By the ANH-Intl Team
The latest skeptic campaign in the UK takes its name from Florence Nightingale and appears set to go on an all-out offensive against non-orthodox medicine. The Nightingale Collaboration intends to work with other similar-minded campaigns and to recruit volunteers to begin campaigning themselves.
The anti-science ‘skeptics’
Strictly speaking, the word ‘skeptic’ should be in quotes, because these people aren’t true skeptics. A skeptic can be defined as “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual”. Rather than look at the subject in a spirit of objective scientific enquiry, the new, anti-natural health skeptics start from the position that natural healthcare is proven nonsense. Among their band of merry followers are high-profile scientists, doctors, journalists and celebrities, including Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst, Ben Goldacre, Michael Baume, David Colquhoun, Brian Cox, Stephen Fry and Tim Minchin. Given their respective profiles, they all have very easy access to the mainstream press. It seems that no evidence will convince them otherwise. They appear to operate from a belief system that is closed and cultish in nature.
Maybe we should refer to the whole skeptics’ initiative as an ‘anti-science’ or ‘anti-nature’ movement? The Guardian journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot has previously drawn precisely this conclusion about the closely allied organisation, Sense About Science. Sense About Science are responsible for the young skeptics’ organisation, Voice of Young Science.
A noisy minority
The skeptics present their views as those of everyone clever and informed enough to know the truth. However, the facts are different, and truth is much less black-and-white than the skeptics like to make out. When skeptics stage a debate around an anti-natural healthcare motion, they lose – even in medical schools. An anti-natural healthcare candidate who ran against David Tredinnick MP in the last election won just 0.4% of the vote. Natural healthcare is more popular than ever!
The skeptic movement is a co-ordinated attempt by established interests to quosh natural healthcare at the very point when orthodox medicine is running into trouble. Look at the timing: the Nightingale Collaboration has been launched exactly when the UK’s National Health Service is considering how to save money by increasing patient access to natural healthcare. Not only that, but the Department of Health is about to bring in statutory regulation of herbal medicine practitioners.
Skeptics were busy when the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s evidence check on homeopathy was released earlier this year. Those behind the skeptics may have designed the Nightingale Collaboration to offset the loss of the Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris. Dr Harris was instrumental in this blatant attack on homeopathy, and lost his seat at the last election.
Cultural dwarfs
Author Martin Walker has done an immense amount of research on the skeptic movement. His book, “Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusting and Corporate Science” can be downloaded for free here. His other books and articles are required reading if you want to know the story behind the skeptics, and medical science run by a corporate agenda.
The skeptic movement is another arm of an industry that spends millions distorting science to sell products. Ever heard of pharma-led ‘symptom information campaigns’ that prompt people to visit their GP? GPs are more likely to prescribe medicines produced by the company running the campaign!
A last throw of the dice
Skeptics like to portray themselves as warriors for scientific truth. In fact, they are a desperate rear-guard action by a medical, pharmaceutical and biotech industry establishment that knows it is losing its grip on the public. Arm yourself with knowledge of their methods and you can tune out their shrill antics.
Comments
your voice counts
25 November 2010 at 8:11 pm
I prefer to call these "skeptics" to be "medical fundamentalists," "deniers," and "obstructionists to medical progress." It seems that these people would rather provide misinformation than factual information.
I recommend that we avoid being "angry" with them but instead to have condolences and sympathies for their misguided efforts. These people are simply sick and/or are stuck in a limited paradigm akin to those medical doctors in the 19th century who bloodlet and leeched their patients in the guise of "science" and "medicine."
26 November 2010 at 2:31 pm
I'm sorry you feel able to link to the exceedingly defamatory Martin Walker. It doesn't really help your argument.
I'm glad, though, that we can agree that George Monbiot writes some good stuff. I rather liked this one http://bit.ly/5lfoX
26 November 2010 at 5:09 pm
Actually the previous writer's comments are a little tame. The skeptic cabal are also apologists for the pharmaceutical industry, for, implicit in all their attacks on CAM is the presumption that all is well with conventional drug based medicine offered in the NHS - it is all evidence-based - which of course it is not, or if it is, much of the evidence is eventually revealed to have been distorted. Their support for Sense About Science is more evidence for this as SAS is part pharma funded and employs past pharma lobbyists. What is also interesting is that the Guardian - far and away the main attack dog of the sceptic cabal is closely associated with SAS - the only newspaper to be so associated. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/130/
29 November 2010 at 4:12 pm
For political analysts, it should be quite easy to identify the skeptics for what they are: a front group for big industry.
There is almost a 100% correlation between what the skeptics claim is scientific truth and the status quo defense of profits from the special interest of the toxicity industry.
Just look at this list of what they claim is harmless: EMF radiation, vaccines, GMO products, MSG, aspartame, trans fats, bovine somatropin growth hormone, water fluoridation, depleted uranium, azo-colors, statins, naked scanners, SSRI:s, micro wave ovens, dental mercury fillings, etc. (Historically they have claimed that cigarettes, DDT, lead, CFC, asbestos, etc. was harmless before overwhelming evidence made these positions untenable.)
At the same time they claim that it is dangerous with: organic food, vitamin supplements, herbal medicines, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy, etc.
That they also attack astrology and ghost-believers is only a trick to hide their real agenda.
Connecting the dots is very easy. Just follow the money. At least green and left-wing activists should be able to see this pattern. I am surprised that they haven’t.
06 December 2010 at 6:46 pm
Science & Scientific
It is normal to live in the knowledge that the circle of knowledge that we may have is inscribed by a circumference of darkness of the unknown, that is of unknown proportions. Within it lays the understanding of homoeopathy. It should not be surmised that we have at present reached the limit of the knowable. And if that which is unknown and unknowable is preponderant beyond compare, it must certainly be determinant and controls the sphere of finite or so-called knowledge. The reason is it "so-called" is because it can only be apparent or incomplete knowledge, for the unknown lies not only outside but also within everything. Inside our homoeopathic remedies lies something unknown, but from what has been discovered so far, it is certainly not unknowable. Thus the practical application through inference – which is a valid way to come to knowledge – shows that the inference is right, backed up by NMR, RLS, piezo-electric values and other methods of determining whether something is there or whether nothing is there. The conclusion is that something is there, although we cannot see it.
This is our position. One may like to think that nothing is superior to oneself. But this is certainly mere egotism. Our honest position is that we are finite beings trying to maintain our existence, know our real purpose in life, and to find fulfillment, which is the definite discovery of the homoeopathic mechanism in objective, scientific terms. We have come a long way, but admittedly, we have not yet been able to explain to everyone's satisfaction. Philosophy teaches us to acknowledge both the finite and infinite worlds that constitute reality. It is really a matter of humility and sanity. This is the beginning. We already have a relationship with the finite reality. What is missing for many is their relation with the infinite that is above and beyond them. This kind of scientific knowledge will be complete real knowledge. And that is the message that we are trying to deliver through this blog.
So far as “evidence base” is concerned, it is still not a scientifically validated ideology that has always been observed. The evidence is lacking, and sorely, as the latest JAMA and BMJ state. BMJ goes so far as to say none can be trusted. Where then is the evidence base? It is imaginary and visible on the numbers on a machine although the machine has nothing to do with the diseased man. Scientists continue trying to impose their idea on Nature, rather than observing Nature and letting her present her evidence to us. We don’t observe suppression. We are blind to the facts. The facts are that our society is a society of suppression. It begins with ideology, regardless whether this is religious or atheist. Then follows education, which is meant to make you a memory bank, engaged in classification ,enumeration and calculation. We have effectively been reduced to bookkeepers, if we succumb to the demand for numbers as a sign of proof.
We shall provide an example that shows the fallacy of this type of reasoning. If we look at the elections and we see a voter turnout of 30% and we note that their affiliations for leftwing or rightwing politics is split approximately down the middle. 70% have declared not to agree with the votes and the voted for and so these need do nothing but go home. Yet nobody will accept this as the outcome, because not voting is declared to have no voice. From an objective point of view, the nonvoters are right – the government has been rejected by 70%. That would be real democracy, when all the votes – also the non-vote of “no confidence” - would be counted. That is scientific, because it does not leave out uncomfortable data. Nonetheless, we have excluded the non-voter although as a sign of proof for “no confidence” it has easily carried the day. The numbers can be easily twisted and turned to manipulate what you wanted to say. I bet the bookkeepers are past masters and I wait for someone to come and juggle the numbers.
We don't observe anything other than similar either.
Like produces like. Dogs come from dogs, humans from humans, etc.
Like attracts like. We don't see that humans are attracted to monkeys, apart from a few exceptions and that in a very limited way.
Like imitates like. We don't see the donkey playing lion.
Like cures like, as homoeopathy always proves.
Like neutralises like. The antidote will always neutralise the effect of the previous remedy.
To try to fit Nature into some Procrustean bed made by the finite brains of scientists, is not science and will not lead to any progress in science. To go back into "evidence based" is to go back into deep dreams that ultimately lead nowhere, as all dreams do. Now at this juncture of our medical scientific revolution, it would be a good time to stop wasting time and daydreaming and go in the direction of some real science. This is my humble opinion.
06 December 2010 at 7:06 pm
"Connecting the dots is very easy."
I have and there is a picture of a clown.
06 December 2010 at 7:34 pm
David Colquhoun, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Andy Lewis and the other skeptics form a thin red line against the roving packs of quacks and charlatans out there, the increasing use of libel laws to censor science and the rising tides of anti-science. They are good and critical scientists, and if you disagree with some of their arguments, as I do, the most likely explanation is that there are elements implicit in their or our models which are not mutually understood or appreciated. To accuse them of being consciously in league with Big Bad Pharma (and I am speaking here as someone who thinks that Pasterurian models have worn very thin), represents a failure to engage in meaningful debate.
It is understandable, for example, that skeptics should generally under-estimate the importance of nutritional interventions; the record is strewn with the wrecks of carriages full of positive associations (beta carotene, vitamin E etc) which turned, when thrown roughly down on the Procrustean bed of the prospective randomised and double-blinded clinical trial, into pumpkins stuffed with negative or null results. Alt and comp.med practitioners who present their arguments as case histories (which prove nothing), will always lose the argument.
Where I believe the skeptics go substantially wrong, however, is that their thinking (and test models) are embedded in pharmaceutical testing systems. Mono- or less commonly oligo-therapeutic interventions generally do not produce positive results; and yet the literature shows repeatedly that (multi-component) diets are strongly linked to better health. This apparent inconsistency is easily resolved once one accepts that most folks today are multiply nutritionally compromised, and therefore intrinsically unlikely to respond to pharma-style mono-interventions.
This reveals the skeptics' second, deeper error of thought, which is based in the idea that we eat a reasonable diet (just look at what you can buy in the supermarkets today!), and that few are malnourished. Most science skeptics have little awareness of history other than the history of science itself; and here, as in so many other areas, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I submit that historians and those who have studied the relationship between dietary shift and changes in public health have shown that due to today's low calorific throughputs, most people today are depleted in most micro- and phyto-nutrients. Historical populations with significantly higher intakes of these, especially the phytonutrients, had a near-immunity to degenerative disease and to allergy.
The usual skeptical response to this is that historical medical data are unsound, and I concede that the neolithic story is fatally flawed in this respect. The medical records of 19th century Britain, however, are detailed and copious. They show that when nutrient intakes are raised, the current scourges of cancer and CVD are reduced by about 90% in a population that lived about as long as we do today. (CAMPOP, for example).
In this sense and in this sense only, the skeptics who deny the importance of broad spectrum micro- and phyto-nutrient programmes serve the purposes of the pharmaceutical complex. I do not believe for one moment that they do so deliberately, and I also believe that once they begin to engage with the historical evidence, they will adjust their thinking appropriately.
For those interested, initial papers on this subject can be found via Pubmed, search terms Clayton, Rowbotham.
06 December 2010 at 11:29 pm
In Notes on Nursing, first published in England in 1859 and in America in 1860, Nightingale says:
“Homeopathy has introduced one essential amelioration in the practice of physic by amateur females; for its rules are excellent, its physicking comparatively harmless–the “globule” is the one grain of folly which appears to be necessary to make any good thing acceptable. Let then women, if they will give medicine, give homeopathic medicine. It won’t do any harm.”
Florence Nightingale was a friend of James Clark, John Forbes, James Vaughan Hughes,
Florence Nightingale was the niece of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (a lover of John Chapman, an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy, and proprietor of the Westminster Review).
From 1854 to 1856, she headed up nursing in the military hospitals. One of the things that Nightingale focused on was improving sanitation within the hospitals:
Nightingale continued believing the death rates were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. It was not until after she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, that she came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. This experience would influence her later career, when she advocated sanitary living conditions as of great importance. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the Army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.
Nightingale was a correspondent and admirer of homeopathic supporter John Forbes: and they exchanged copies of each other’s books with expressions of mutual respect and admiration.
Of interest:
Geoffrey Nightingale was a member of the Management Committee of the British Homeopathic Association in 1847.
Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910 was a patient of homeopath James Manby Gully and she called him a ‘genius‘, and she also had homeopathic nurses with her in the Crimea, and she mentored Linda Richards, an American nurse who trained at the Brooklyn Homeopathic School.
In 1890, Florence Nightingale advised sending the homeopath James Peddie Harper to see her sister, who had refused to consult Andrew Clark 1st Baronet again as he had made her condition worse. Nightingale also wrote to her mother that she hoped her father would try homeopathic treatment for an eye problem.
In this light, it is a little strange to call their campaign the Nightingale Collaboration.
On the other hand, it is what they do. They collaborate with us, keeping homoeopathy in the news. People are not as dumbed down as they hope they are and see through the ruse. They reckon that the more something is put down, the greater the chance it is better for you. I have personally seen more people come since the campaign started, because they want to find out for themselves.
07 December 2010 at 12:08 pm
Ridicule then rage then finally acceptance, isn't that the general pattern? Historical processes will take their course, and have always been interwoven with vested interests.
The drug world is tottering, from M**ns**to to Gl**o; the international community cannot for much longer afford the greed of corporate 'healthcare'; concern is fast growing about the integrity of corprate funded scientific research: all good.
We need to work on the total reality disconnect between experience and laboratory 'proof'; if we accept the absurdity that we can't prove that paint dries without a scientist, we accept a second hand version of reality which is completely disempowering: RESIST IT! The lab is a tool, not a philosophy; science is a means of understanding the world, not a religion.
12 December 2010 at 9:34 pm
Well, I don't want to waste energy on being angry with these small minority of people. Its really sad to hear that in liberal Europe thats supposedly so educated that people like these misinformed "skeptics" are able to get the publics attention. These people obviously don't believe in true science and should be called deniers, in fact most skepticism you see today is actually denialism. These people belong to a cult of scientism that adheres more to medical fundamentalism than any true science. Its sad to here that celebrities are now falling for their prey tactics.
Its important to keep in mind that they are a small minority and the whole reason their forming is because they know the pillars of orthodox medicine are crumbling. And we natural health advocates need to look down upon them as equivalent to the dark ages of medicine. Because orthodox medicine is actually very barbaric and primitive, not progressive. Cutting people up and poisoning them are not the way towards a progressive future. And we need to smear the numerous flaws and inefficias of conventional medicine in their face. Like the very fact that western medicine is mostly junk science based on a faulty inept paragrigm that doesn't care about peoples health. Life is not a clinical study. Placebos actually work far better than drugs and those "skeptics" are starting to realize that. That western medical science is nothing but blood-thirty barbaric junk science. All their profits and beliefs are crumbling. The Church of Medical Truth has come to an end.
And as we continue to fight for natural health we need to always remember the above. Never give up because eventually we will win in the end. Our day has come, the dark ages of medicine are ending.
12 December 2010 at 10:13 pm
These "skeptics" (aka denier) campaigns should be prosecuted and put in jail for a very long time. They are advocating for barbaric and medieval-style treatments such as radiation and disfiguring surgeries. Conventional medicine has caused many needless deaths and suffering. It should be banned for its crimes against humanity. We need to form a "Health Freedom Liberation Front" to fight against these fundamentalist quacks. They have destroyed and tortured humanity long enough with their outdated and invasive "medicine" junk. How dare these skeptics advocate to continue these horrible practices. We must fight them to every last breath.
nocodexgenocide.com
13 December 2010 at 4:27 am
I get so annoyed when the 'Smart Aleck' brigade condemn homeopathy because of its apparent illogicalities. Quantum physics clearly explains how it functions and works. I know homeopathy works because I've used homeopathic remedies many times, and it's not a matter of the placebo effect, because often their effects were not what I was expecting to happen. As all forms of complementary medicine become more popular, so the opposition to them from certain quarters becomes louder.
By the way, 'skeptic' is the archaic or American usage spelling of the word; the British English spelling is 'sceptic'.
08 May 2012 at 10:19 am
As an 'outsider' to this topic I find it interesting, althouogh not surprising based on the fact it is an ANH website, that people are criticising those who challenge people's views.
'Science' rather than being a dirty word is the search for truth by challenging beliefs and views, be they traditional or alternative.
I find the criticism of those who criticise an indication of a lack of faith in scrutiny. If homeopathy is all the supporters believe why not allow open scrutiny, welcome criticism and use it to improve treatments?
It strikes me as similar to fake psycics who pray on the vulnerable, claim to have true powers but then can never actually present any evidence of their claims.
I accept "there are more things in heaven and earth" than we are able to understand but that does not mean we should accept things on blind faith. There are many reasons why people may feel a benefit from a treatment (placebo, timing, belief or genuine physical effect) but claiming it is something which you charge people for like pills or treatments you should be able to prove it.
I'm off to look for large scale research (rather than isolated studies proving whatever one way or another) which may provide some insight.
I'd recommend the ANH make clear on the website, or fund some genuine honest, peer reviewed research, in the same way the 'medical establishment' does to prove something works thus silencing critics. Even get the critics on board to agree on how the study should be conducted so they cannot criticise the results.
Failure to do something of this nature would indicate a lack of real evidence to prove the claims, but it could put end the debate once and for all.
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