Leading academic attacks tick-box science and politically correct quackery

If it ducks those who look, ducks like a quack, then perhaps it IS a quack.

I checked the date first. It is not April. And not the first of that month. Realising this is possibly a mis-scheduled article and left wondering what the focus actually was (or foci - and those of a Northen English persuasion should rest assured I am not resorting to foul language): pseudo-science or adinistrators. A possible battle-hymn for the yin-yang scientist came to mind... I look out my window, And what do I see, Mobility, and that's not just the phones, A big quantum scientist, Coming just for me; Everything's as flat as can be: Swing stones, yin energy......etc. Soooo 'Real' Science. Such as sociology? Or sumfink with lotsa maffs? (the other spelling makes me spit a little). Strange to say we often find more charm in a bottom up approach to science rather than a top down view. It all depends upon what one can see, or not. OK, not a cat then. And not in a box.

Bravo for David Colquhoun! The fondness for outlandish pseudo-medicine in this country is a particularly pernicious element of a wide-ranging hostility toward science (a superstitious hostility expressed by the heir to the throne, among others).

Well I think I understand at least the first sentence of Orr's comment. One purpose was to point out that there is little difference between the following ways in which science is corrupted. (1) Students being taught that "amethysts emit high Yin energy" (as at the University of Westminster) http://www.dcscience.net/?p=227 (2) HR departments offering to teach you the core principles of "Brain Gym" (as at UCL). http://www.dcscience.net/?p=226 (3) The encouragement of short term, shallow, and occasionally corrupt science by imposition of crude 'productivity' targets and daft bibliometric criteria. (4) The failure of the QAA to notice any of the above. (5) The laying out of "competences" in (for example) "distant healing (in the absence of client)" by Skills for Health and National Occupational Standards.http://www.dcscience.net/?p=215#sfh (6) The existence of BTEC qualifications that teach 16-year olds bunkum about "hot stone massage", endorsed by a whole maze of quangos. http://www.dcscience.net/?p=454 All of these absurd insults to reason have been solemnly approved, validated and accreditied by all the proper processes and procedures, There is, though, one good aspect to all this, The financial crisis in universities can be solved quite simply by firing all the box-tickers. That would give us better science at lower cost,

Can I inquire as to why political correctness is being invoked as a bogey man? It's probably those niggers, isn't it.

Alfred Fedchuck, your paranoid and rather bluntly and nastily expressed suppositions couldn't be further from the truth. It is perfectly clear what David Colquhoun is getting at. Conventional science proposes there is only one way to verify the properties of the physical world and the efficacy of medical treatment, and that is value-free, controlled, replicable trials and intersubjective agreement. Advocates of 'alternative' medicine know that their treatments do not stand up to the scientific test, so they prefer to use methods other than those which are scientific to evaluate them. Alternative practitioners deny objectivity and treat it as an ideology, and they value subjective treatment of clinical data, i.e. narratives of patients' experience, in the place of what is objective. They frequent express outrage when conventional science dismisses their patients' subjective and unverifiable experiences. This is where political correctness comes into it. It is politically incorrect to treat patients' reports of feeling better as anecdotes and not give them equal status as scientific data. It is politically incorrect to advocate only medical treatments backed up by orthodox science and to dismiss those supported by alternative and magical philosophies of the universe: faith, superstition, hearsay, etc. Thus, those in authority can be argued to be behaving in a politically correct manner by giving credence to less than scientific approaches to health because, without any philosophical understanding, they are taking a relativistic attitude to what counts as 'evidence', as if non-scientific practitioners have an equal claim to knowledge of medical matters. That is where David Colquhoun's accusation of political correctness lies: I take it to be a criticism of the wish to give non-scientific views 'their fair say' for no better reason than a lot of people get upset if you don't.

Oh David. How can you read what is not there. And the tune is Swing Low Sweet Chariot. As Marv. A Louse once said (bibliometric data available on request - from Marv that is:, 1,243.015 refereed papers, all documented on the ISI Web of Knowludge, all the same paper (in the best tradition of 'proper' academia), and growing....) "......it is amazing how many scientists have little understanding of science." Or as the edjukated duck said: 'Quark!' [wee bit of a clue there David me old mate - reread the second last sentence. F*cking clever innit? Yeah, I fot so] Corrupted science. Yes mucker. The World is flat and anyone what says different is not Jacob. In fact anyone that THINKS different will have their guilt smeared across their smacker. Innit. And dealt with accordingly. Sharp falling sort of a thingy, reliant on a theory thingy, cuts to the quick so to speak. Or was that the Quark? Bloody fine cut if so. We have documented evidence (albeit smoozed a wee bit) of distance healing (occasional mistranslation, deliberate mistranslation, out and out mal-translation - but hey, it's the King James bible innit) and that ought to be good enough for any objective skinnietist. Cutting life down to its minimum is boring. Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath....no....wait.....that's 540,575,999 (wikipedia, 2009 - so it must be right... after all 100,000 [ok so I'm exaggretating] science students can't be wrong... and there is no way they actually can get caught out - how many PhD candidates actually have the time to mark assignments properly).....die. Cutting learning down to what can be proven is, well, just silly. Without the nutters how do you know you are sane? How do you know when to doubt? How do you know when to ask - why not, or what if...... There is a place for empirical evidence and that is AFTER the event. It is ever thus. First the thought experiment, then the evidence. But it usually takes a nutter to ask the silly question. My friend George told me. And he knows the cat, and deliberately hid the box. The cat's going nuts.

Exaggerating? Oops. I meant 'OK so I'm telling a porky' I can spell porky. Entreprenurialism has the same effect on my command of Earth's Mother Tongue.

Oh dear. The mistakes just pile up don't they? Orr, not Or. Oh well, lucky for me I am not politically correct in either direction. Thing is this chaps: 'Politically Correct' is now a pejorative. As such I am inclined to react negatively to evidence of political correctness aimed at 'correcting' ostensibly mal-informed opinion. But that is what has been offered, opinion that is, and, while it seems true that little evidence appears available to support the more 'esoteric' views of some, I do feel there ought to be a place for them in the Grand Scheme. You know, like economists and such. There is one serious point I should like to make. If bibliometric criteria is daft, how much more so is a lecture theatre of 200 students? And how does one become a Professor without both? My chunder ends here.

@Flabbergasted Thanks. I agree with all you say, but, more important, I was referring not only to quacks. A far more important source of corruption of science arises when people read the sort of vacuous edubollocks that emerges from HR departments and, only too often, from senior scientists, and fail to label it as such. The late great Ted Wragg said it perfectly, but most academics stay silent out of misplaced feelings of political correctness (and/or fear that their careers will be harmed if they call a spade a spade). In 2002, Wragg wrote thus, " This free market has generated a whole new breed of employee, especially in further education, the Bid Writer. In education nowadays the pen can be mightier than the chalk. Bid Writers are a special breed who can weave together and launch back at policy wonks all their own buzzwords, with the deadly accuracy of a guided missile, sending them into the sort of sustained ecstasy that loosens both critical judgment and purse strings. “This synoptic overview summarises the operational strategy for delivering the procedural and content objectives to a world-class standard, within the parameters delineated in Annex A of Initiative 374B, glob glob, oodle oodle, turge turge.” Wonderful. Give that school a few hundred grand. Worthwhile policies graft seamlessly on to schools and eventually become their own. An ephemeral policy is merely a headline grabber, a wheeze, demeaning to both begetter and recipient. Who needs a physics teacher, when among today’s most highly esteemed pedagogues are wordsmiths who can deliver world-class meaningless bollocks to order?”"

A well-administered depth-charge, David. It's not just pseudo-science we're up against. In the humanities it is far worse, and far less subject to reality checks. Too much gunk, too many hangers-on, not enough being discovered, very little being properly checked, depressing numbers of unproductive "central service" dudes at every turn.

To the two Davids: Thanks for highlighting a truly pernicious and cancerous influence. Indeed, as David T has pointed out, such attitudes are not exclusive to the natural sciences: those of us who are social scientists (in the broadest sense) have been forced to endure it for too long.

Box-tickers ( those who sit for SAT) cannot write any essay, cannot solve a long problem, cannot analyse an issue from various points of views, which are all essential for a proper education. Similarly 4 papers cannot more valuable than just one paper if the 4 papers are written as extensions of the first one. A lot of fantastic papers are being published in unknown or foreign journals, but one cannot get any credit for publications in those journals. According to this modern criteria, one should never write a book, there is no credit. If you cannot bring money from a company by selling your research, your research is considered as rubbish by some manager who got only a B.A in Business Studies. I wonder how much money Einstein had received from a contract research for a company!

Prof Colquhoun, you're such a negative person! ! Let CAM exist alongside conventional medicine and put your energy on something more useful

No! David Colquhoun is a man is principle. If he thinks it is wrong that charlatans are making money by exploiting people's vulnerability and gullibility, then it's right that he should make a stand against it. Furthermore, he makes a powerful case that the NHS should not be wasting taxpayers' money on bogus 'magic' health treatments. If we let complementary 'medicine' exist alongside conventional (i.e. real) medicine, it's our taxes that are being spent on it. If people want magic potions let them buy them from the occult supplies shop in the high street, and don't give them the spurious legitimacy of NHS approval.

Yes, Mr. Manolis? What a logic! And what a criticism! ;) David Colquhoun, indeed, you are such a negative person (for different quacks and charlatans ;) ) Let the dirt exist alongside the clean things and put your energy on something more USEFUL (for quacks and simpletons, who loves so to live in this morass of lie and delusions). No, sirs quacks. David Colquhoun will put his energy on something useful for all good people. And he will continue to make the world more clean and honest as he is doing it now. Good luck in your activity, David! I wish you to be healthy and to win!

Dear Serious & Svetlana, Thanks for replying. My response below refers to medicine in relation to chronic, non-infectious disease. You (as well as most people who commented and expressed their support for Prof Colquhoun's campaigns) idolise "real medicine" despite its numerous failings and its inherent weaknesses. The sad fact is that this is what we have all been educated to believe, we have lost our ability to question the scientific establishment. Is it not true that at the forefront of Western medicine is the pharmaceutical industry (somewhat, represented by Prof C) that has the means to produce, publicise and promote the evidence on effectiveness of what they call "treatments"? Is it not true that this is the very fact that David Colquhoun bases his "war" on CAM, i.e. the fact that CAM has not evidence to support it? Who's going to fund this research, the pharma-funded executives of the research councils? I doubt it, such research will never be funded in the current climate. Is it not true that, when it comes to non-infectious chronic diseases (cancer and cardiovascular disease), which are the main killers and causes of suffering in our society, contemporary "real" medicine has failed to deliver? Both cancer and CVD are largely preventable. How does "real medicince" deal with them?: Wait till you get the disease and then we'll put you on sophisticated expensive medication or treat you with hi-tech toxic therapies (to please our friends and funders at GSK or Pfitzer) that may have fatal side-effects anyway and will certainly reduce your quality of life to that of a cockroach's in a sewage and, if you survive, we'll put you on super hi tech support equipment (to please our friends at the Med Tech corporation). Of course, there is "evidence" to support all this, sophisticated and incomprehensible studies contradicting each other relying on arbitrary statistical criteria that concentrate on outcomes narrow enough to forget that when treating someone's arm, well, don't forget not to cut off to the leg, yeah? Usually, CAM techniques deal with the individual as a whole and focus on bringing balance by, usually, natural means. They also have a strong focus on positive wellbeing (not only disease avoidance ) and prevention. Reductionist science relies on measuring outcomes,but how can you measure feeling "balanced"? Some CAM techniques go a bit too far, I agree. But we cannot dismiss anything that is not Western medicine as quackery. Some popular CAM techniques have been practised for 1000s of years and if you ask people who have tried them they work fantastically well. I am a preventive health researcher who's recently been introduced to yoga as a means to relieve stress and improve physical health. What a life changing move, I have no words to describe how much I have benefited! I did some lit review on the effectiveness of yoga for the prevention or treatment of chronic disease, stress, or promotion of positive well-being, etc: evidence is at very best scarce. Should yoga be banned then? No, in my view it should be a standard NHS treatment /preventive modality, its is fantastic. Could it be that some CAM techniques have a placebo and therapist attention effect sometimes? Maybe, very possible. Well, let's focus on exploiting the power of placebo then! If that works and makes people feel and get better, why not? At leasts it costs nothing and it doesn't have any side effects! Contrary to medication... I still believe that Prof Colquhoun is a negative person and this is sad because he is a very passionate and entertaining man and I truly believe that he is man of principle. Before his next press conference on quacks and charlatans it may help him to sit down and think why people resort to CAM? Is there something fundamentally wrong with your "real" pharmaco-medicne? If there is, why not trying to improve that flaw instead of fighting against x y or z?? Would it not be better to find ways to best combine western medicine with other more traditional but less reductionist evidence-based techniques? . He could even use his name and reputation to write a successful grant proposal on that! And please David, do yourself a favour and try a hot stones massage one day. It will soften your view of the world a lot, I promise you!

Manolis what a drivel? Yes I want my GP to combine Witchcraft with a course of antibiotics to drive away the throat infection I have. For my acidic stomach, I do need Zantac but I want homeopathic remedy, yes the little seeds combined with a course of American Indian's chants to drive away the spirits residing in my stomach and a bit of aroma therapy bath thrown in to sooth my stomach.

I'm glad you enjoyed my childish & mindless drivel, hope you found it entertaining. And I'm glad you want your GP to combine Witchcraft/native American chants with drugging you. I'd also recommend asking him to educate you a bit about what you should have done in the first place to avoid the acidic stomach and the throat infection. The Sun or Daily Mail you read may not be the best sources of health education, you know.

How can any one expect you to understand sarcasm! After all you are recommending vodoo remedies!

Some curates egg in the drivel... I think that Manolis original post was full of utter rubbish, but one point is worth shaking out from the chaff, that of the fact that conventional medicine often does focus too much on the diagnose and pill approach, rather than, indeed, effective prevention and/or non-medicine solutions. Some examples: 1. The lower spine is pretty much unsupported by any structure other than itself, the spinal muscles and the abdominal muscles. - People presenting to GPs with back pain are recommended pain killers and movement - this works and tight spasms will go away BUT there is not often prescribed a habit of abdominal strengthening exercises. (this would include Yoga, Pilates and other conventional exercise programmes (eg the one for the first Boy Scouts!) 2. I have been through a period of shin splints (trained through them), constant ankle paid (flexiility exercises addressed my slight body imbalance - this could have been achieved through similar exercises named above. 3. I had a problem with insomnia and mild, but pervasive depression (known cause) and was advisesd SSRAs for get this.. at least 12 months!!... but instead followed a tight diet, sleep management programme and exercise and two weeks later the depression lifted and my sleep improved to the point where I no longer experience insomnia at all. Later research that I did showed plenty of conventional evidence to suport this treatment, but none was given by the GP. I asked for a diet sheet to show foods and eating patterns that might help - there was none there. As for hot stone massages - they feel nice. That's it! I'm not saying that doing things that feel nice isn't good for you - it is, but claiming that it re-aligned my chakras or re-tuned my aura is all buzzewording for 'relaxation' in my book. Not worth £60, but perhaps couple of tenners.

Hero,call what I say rubbish but I totally agree with you. This is exactly what I'd like to see in the NHS, get away from the "take-a-pill" approach, work towards preventing the disease, and pay more individual attention to the patient . Should that ever happen, there will be no need to re-align your chakras or re-tune your aura (but I know little about aura or chakras so I cannot tell whether is buzzewording or not). Not all people have your literacy and skills to do all the research you did for your spine. The tragedy is that we have been trained and educated to rely on the medical "experts" for our health but medical experts have failed us big time in many ways. GPs & consultants are far more interested in reaching the NHS targets to enhance their salaries than your or my health (and of course I believe there are exceptions). My point is/was above: keep an open mind, "real" medicine if implemented properly and lean more towards prevention will help many people, some CAM techniques may help some others (either due to placebo/individual attention effect or because they do have some basis). I do not defend vodoo therapies but CAM is rarely about voodoo. It's over-simplistic and narrow-minded to dismiss all CAM because it does not follow the western medicine paradigm. We do not need Colqhoun Warriors or any warriors of any type to open our eyes with their anger and simplistic views. As far as paying £60 for a hot stone massage, you've been nicked mate! I do it for £30 and it's cold-hot stones too :)

How does real medicine deal with cancer? Manolis, as a preventative health researcher you should know that practitioners of conventional medicine advocate not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, avoiding stress, getting enough sleep, and eating plenty of green vegetables and foods containing high levels of antioxidants. This does not equate to waiting until you get the disease and then treating it. To Hero I would say that for my own chronic shoulder pain, my GP recommended me a set of exercizes. They helped. I don't think any greater intervention is necessary. Manolis, you say the evidence for the effectiveness of yoga for stress prevention and promotion of positive well-being is scarce and ask if it should therefore be banned. Why? It's a very pleasant and relaxing pastime. There's not much evidence that flamenco dancing and flower arranging prevent kidney stones, but no advocate of conventional medicine would demand the banning of either.

"...you should know that practitioners of conventional medicine advocate not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, avoiding stress, getting enough sleep, and eating plenty of green vegetables and foods containing high levels of antioxidants." Yes, in theory this is what happens during the 1 minute/year per patient GPs devote in their preventive interventions . In practice, there are tons of evidence showing that simple advice does not work, especially when is unstructured & opportunistic. We are talking about complex behaviours like physical activity (which you omitted, btw), diet, and stress (that's related to sleep and smoking habits) who are the cornerstone of cardiovascular disease and cancer aetiology. We live in environments that promote inactivity, bad diets and stress, it's not always up to the individual to "do the right thing" & simple education rarely works. Health professionals should know that simple advise doesn't work and demand more specific preventive training from their PCTs. Sadly, what happens in practice it is nothing more than waiting to get the disease and then try to deal with it, but usually it is too late for the patient and too expensive for the NHS (and hence the tax payer). The amount of research and intervention funds devoted to finding ways to assisting people living in a health way (and hence preventing disease) is a tiny fraction of what is spend on "miracle" cancer treatments that do nothing more than prolonging a life that's usually not worth living anymore. For example, Yoga, and maybe other CAMs is a lot more than "a very pleasant and relaxing pastime" and should be extensively researched so that it is given a fair chance of becoming a mainstream practice prescribed in the NHS. Unlikely drugs, it is safe and has no side effects, two great advantages to start with. The same could be done with many other forms of exercise that is public health's best-buy. The small-scale and sometimes low quality trials on yoga, for example, I have seen sho consistently impressive results in terms of many health outcomes incl diabetes. This is my whole point people, stop fighting the witches and magicians and work towards giving a chance to non-drug centred approaches to improving people's health. Should that happen, no witch will survive, I promise you

Hmm. Okay, Manolis. Well said. I think we may be on the same side.