As recently mentioned, the firing of Professor David Nutt has brought into focus politics’ deep seated discomfort with scientific evidence. In a world where vague weasel words are part of day-to-day survival, the scientific method’s disregard for political ideology can understandably create no end of problems for politicians with an agenda.
However, the government has at least had the decency to practically admit as much. There are systems in place which attempt to hold the government accountable for the way they use evidence in policy decisions. The Commons Science and Technology Committee (CSTC) “exists to ensure that Government policy and decision-making are based on good scientific and engineering advice and evidence”. The committee recently selected a number of areas for enquiry and asked the relevant government departments to explain the evidence used to justify their policy decisions
Profile Books, £7.99 (pb), ISBN 1846681111 The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers
by Michael Blastland and Andrew DilnotReviewed by Michael HuttonOur lives are more and more dominated by an endless flood of numbers: the average cost of this, the increased risk of that, the number of people who have stopped, or started, doing something else. Yet this increase in data rarely seems to go hand in hand with an increase in understanding and it just seems so difficult to make sense of all the numbers. Does tagging reduce re-offending rates? Should men stop eating cured meats or women stick to one glass of wine a day? What, if any, is the long-term effect of speed cameras on accident rates?
The answers to questions like these are important if we are to make sensible private or public decisions. Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, the creator and presenter respectively of that excellent Radio 4 programme, More or Less, have done something quite unusual: they have written a book about numbers that is lively, readable and entirely practical.
They begin with the assurance that we all know more than we think we do when it comes to making sense of numbers, simply as a result of our own experience. We don’t need to retreat into the “Lies, damned lies and statistics” position, nor see numbers as the deciding factor in any argument. A reasonably sceptical attitude and the habit of asking a few simple questions will usually lead us to the ‘take away’ message buried (often deliberately) in a set of figures. This is certainly not a text book but a book for the consumer of statistics, which is all of us. It is divided into a dozen clearly defined chapters, each dealing with a single topic such as chance, averages, targets, risk, comparisons and correlation, and illustrated with neat everyday examples and reminders of why we should approach even an apparently simple thing like an average with caution. Just remember that an average rainbow would be pure white and most people have more than the average number of feet – which makes them typical.
Perhaps the most valuable chapter is the one on risk, since it is the figures relating to this that cause the most uncertainty and anxiety. A statement like “risk up by 42 per cent” sounds scientific and authoritative but tells us nothing useful (42 per cent of what?) or helps us answer the questions we want to ask: “Does that mean me?” and “What should I do?” The straight- forward way to bring this back into line with personal experience is to use natural frequencies – so many people per 100 or 10,000 or one million. The underlying message of the book, one that every politician and journalist should have drilled into them, is that life is messy and complicated, and that looking for certainty in the numbers that are produced is a waste of time. Truly it has been said: “If you ask a question, statistics will tell you the answer. What they won’t tell you is whether you asked the right question.”
Oxford University Press, £13.99, ISBN 0195313682
Snake Oil Science: the Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine
By R. Barker Bausell
Reviewed by Ray Ward
Bausell covers the rise of CAM, the history of placebos, impediments to valid inferences, why randomised placebo controls are necessary in CAM research, judging scientific evidence, personal research on acupuncture, how we know the placebo effect exists, a biochemical explanation for the effect, what trials and reviews reveal about CAM, and how CAM is hypothesised to work.
He begins by quoting Robert Park’s experience of seeing CAM advocates nodding in agreement despite giving differing views on the field’s most important issues: in a body which regards itself as embattled and besieged there can be no internal dissent. In a new area, poorly conducted research is the norm, and almost invariably produces false positive results. Patterns are often very difficult to distinguish from coincidence. CAM therapists do not value (and most, in Bausell’s experience, do not understand) the scientific process. There is the “file drawer” problem, familiar from other areas of paranormal research: negative results are less likely to be published, and the problem of attrition: subjects who feel they are not being helped tend to drop out.
The nature and quality of the publishing journal is particularly important in CAM research; a homeopathy or acupuncture journal is unlikely to publish a trial that suggests homeopathy or acupuncture doesn’t work. Small studies tend to produce distorted results. Good news is always preferred to bad, and there are always people whose beliefs are more important to them than whether or not they are correct.
Bausell relates how his mother-in-law’s experience with CAM treatments for pain demonstrates the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, the mother of all superstitions: the fact that one thing follows another is not evidence of cause and effect. His mother-in-law attributed pain relief to the treatment, when in fact her pain pattern shows that it would have diminished anyway. Our old friend the principle of parsimony appears, and Occam’s Razor is vigorously plied.
Bausell summarises well over a hundred CAM trials and discusses all the well-known CAM therapies, and his conclusion is unequivocal: “CAM therapies are nothing more than cleverly packaged placebos.”
On 1st November, following the sacking of Prof David Nutt, Ryan O’Meara, Editor-in-Chief of K9 Magazine, published the podcast below exploring evidence based policy.
He brings parallel arguments from his personal area of expertise and from the consequences of the inept and archaic Dangerous Dogs Act, an issue about which K9, DDA Watch and countless other organisations have mounted campaigns against, and an issue I’ve highlighted on this blog previously. O’Meara also queries whether the principles of Darwinian selection can be applied to thought, a line of reasoning which is perhaps not far removed from meme theory.
The lack of evidence and evidential quality involved in the policies O’Meara cites, is striking.
It is appalling, for instance, that an individual with no more than a few hours’ training can provide expert testimony in court alleging that a dog possesses the characteristics of a banned breed (and therefore apparently poses a danger and should be destroyed), despite the dog doing nothing wrong and potentially being of a completely different, ‘permitted’ breed.
It is then truly inexcusable when such testimony is accepted by a court without question.
This illogical, crass and ultimately cowardly decision making bears sinister similarity to the involvement of racial profiling in policing, an issue about which there has been great public discussion and political hesitancy. Certainly, considerable caution is used in exercising any type of racial profiling in the proactive identification and investigation of crime, yet the Dangerous Dogs Act, almost devoid of practical regulation, permits decisions of life and death to be made on exactly this basis.
With Prof. David Nutt being sacked for daring to question knowledge he believed to be unsubstantiated, the issue of the use (and abuse) of evidence in public policy is once again exposed for widespread public examination. Listening to any reasoned, considered commentary is certainly worthwhile and this is no exception.
Do they fail to see the irony? This week The Daily Mail reported on a new book that dispels a number of health myths (the book is called “Don’t Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked”). They open with: “Every day you hear or read things about your body and health that are simply not true. In many cases they’ve been scientifically discredited, yet these medical myths endure.” They point out classic myths such as the one that claims we only use 10 per cent of our brains (although if this were true it may help explain why The Daily Mail is still around…), or the misconception that the flu jab can cause the flu.
The Mail seems rather bemused at the level of belief in these medical myths: as if they are not quite sure why it would be that people would believe such nonsense. Naturally, they would never be so foolish as to make any such claims that the flu jab causes the flu it is designed to prevent, although they did get pretty close just last month.
Whilst I am all for The Mail helping to dispel these sorts of things, and if they really are so clueless as to why people believe such myths, perhaps they should start by taking a good look through their own archives. A good place to start would be here, although a book debunking all of the rubbish The Mail has given us could make “War and Peace” look like a light read.
It had been a while since the newspapers told us to drink red wine in order to receive a health benefit. There has been plenty of reporting in recent years suggesting that a glass of red wine a day can reduce the risk of heart problems; articles talking of the virtues of the Mediterranean diet and how it’s the red wine causing the lower rates of heart disease in a very specific population, and nothing to do with any other aspects of lifestyle, and so on.
I think I can honestly say I’ve never been rendered speechless with anger before. However thanks to a one page document recently released by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, I am delighted to report that I am fully capable of being struck dumb by pure, unadulterated fury.
The UK media was feeling pretty smug last week, due to the fact they single-handedly averted the cervical-cancer-vaccine-Armageddon. The tragic death of Natalie Morton mere hours after receiving the human papillomavirus vaccine could have been a story straight from heaven for a media constantly denied the tales of horror they feel they so deserve. Those damn scientists just refuse to prove that the vaccines we are pumping into our children are turning them into autistic dead people.
