we can’t live without them. The same goes for proteins and fats. Eliminating or severely reducing a particular nutrient in your body can have some major side-effects. For now, you should keep your nutrient intakes within these ranges, 50-65% calories from carbohydrate; 15-30% calories from fat; 20-30% calories from protein. The debate over low-carb diets is ongoing for good reason. We simply don’t have enough information on the effects of dramatic reductions to your intake of carbs and dramatic increases to your intake of protein. What information we do have can seem conflicting. People with kidney problems or who may develop kidney problems, for example, can suffer more damage with excessive protein intake. On the other hand, high-protein diets seem to supress hunger, making weight loss easier.

Furthermore, not all carbohydrates are the same. There are complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates. Carbohydrates come in the form of the plain, white sugar that you’re used to and in healthier forms, like in the fiber and complex carbohydrates from your roughage.

As science investigates dietary habits more, they’re finding that different bodies do, indeed, need different nutrients. Factors ranging from genetic predispositions to existing medical conditions to what bacterial bouquet is in your stomach can affect what foods we may be better off eating. As a result, just as it was a misleading idea purpetuated by bad scientific journalism to promote mostly rice diets in the ’80s, it is a bad idea to promote high protein/low-carb diets to people now, without looking into the full consequences. Current studies looking into these diets are still conflicted, possibly due to diversity amongst participants. In time, it is possible that we can find more conclusive evidence and adjust our diets accordingly.

“Natural” doesn’t mean much. There is a tremendous movement toward making things ‘natural’ in the food production industry. This utilizes the assumption that if it is natural, it is somehow better, no matter how badly defined the word ‘natural’ is. Given that very few of our foods that we eat are not a part of products that we evolved to suit our needs, it is tough to say what fits neatly under the ‘natural’ umbrella. We created bananas as they are; wheat; rice; cows and most produce that we are used to, now, are the products of thousands of years of our impact on plants and animals around us. Some are things we affected accidentally and some are things we intentionally used natural selection to create. Furthermore, not all products that are ‘natural’ are things that are good for us. There are countless plants that grow in the wild that would make us sick if we eat them. If you’re particularly worried about what’s in your food, falling for the ‘natural’ label isn’t going to tell you. Instead, doing the research yourself on where your food comes from is a much wiser idea, and it may turn out to be quite the unexpected adventure.

The fast track to weight loss is usually slow. Yes, that’s a painful thing to know. Our bodies naturally try to stay at a certain weight. Our bodies also lose nutrients as we lose weight, and losing weight too fast can make us sick. In some situations, a doctor may try to help a patient to lose weight quickly. This is usually when the weight of the individual poses greater health risks than rapid weight loss will. Outside of when a doctor suggests it because of another health risk, the safest rate of weight loss is considered to be 1-2 pounds per week. Even if you have a friend that lost weight quickly, that doesn’t mean it is healthy for you to do so as well. So, if you’re looking for that bikini-model body for Summertime, you have to start very early.

In future articles, I hope to address some of these topics more in-depth. I think that people may benefit tremendously by understanding the chemical differences between carbohydrates, proteins and fats and understanding how they are digested. This may help rid people of some of their fears about which nutrients are going into their body.

One thing I think would also benefit everyone is to always double check anything you read on diet and exercise. When someone is trying to sell something, even if it is a book, they have motivation to leave things out that will show their product in a less positive light. As a result, studies that might cast doubt upon their claims are avoided. You can usually easily search for studies on the same topics using google scholar, and it will show you if there is conflicting evidence for something. Always read what the other side has to say and use good critical thinking skills.

Sources:

Understanding Nutrition
Nutritional Anthropology
Nutrition and Diet Therapy for Nurses
Stanford Food Pyramid

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This post, Why You Should Hate Weight Loss Tips, originally appeared on She Thought on January 7, 2011.
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Their Site's Main Image

I’m a writer, which means that I have to spend a lot of time looking out for scams trying to take advantage of me.  There are fake agents, fake contests, and fake publishers who are all trying to get my money by promising me riches and fortune and, most importantly, an audience.  If anything can teach you skepticism, it’s trying to navigate the minefield of nearly, but not quite, professional writing.

I think you should go look at this.  It’s a “Mind Science” based analysis service for screenplays.  That seems highly unlikely to me, but here is an excerpt from the site:

Once your screenplay has been received, trained evaluators conduct an analysis using our proprietary Mind Science Method to ascertain individual scores for each line, each page, and for the screenplay as a whole. This scoring system evaluates the different criteria, story structure, dialog and action of each individual line.

Once the analysis is complete, a score is assigned that can be compared equally against the score of any other screenplay, if you have chosen to submit a second screenplay of a previously produced project.

After the initial page-by-page study is complete and individual score determined, the screenplay is then studied and examined by separate evaluators for its story structure and connection strength, yielding the second analysis based on content.

You will receive both the score and complete analysis in your final report, including a hardcopy of the screenplay with review notations.

The Mind Science score and analysis will allow you to gauge the degree of stimulation/mental connection the screenplay evokes. And, by comparing the score of a new script with the score of a script from a produced film in the same genre, you can compare its potential success apples-to-apples.

Does this sound like Scientology to anyone else?  It sounds like all they’re doing is providing detailed coverage and calling it “Mind Science”.

I mean, maybe what they do is legitimate in the sense that they provide a service, but they charge, get this, FIFTY DOLLARS A PAGE to review your screenplay.  That’s $6000 for a 120 page script.

$6000!!!

Everyone, for 1 dollar a page, I will read and review your screenplay!  I dunno how appealing that is, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot cheaper!  I’m no one, but at least I’ve optioned a screenplay and that makes me 100% qualified to use my own Proprietary Mind Science to evaluate your screenplay’s ability to engage an audience’s interest.  For $6000 dollars, who knows what I’d do (e-mail your inquiries).

Hell, pay an 8-year-old a dollar and see how long he can sit through it before getting up.  If it’s more than 10 pages, you’ve got a winner!

If you’re going to pay money to get feedback I recommend finding someone who is a screenwriter or actually works in the business — submit to ScriptSavvy or Carson Reeves, I can personally attest to both the quality and honesty of their services.

I realize that the Cinematic Appraisals Service is aimed at producers and people who are in genuine pre-production stages of getting a film made, not just struggling writers, but, until I see some evidence that what they’re doing actually has any evidence behind it or is more useful than, say, reading the script with a critical eye, I’m going to have to call this one as straight up bilking people out of their money.  Especially since I can’t find any information about them anywhere else on the net.  And taking money from producers, while potentially satisfying, means that there’s less money to make movies.

Writers Beware!

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This post, Cinematic Appraisals: Scam or Science?, originally appeared on She Thought on November 12, 2010.
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Spending on homeopathy by the government and private individuals is medically indefensible. Furthermore, wasting money on medically ineffective water and sugar pills at a time when local NHS trusts regularly run out of funds, and education and scientific research budgets may be slashed is ridiculous. Therefore, I am a strong supporter of the 10:23 Campaign’s goals and want nothing more[1] than to see them succeed.

But[3] I have concerns about the safety and efficacy of the 10:23 Campaign’s approach, which I have helpfully categorized as Economic, Philosophic, Scientific, Pedagogic, and Safety.

Economic
Boots sells homeopathic products because people buy them. If obtaining homeopathic products involves buying them from Boots, then those purchases go down as customer interest in homeopathy. I doubt Boots has a hipster flag for ironic purchases.

This is not a very important concern.

Philosophic
“10:23″ is a reference to Avogadro’s number, because homeopathic remedies are frequently diluted until the odds of finding even a single molecule of the “therapeutic” compound in solution are astronomical. Thus, the tagline, “There’s nothing in it”.

Unfortunately, many homeopaths will agree that there are no molecules remaining in solution. Instead, they suggest that the water “remembers” the compound through some vague hand waving mechanism that invokes “quantum mechanics” and is potentized by succussion.

“Water memory” is thoroughly implausible, but it is the proposed mechanism for homeopathic action and, therefore, is the hypothesis to address.

Scientific
The mass overdose stunt is not a scientific test, but it may provide data that is detrimental to the anti-homeopathy campaign. The stunt’s efficacy is predicated upon participants suffering no ill effects after “overdosing” on the homeopathic remedy. The odds of something happening because of the “overdose” are small, the odds that something bad will happen by chance grows as the popularity of the campaign increases. Unfortunately, bad things randomly happen to people, and if one of those things happens close in time to the overdose it may be used as evidence of homeopathic efficacy. The Boobquake protest was similarly undermined by the virtual certainty of a 6+ earthquake occurring within 48 hours of the protest time.

Pedagogic
Most people do not believe in the Law of Similars or the Law of Infinitesimals. They think homeopathic remedy means herbal remedy. Therefore, explaining that “there’s nothing in it” may seem like a straight forward educational approach. But, as a friend who is a Christian minister[4] says about atheist arguments:

“I don’t believe in that jerk either.”

Homeopaths can say the same about the “there’s nothing in it” argument and invoke “water memory”. In the same vein, the lack of harm from mass overdose stunts can be presented as a lack of side effects. Remember, homeopathy advocates are not operating from a biochemical understanding of therapeutic action.

Therefore, it is not clear that mass overdose stunts are the most effective tool for teaching the public about homeopathy. While the “water memory” mechanism cannot be directly refuted in a publicly dramatic way, the implausibility is evident when one sees the preparation of a homeopathic remedy, as demonstrated by Crispian Jago:

Safety
The overdose is a staple of homeopath opponents. Homeopathic overdoses appear safe because homeopathic remedies are diluted until they are just water or sugar pills.

The homeopathic industry, however, is poorly regulated. It is not unknown for so-called “homeopathic” remedies to contain physiologically significant doses of active compounds (e.g., zinc in Zicam). The alternative medicine industry is notorious for the presence of undeclared drug ingredients in their products. A mass overdose of such products could pose a health risk to activists.

Conclusion
I do not know what the 10:23 Campaign has planned for 2011, but I would hope that future stunts maximize participant safety. I also hope that they embrace the opportunity to make their stunts more than a way to generate publicity, but also to creatively educate the public in an effective manner.

NOTES

1. Technically untrue. I want my kids to be healthy and a tenured faculty position a lot more. It’s just a figure of speech. Jesus[2].
2. Also, just a figure of speech.
3. Yeah, you knew that one was coming. So clever, that one.
4. Apologies for any misquoting and for lumping a lovely man in with homeopaths.

Josh regularly publishes similar drivel at The Finch and Pea and can be found on Twitter posting as @rugbyologist.

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This post, Safe and Effective Skeptical Activism – The 10:23 Campaign, originally appeared on She Thought on October 16, 2010.
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Sacred cow (Wikipedia): “The term sacred cow has passed into the English language to mean an object or practice which is considered immune from criticism, especially unreasonably so.[32][33] The term is based on the popular understanding of the place of cows in Indian religions as objects that have to be treated with respect, no matter how inconvenient.”

I mentioned  in a post on my personal blog that I harbor sacred cows of my own–beliefs that I can’t seem to abandon even though I have found strong, credible evidence against their validity.  One of these is the idea that my recreational drug of choice, caffeine, is a harmless and effective stimulant.

Evolution of an addict
I have heard the siren call of caffeine since I was a child. One powerful signifier of status in my received religious tradition is avoidance of caffeine.  It’s not as serious as the prohibition against alcohol, but the social stigma against consuming caffeine is a strong deterrent.

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This post, Sacred Cow: Caffeine, originally appeared on She Thought on September 28, 2010.
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“Tis now near five o’ the clock.

Yon brilliant moss o’ fire, the golden sun,

Hath just saluted with a blushing kiss

That partner of his bed, the vasty sea”.

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth.

There was a time when both quotes about “sunset” were thought to be written by William Shakespeare.  Not just by people who were “ignorant” or “foolish” but by wise educated people that fell into the same traps people fall into today through a lack of critical thinking skills.  The great Shakespeare forgery of 1795 is chronicled in a delightful book “The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare” by Doug Stewart.  Mr. Stewart’s book shows that not much has changed since William Henry Ireland in a fit of boredom (and to please his Shakespeare fanatic father) put “old” ink to “old” paper and for a time fooled a large part of the English population, including many experts and a Duke.

The elements in the Shakespeare forgery we see today are:

*what starts out as a simple prank  quickly gets out of hand

William Henry Ireland was a bored 19 year old who wanted to please his father, a Shakespeare fanatic.  After a trip to Stratford on Avon, where his father was sure they would find old Shakespeare documents, he decided to make his father a small forgery with Shakespeare’s signature.  His father instead of being pleased, wanted more.

*it grew out of control

William Henry felt he had to keep producing more documents to keep his father happy.  Also his father was insistent that he be taken to the secret trunk where the Shakespeare documents were being found  Only by supplying more and more could William Henry keep his father happy.

*the scam became more complex

Eventually William Henry wrote 2 plays of Shakespeare.  The more his forgeries were accepted the bolder he became.

*experts agreed the documents were real

William Henry’s father had experts sign a document after visiting the forgeries testifying they thought the Shakespeare papers seen were real.  The Duke of Clarence, brother to the king, backed one of the plays and his mistress the actress, Dorothy Jordan, played a role in the play.

*new documents (or paintings) turn up whenever an artist or writer regains popularity

When Vermeer is popular, new “lost” Vermeer s show up.  Shakespeare was just gaining a cult status, so documents by Shakespeare were bound to turn up.

Shakespeare was just gaining cult status in England.  People could not believe that more documents by him and copies of his plays written by his hand were not somewhere.  The truth was Shakespeare was not seen as a “genius” until many years after his death and probably most of his papers had been burned or lost along the way.  It was only now that he was “important” again that a real need for his papers was created.

*we tend to look for confirmation of what we want to be true, rather than inconsistencies and incongruities

William Henry used old paper cut from books of Shakespeare’s day.  He used specially prepared “old” looking ink.  Many mistakes made, including a receipt for 50 pounds from the Earl of Leicester, dated 2 years after Leicester had died.  The mistake was noted, but excuses were made.  Often a forgery or scam does not even have to be well done to work.  Much of the work of convincing others can be done by people not involved in the scam, but by people who just wish it to be true.

*believing that it would take someone of “high intelligence” and “experience” to perpetrate a seemingly sophisticated hoax

William Henry, a simple clerk without a reputation for being intelligent or a writer, was deemed too “dumb” to have written such works.  Even when some people suspected forgery, they thought it was an “old” forgery, because of the “old paper” and the “skill” it would have taken to create such a hoax.

Little girls were once thought too “pure” and “innocent” to create photographs with fairies.  Poltergeists can’t be the child in a family simply throwing things, because they aren’t clever enough to fool adults.

We like to think we can only be fooled by very smart and experienced people.  Being fooled by a child or young adult is especially hard to admit to.

*someone making money and getting attention from the hoax

Drury Lane Theatre owner Richard Sheridan put on the forged play “Vortigern and Rowena” not so much because he believed the play to be written by Shakespeare, but because he knew the play would be a sell out.  It was.  William Henry’s father sold a limited edition folio of the new Shakespeare discoveries.  Everyone seemed to be making money except for William Henry.  Often the hoaxer doesn’t profit from his own hoax.

*when the hoaxer confesses, many do  not believe the confession, as they have too much invested in the hoax

William Henry, after the disaster that was the opening (and closing) night of the “Vortigern and Rowena” finally confessed to the forgeries.  His father refused to believe him.  Many people believed that William Henry’s father must have some how been involved with producing the forgeries.  People could not believe one young man could produce so much work, and of such quality.  (though that quality is debatable).

Even today when Bigfoot hoaxers admit to giant wooden feet and crop circle video tapers admit to trick photography, people say “they aren’t smart enough” or “that doesn’t explain the amount of evidence” or “they are lying and just trying to get attention”.  The will to believe over rides the truth and common sense.  Once you have public ally committed to something being real, the humiliation of ever backing down can be more than many can handle.

I wish I could say that William Henry and his father ever mended their relationship. Father never really accepted that his son could have the brains to fool him. William Henry went on to be a real author.  He published several books, hut never became the “next Shakespeare”.  He later in life wrote a “confession” where he once again was clear, he did this without any help and it wasn’t very complicated to do.

We don’t like to think how easily we can be fooled, but we can take comfort that being fooled is nothing new.

And by the way, the first Shakespeare quote is the fake.

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This post, A Midsummer Night’s Scheme, originally appeared on She Thought on September 16, 2010.
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If you’re like me, you sigh, and, if you’re feeling particularly energetic, you post your own list of citations saying exactly the opposite.

Because really, who has the time, or the inclination, or the skills, to look up every single one of those studies and analyze the methodology or the interpretations? Especially when there are not one, not two, but twenty one studies given to support their claim?

Kim Hebert, that’s who. In a serendipitous convergence of the knowledge, tenacity and free time required to research the twenty one papers that Naturopath Bryce Wylde submitted as his favourite studies on homeopathy, Kim has provided a summary of each and every one.

As Mr. Wylde took the time to respond to criticism with a list of citations that are his favourite, I must assume that he intends this list to be persuasive supporting data for homeopathy, if not the best data available. Given that he prides himself on his evidence-based practice and discusses homeopathy in regular media appearances, I expect that if there’s good data to support homeopathy, he would have it. I also expect that Mr. Wylde, in using scientific papers to validate his position, values the scientific method and recognizes that science is not inherently biased against homeopathy or ineffective in evaluating its effects.

Curious about the results? Read the whole post at SkepticNorth.com.

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This post, Des Liked: How To Argue With an Alternative Health Proponent, in Twenty One Mind-Numbing Steps, originally appeared on She Thought on August 26, 2010.
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Today I read an article that I found infuriating, but then I’m easily infuriated, because of what appeared to be either really bad methodology in a study or really silly conclusions by the journalist who wrote the piece.  Since I can’t see the study and I can read the piece, I’ll try to avoid pointing a finger in either direction.  It was posted several months ago, but came to my attention today.  It reminded me of how important it is to be critical of the media’s handling of scientific studies.

The piece is called “The Psychology of Knock Offs: Why ‘Faking It’ Makes Us Feel (and Act) Like Phonies“.  The basic premise is that, through a study recently conducted, scientists have concluded that people are more dishonest and cynical when they wear knock off goods.

I’ll be the first to admit that this sort of thing falls well below my normal threshold of caring.  People who wear things because they are a specific brand or because they look like they’re a specific brand are a little alien to me.  It strikes me as fairly shallow behavior, but if it makes them happy, it’s really no skin off my back.  If you can buy something for $5 from a dude on the street in New York and it impresses all the ladies back home because it looks like a $500 purse, good for you, right?  How on earth does a purse cost that much anyway?

In any event, the basic methodology for the study was that they had girls come in and they gave them sunglasses.  Half were told they were super expensive awesome sunglasses, and the other half were told they were cheapo knockoffs.  They were then given a battery of tests in which lying would earn them more money.  They were also given a survey that asked them their views on the world.  The women (and it was all young women, why no guys?) who were told they had cheapo sunglasses were much more likely to lie and be cynical.

From this, the journalist concludes that people who buy knock offs are paying a hidden moral cost that makes them more likely to lie and be cynical.

Wearing counterfeit glasses not only fails to bolster our ego and self-image the way we hope, it actually undermines our internal sense of authenticity. “Faking it” makes us feel like phonies and cheaters on the inside, and this alienated, counterfeit “self” leads to cheating and cynicism in the real world.

That would be a really interesting conclusion if the methodology at all allowed you to make it, but it doesn’t.

I have some questions that aren’t answered in the article.  Did they all get the sunglasses at the same time?  Did they know other people had supposedly real sunglasses?  Were they tested by the same person who told them that the sunglasses were real or fake?  Did they get to take the glasses home, or did they think they would get to take the glasses home?

But there are problems I can see with just the information in the article:

1) The volunteers given “real” sunglasses were told they were authentic, so they’d already been rewarded and were therefore more likely to do what they thought the researchers wanted.

2) The volunteers given “fake” sunglasses had been told, essentially, that they didn’t deserve real sunglasses when the researchers told them they were fakes, and were therefore less likely to do what they thought the researchers wanted.

3) The volunteers had just been cheated, of course they felt more negative.

4) The volunteers were gifted sunglasses, they didn’t buy them knowing that they were knock offs, so it’s impossible to extrapolate the behavior to people who buy their own sunglasses.

5) The volunteers received no benefit from wearing fake sunglasses because they didn’t buy them — the entire reason people buy fake brand names is to save money, in what way is a study that excludes the primary motivating factor at all useful in studying a behavior?

6) There’s no way to be sure that the behavior is linked to wearing the sunglasses rather than linked to being given sunglasses of one kind or another.

The only reasonable conclusion from the study is that people who are given things they’re told aren’t very nice don’t feel terribly good about it.  This is, of course, not a broad and moralistic statement and it doesn’t really make good news, and that’s a big problem with a lot of science reporting.  When something interesting happens in a study, the response is to exaggerate it, make huge claims, and moralize wherever possible.  Interesting patterns are often pointed to as conclusive results and people with pre-determined moral opinions take things and run.

If you want to tell me that ”[c]ounterfeiting is a serious economic and social problem, epidemic in scale,” I’d love to hear the whys and wherefores, but I’d much rather hear the facts and figures accurately explained.

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This post, Pop Psychology and the Media, originally appeared on She Thought on August 25, 2010.
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This little experiment was inspired by a Life Ionizer video that was sent to me, warning of the dangers of acidic bottled water. I address some of the medical claims of alkaline water in Part 1, and in the following video, I see how acidic bottled waters (and soft drinks and tap water) really are…

So, yeah, don’t take YouTube videos at face value, even mine. This is an easy test you can do yourself!

Me, I’ll stick to my tap water. As long as it doesn’t actually come out green…

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This post, Taking the Bottled Water Test – Part Two, originally appeared on She Thought on August 19, 2010.
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