It seems as if the wave of H1N1 pandemic flu has passed, so it is a good time to get up to date on the status of the pandemic. For background, the H1N1 is a strain of influenza A  that cropped up about a year ago. It was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) last Summer.

The pandemic spawned a number of controversies. The last H1N1 pandemic, called the “swine flu” (a bit of a misnomer) was in 1976. The vaccine for that strain caused Guillaine Barre Syndrome (GBS) in about 1 in 100,000 people vaccinated. Therefore with the roll out of the new H1N1 vaccine there were cries from the usual assortment of anti-vaccine and other cranks that the vaccine would cause GBS, even though the last 30 years of seasonal flu vaccine has not caused any such outbreaks (at worst the seasonal flu vaccine causes an extra one case of GBS per million doses, but even this is questionable).

There were also accusations that the flu pandemic was a scam created by Big Pharma to sell vaccines, and the real conspiracy nuts claimed that the vaccine was in fact designed to infect and kill people.

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A Utah company, Manna of Utah, is planning on building a plant in Odessa MO that will, among other things, build generators for home use. I wrote recently about another home generator company, Bloom Box, cautioning against accepting corporate hype at face value. Bloom Box appears to be a legitimate generator, surrounded by some misleading hype. But the generators promised by Manna of Utah seem to take the company name seriously, promising energy from heaven.

The generator they plan to build was designed and patented by another company, Maglev Energy, Inc. They claim to be able to generate electricity with magnets. Here is their description of their technology:

A running prototype using a new way to control attract – repel forces generated by permanent and electromagnet interactions.  Our unique configuration and intellectual property manipulates these forces to apply its product towards useful work. With chip technology, laser measuring devices, and MagLev Energy, Inc. (MEI) developed proprietary algorithms, this prototype produces clean, renewable, and better power conversion ratios than fossil fuels.

Most skeptics should instantly recognize this description as an utter scam – we are in Dennis Lee and Orbo territory here. You simply cannot generate free energy by cleverly interacting magnets. This seems to be the perpetual free-energy deception – whether self-deception or conscious fraud.

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Controversies in science are fun, and the spectacle of such controversies being worked out by competing groups of scientists is a wonderful way to learn about the process of science. But as science progresses, we hope to occasionally resolve controversies and come to a reasonable consensus.

One such controversy that I have been following is the question over what killed the dinosaurs, and much of other life on earth, 65 million years ago. The two leading contenders were an asteroid impact at the Chicxulub crater near Mexico, and volcanic eruptions at the Deccan trap in India. Now a new review of the literature has resulted in a solid consensus supporting the asteroid theory.

Actually, the consensus is somewhat of an anti-climax in that this consensus has been slowly building for years. In recent years the vast majority of scientists already agreed on the impact theory, with just a handful of holdouts rooting for the volcano alternative. So this latest report is no surprise.

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Since the discovery of magnetism, using magnets and magnetic fields has been a popular subject for quacks and charlatans – starting with Anton Mesmer and his “animal magnetism.” Recently there has been a resurgence of dubious magnetic devices for arthritis, pain, injuries, and other uses.

But today I am writing about the legitimate science of using magnetic stimulation for therapeutic effects. The brain is both a biochemical organ and an electromagnetic organ. Until recently our attempts at altering the physiology and function of the brain have focused on pharmacology – mainly either increasing or decreasing the action of specific neurotransmitters. This is an effective paradigm for seizures, preventing migraines, and treating pain. It has also been the approach for treating psychiatric disorders, with clear effects for psychotic symptoms, like those caused by schizophrenia, and also anxiety, eating disorders and severe depression. The effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for some psychiatric indications, however, remains marginal and controversial, for example for mild to moderate depression.

Because the brain is also an organ that interacts with the environment, there are also several specialties dedicated to addressing psychological concerns with environmental treatments – cognitive behavioral therapy, for example.

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One of the basic principles of science-based medicine is that a single study rarely tells us much about any complex topic. Reliable conclusions are derived from an assessment of basic science (i.e prior probability or plausibility) and a pattern of effects across multiple clinical trials. However the mainstream media generally report each study as if it is a breakthrough or the definitive answer to the question at hand. If the many e-mails I receive asking me about such studies are representative, the general public takes a similar approach, perhaps due in part to the media coverage.

I generally do not plan to report on each study that comes out as that would be an endless and ultimately pointless exercise. But occasionally focusing on a specific study is educational, especially if that study is garnering a significant amount of media attention. And so I turn my attention this week to a recent study looking at acupuncture in major depression during pregnancy. The study concludes:

The short acupuncture protocol demonstrated symptom reduction and a response rate comparable to those observed in standard depression treatments of similar length and could be a viable treatment option for depression during pregnancy.

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The Diagnostics Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, a much maligned document, is in the midst of its fourth major revision (the DSM-IV will be replaced by the DSM-V). This process has been going on for over a decade. The revisions are now being made public in order to have a two year period of public comment and debate about the details of the revisions.

This has led to a new round of criticism of the DSM, and through it psychiatry, from those who either do not sufficiently understand, in my opinion, the nature of psychiatric diagnosis, and from those who are anti-psychiatry because of ideology (Scientologists, for example).

At the extreme end of criticism are those who deny the very existence of anything that can be called mental illness. I have already dealt extensively with their arguments, and won’t repeat them here. But even those are not so extreme fall into some of the same logical fallacies when criticizing mental diagnoses. Recently George Will, for example, wrote an editorial which I think confuses medical diagnoses with taking moral positions (I will get to his commentary below).

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I am often asked if skeptics and skeptical organizations should undertake first-hand investigations. Of course, it depends upon what your goals are. But I think the question can be re-phrased to mean – is there any value or benefit to first hand investigation, and to this the answer is a definite “yes.”

But this is not to denigrate the value of skeptical review from the comfort of your computer chair. This kind of activity has sometimes been referred to as “armchair skepticism” – meant to be derogatory. While I see the value in going out into the field, armchair skepticism has a valuable and complementary role to play.

In fact, these two activities mirror what real scientists do, and are roughly analogous to peer-review vs experimental replication.

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It’s been a bad year for homeopathy, and it’s still February. The 10^23 campaign has been making a proper mockery of the magical medicine that is homeopathy, capped off with their mass homeopathic “overdose.” In Australia skeptics have been taking homeopathic websites to task for making unsupported health claims. And in the UK there has been increasing pressure to question NHS support for homeopathy – most recently the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that homeopathy is nothing more than an elaborate placebo and the NHS should completely defund and remove any support for homeopathy. This could be a death blow to homeopathy in the UK, and provide support for similar efforts elsewhere.

Last year was no better. Most memorable was this comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb, who nicely skewered homeopaths and other cranks. When comedians are not ridiculing them, homeopaths were doing a fine job of lampooning themselves – the best is this video where Dr. Werner tries to explain how homeopathy works – pure comedy gold. Of course the best real explanation for how homeopathy works is here.

Even before the House Committee presented its final report, the embarrassing moments were being immortalized on YouTube, for example the head of a major UK pharmaceutical chain admitting that they market homeopathic products with full knowledge that they don’t work.

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One of the strengths of the skeptical movement, as an intellectual community, is that we wrangle with important issues regarding the relationship between science and what people do and should accept as probably true. We deal with not only specific issues, but the bigger question of process. For example – how much weight should an individual give to any specific scientific consensus, and is this just an argument from authority?

This question has recently become central to the debate over climate change – one of those few scientific debates that fractures the skeptical community. We are fairly united when it comes to the question of ghosts, Bigfoot, and UFOs. But when certain topics come up, like climate change, there is disagreement over the meaning of consensus, what the consensus is, and the very definition of “skeptic”.

Consensus vs Authority

Deferring to the scientific consensus on a given topic is not the same thing as making an argument from authority – a logical fallacy to be avoided. The argument from authority essentially follows the pattern of concluding that a claim is true because it is being made by a person of some authority (scientific or otherwise). Most of us spend our childhood committing this logical fallacy – the right answer is whatever an adult says it is, or the teacher, or whatever the news reports “scientists” are saying.

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I have been following the story of the crazy libel laws in England, brought to public attention by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) suing journalist Simon Singh because he dared to (correctly) state that many of their treatments are “bogus.”

In England (if I understand correctly, these laws apply only to England and not to all of the UK) when someone is sued for libel they bear the burden of proof that what they said was true. Further, the process is so expensive that it is easy for deep pockets to intimidate those with fewer resources into silence merely by the threat of suit.

Simon has bravely stuck with his suit, at great personal expense, largely to use it as a platform to lobby for rational libel reform.

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