The JREF Million-Dollar Challenge

The James Randi Educational Foundation at this year's The Amazing Meeting (TAM 7) conducted a preliminary test with dowser claimant Connie Sonne. The video of the test has 4 parts and is 40 minutes long altogether. I don't recommend watching the whole thing, it's fairly dull. More interesting is the press conference afterward, which also appears on YouTube. This test had the largest live audience in the long history of the million-dollar challenge so it's unusual mainly in the amount of visibility it has gotten. The other details of the test are fairly typical of Challenges.

• The claimant and the Foundation agreed on the rules in advance.
• The test as conducted was double-blind. Neither the claimant nor the tester knew the location of the card that was being sought.
• The claimant failed to move past the preliminary test.
• Before the test the claimant said the skeptical audience would not affect her powers.
• After the test the claimant said the skeptical audience affected her powers.
• Before the preliminary test the claimant did not subject her own abilities to a similar type of test. She didn't need to, because she knows they work.
• The outcome of this test did not change the claimant's belief in her own powers. There is no test that, if failed, would cause her to change her belief in her own powers.

Why is this important? To the extent that people's individual beliefs remain personal and private experiences, they may comfort people and help them gain insight into their own mind and their own life. It is not the role of skeptics to disabuse people of their own private beliefs, and James Randi does not demand that people give up their beliefs in their own supernatural powers unless they subject them to testing.

On the other hand, supernatural and pseudoscientific claims are often used for more public purposes. When a person asks you for your belief in an unusual claim, you should be skeptical unless there is good reason or evidence in favor of the claim. You should be particularly skeptical if the person is asking for your money through book or ticket sales. You should also be especially skeptical if your own experiences might predispose you to believe the claim. For example, if your son or daughter has died and someone says that they can connect you to the lost person you should be especially careful precisely because you might be particularly emotionally vulnerable.

The Million-Dollar Challenge is a useful tool not because it disproves the claims of honest believers like Connie Sonne. The Challenge is a useful tool because the professional hucksters won't come close to it. The John Edwards, Uri Gellers and Sylvia Brownes of the world know that they are putting on a show and that their supposed powers would fail any sort of controlled test. They often say that it would be wrong to accept a million dollars for demonstrating a power that should be used for the benefit of humanity, but if that were the case why do they accept salaries or royalties for what they do? If their powers were real they should earn a million dollars from an afternoon of work and donate it to a charity that works for the good of mankind.

Oh, and one final thing. If you're a detective and a psychic calls to say they have seen the location of a missing person in a vision, you should just hang up the phone and go back to doing serious detective work.

Beware the Spinal Trap

(Note: this is the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines.)

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Bill Kristol: Veterans have first-class government run health care; ordinary Americans don't deserve same

On the Daily Show episode from Monday, July 27 Jon Stewart catches Bill Kristol in an accidental admission that our veterans have the best health care system money can buy. Kristol later tries to close the barn door, but I'm pretty sure the cows have already left.

Big Government

One of the ideas that conservatives turn to very consistently when you ask them what they have to offer is the assertion that they are in favor of small government. Of course the reality is more complicated than that. On some issues they are in favor of smaller government, but on many others they are in favor of larger government. Let's take a look at how this tends to break down.

Conservatives want more government:
military spending
lots of military spending (worth mentioning twice)
war
interventionist foreign policy
government secrets/less transparency
domestic wiretapping
prisons
suspension of habeas corpus/indefinite denention
police departments
banning gay marriage
criminalizing abortion
criminalizing homelessness
state executions
immigration enforcement
prescription drug coverage (handouts to pharmaceuticals)

Conservatives want less government:
social security
medicare
health care reform
unemployment insurance
SCHIP
environmental protection
market regulation
consumer protection
science and research investment
international aid (the kind that doesn't go to dictators)
corporate tax exemptions
taxes on wealthiest 1%
rescuing people from hurricanes

The really irritating part is that I hear this meme repeated by even smart moderates and liberals, people who should know better. Conservatism does not represent small government, at least not the thread of conservatism that has come to completely dominate the Republican party. What is the theme of these two lists, the thread that links them all?

Kos points it out for us: it's compassion. The 'compassionate conservatism' line was a political victory for W precisely because it was a giant lie.

Conservatives seem to think that any problem that can't be ignored should be solved by force. And that ordinary people don't deserve the protection of the government, they have to save themselves. While on the other hand, the wealthy and powerful are important and vital to the country and should be promoted and bailed out when they get into trouble.

One more thing: large budget deficits and national debt accumulated during Republican terms in office are not an accident. Long-term government bankruptcy is a GOP strategy intended to generate excuses to do nothing in terms of helping ordinary Americans. If you point out that money could be easily saved from the military budget with no adverse effect on national security then of course you are called all sorts of names.

The Time is Now for Health Care Reform

I've been meaning to do an extensive post on this topic. It's been very much in the news lately with bills appearing before Congress and the Senate and Barack Obama's press conference tonight. However, I don't think I can say it any better than Massimo Pigliucci. Except to add, as Rachel Maddow did, that there is no such thing as moving too fast on an issue that has been in the works for over 60 years. It's also worth noting as Nate Silver did that money from the health insurance industry has a huge effect on the voting patterns of Congressional and Senate Democrats.

This has been one of the moral failings of our country for too long. We can definitely do better.

Talking About Compromise

A buddy of mine and I were chatting on IM about the meaning of political compromise the other day. Before posting it here I fixed some but not all punctuation and spelling. In particular over IM I tend not to use capitalization or periods. I also cut bits out to make it more interesting and readable. MONSTRTRKMAN is not his real IM name.

Read more >>

Quick News Stories

Lots of little stories today.

• Reposted from my girlfriend's blog, Radioactive Quill:

So apparently you can be arrested for not appreciating it when a police officer shows up at your house and demands proof that you live there.

Provided you're a Black man, of course. I rather suspect that very few police officers would have the stones to do this to a white man.

Here is the statement by Professor Gates' lawyer. I'm really not sure why he didn't include a threat along the lines of, "I'm going to sue the city for $100 million." I would.

• Reposted from a friend's facebook page, a UF law student:

It's truly amazing that the erosion of racial and sexual bigotry is being accompanied by a revival of religious bigotry. Do people have an innate need to exclude and suppress the "other" that isn't being met now that racism and sexism have become fringe?

If we're discussing founders' intent, why did we include guarantees of religious equality in the First Amendment, while we didn't get around to race until the Fourteenth, or sex until the Nineteenth?

• A congressman from a district not far from where I live is a crazy birther.
• Good news: Obama is turning up the heat on obstructionist Democrats.
• Molecular developmental biology!