While doing research for my PhD I stumbled across a little gem from 1556.  De Re Metallica (On the Nature of Metals) by Georgius Agricola is a comprehensive technical book covering metals and mining in the 16th century which would stand for several centuries as the book on the topic.  It is a fascinating read as it has one of the earlier formal discussions of sustainability and competitive land use but also has some fascinating insight into dowsing/divining.

Obviously in those days finding metals was a big deal and one of the common methods of the day was divining for it.  His rejection of the technique is notable given the age of the document and he does so using many of the arguments we recognise today.

I’ll let his words speak for themselves:

The truth is, they assert, the movement of the twig is caused by the power of the veins, and sometimes this is so great that the branches of the trees growing near a vein are deflected towards it.  On the other hand, those who say that the twig is of no use to good and serious men, also deny that the motion is due to the power of the veins, because the twigs will not move for everybody, but only for those who employ incantations and craft.  Moreover, they deny the power of a vein to draw to itself the branches of trees, but they say that the warm and dry exhalations cause these contortions.  Those who advocate the use of the twig make this reply to these objections:  when one of the miners or some other person holds the twig in his hands and it is not turned by the force of a vein, this is due to some peculiarity of the individual, which hinders and impedes the power of the vein, for since the power of the vein in turning and twisting the twig may be not unlike that of a magnet attracting and drawing iron toward itself, this hidden quality of a man weakens and breaks the force, just the same as garlic weakens and overcomes the strength of a magnet.  For a magnet smeared with garlic juice cannot attract iron.  Further, concerning the handling of the twig, they warn us that we should not press the fingers together too lightly, nor clench them too firmly, for if the twig is held lightly they say that it will fall before the force of the vein can turn it; if however, it is grasped too firmly the force of the hands resists the force of the veins and counteracts it.  Therefore, they consider that five things are necessary to insure that the twig shall serve its purpose:  of these the first is the size of the twig, for the force of the veins cannot turn too large a stick;  secondly, there is the shape of the twig, which must be forked or the vein cannot turn it;  thirdly , the power of the vein which has the nature to turn it; fourthly, the manipulation of the twig; fifthly, the absence of impeding peculiarities.  These advocates of the twig sum up their conclusions as follows:  if the rod does not move for everybody, it is due to unskilled manipulation or to the impeding peculiarities of the man which oppose and resist the force of the veins, as we said above, and those who search for veins by means of the twig need not necessarily make incantations, but it is sufficient that they handle it suitably and are devoid of impeding power; therefore, the twig may be of use to good and serious men in discovering veins.  With regard to deflection of branches of trees they say nothing and adhere to their opinion.

Since this matter remains in dispute and causes much dissention amongst miners, I consider it ought to be examined on its own merits.  The wizards, who also make use of rings, mirrors and crystals, seek for veins with a divining rod shaped like a fork; but its shape makes no difference in the matter, – it might be straight or of some other form – for it is not the form of the twig that matters, but the wizard’s incantations which it would not become me to repeat, neither do I wish to do so.  The Ancients, by means of divining rod, not only procured those things necessary for a livelihood or for luxury, but they were also able to alter the forms of things by it; as when the magicians changed the rods of the Egyptians into serpents, as the writings of the Hebrews relate.; and as in Homer, Minerva with a divining rod turned the aged Ulysses suddenly into a youth, and then restored him back again to old age; Circe also changed Ulysses’ companions into beasts, but afterward gave them back again their human form; moreover by his rod, which was called “Caduceus,” Mercury gave sleep to watchmen and awoke slumberers.  Therefore it seems that the divining rod passed to the mines from its impure origin with the magicians.  Then when good men shrank from horror from the incantations and rejected them, the twig was retained by the unsophisticated common miners, and in searching for new veins some traces of these ancient usages remain.

But since truly the twigs of the miners do move, albeit they do not generally use incantations, some say this movement is caused by the power of the veins, others say that it depends on the manipulation, and still others think that the movement is due to both these causes.  But, in truth, all those objects which are endowed with the power of attraction do not twist things in circles, but attract them directly to themselves; for instance, the magnet does not turn the iron, but draws it directly to itself, and amber rubbed until it is warm does not bend straws about, but simply draws them to itself.  If the power of the veins were in a similar nature to that of the magnet and the amber, the twig would not so much twist as move one only, in a semi circle, and be drawn directly to the vein, and unless the strength of man who holds the twig were to resist and oppose the force of the vein, the twig would them be brought to the ground; wherefore, since this is not the case, it must necessarily follow that the manipulation is the cause of the twig’s twisting motion.  It is a conspicuous fact that these cunning manipulators do not use a straight twig, but a forked one cut from a hazel bush, or from some other wood equally flexible, so that if it be held in the hands, as they are accustomed to hold it, it turns in a circle for any man wherever  he stands.  Nor is it strange that the twig does not turn when held by the inexperienced, because they either grasp the forks of the twig too tightly or hold them too loosely.  Nevertheless, these things give rise to the faith among common miners that veins are discovered by the use of twigs, because whilst using these they do accidentally discover some; but it more often happens that they lose their labour, and although they might discover a vein, they become none the less exhausted in digging useless trenches than do the miners who prospect in an unfortunate locality.  Therefore a miner, since we think he ought to be a good and serious man, should not make use of an enchanted twig, because if he is prudent and skilled in the natural signs, he understands that a forked stick is of no use to him, for as I have said before, there are natural indications of the veins which he can see for himself without the help of twigs.  So if Nature or chance should indicate a locality suitable for mining, the miner should dig his trenches there; if no vein appears he must dig numerous trenches until he discovers an outcrop of a vein.

Looks like Ian (below) beat me to it…more on current UK Homeopathy inquiry.

It would seem that homeopathy in the UK is finally coming under some long-deserved scrutiny. Shockingly the taxpayer funded National Health Service (NHS) has spent around £12million on homeopathic remedies between 2005 and 2008, including funding more than one homeopathic hospital. However, in a move that is sure to shed light onto the treatments dubious claims of efficacy a Commons cross party select committee has been looking into whether the NHS is getting value for money.

Is it too much to ask??

In other news there has been a bizarre trend suddenly appearing in the world of Premiership football. Now while the top echelons of the Premier League are no stranger to 19 yr olds crashing their new Maseratis or stumbling out of clubs with their trousers around their ankles, this is something new. Several players who have succumbed to muscle strains or similar injuries have been jetting off to Serbia in the last week to see housewife who claims to cure people with horse placenta. However it seems Marijana Kovacevic’s treatment is not without controversy as now some claim that she uses human placenta that is massaged onto the affected area. The Serbian authorities are not quite so taken with the claims and would very much like to talk to Ms Kovacevic about various tax and licensing issues. Let’s hope it works because as an Arsenal supporter I’d very much like to see our striker Robin Van Persie, one of the Serbian travellers, back asap. However I am not holding my breath.
**Update** great, well now it looks like he’s out for the rest of the season. bah!

And finally great news! All late night TV viewers will remember the truly frightening series of advertisements featuring Aussie spin bowler and serial texter Shane ‘Warnie’ Warne banging on about how Advanced Hair Studio saved his barnet and filled him with youthful vigour. Well not any more because it has been banned in the UK for being misleading.

Check out the link below for a fascinating discussion about homeopathy featuring Ben Goldcare and Edzard Ernst plus quite a few others.  This discussion is from the House of Commons Science and Technology Sub-Committee relating to government expenditure on homeopathy.

It takes the form of a grilling by a committee of two panels of experts.  The wriggling by the proponents of homeopathy is fascinating.

It is ~2 hours long and available streaming here:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5221

There is a transcript here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/nov/24/homeopathy-science-technology-committee

UK newspapers, notably The Telegraph, are reporting the latest figures released from Allergy UK that apparently claim that 45% of the UK’s population are suffering from food intolerance of one sort or another. I checked Allergy UK’s website but couldn’t find the press release that backed up these claims so I called them and was met by a wall of vagueness. Perhaps they are just tardy in updating their website… Assuming that the release is genuine it seems an extraordinarily high figure. Unfortunately The Telegraph only features quotes from people with a vested interest in food intolerances; an author with a book on the subject, one doctor from a company that sells intolerance testing kits and another from a company making food suitable for people with intolerance. They come out with the usual claims such as ‘A big part of the problem is that we are assaulting our children with chemicals because the food that we are feeding them isn’t real anymore, it’s just a bunch of food additives, flavourings and colourings’ and ‘if people are eating foods straight out of a chemical laboratory then diabetes and obesity, heart disease and cancer will be a result of these intolerances’.

Not For Me, Thanks

In other news the Pope has upset the Church of England by announcing that he will issue an apostolic constitution, a form of papal decree, that will lead to the creation of “personal ordinariates” (whatever they are) for Anglicans who convert to Rome. This effectively means that all those in the C of E who are against female priests and homosexuals can escape to Catholicism. Sound like a complete fudge to me but it’s amusing to watch the churches going at it while trying to appear pious at the same time. Meanwhile at the same time as some of the bones of St Therese are being toured around the country, no doubt performing miracles left right and centre, Jesus has appeared on a toilet wall in Glasgow.I’ll say this much for religion – it’s certainly entertaining.

UPDATE: I called Allergy UK and found one extremely woolly article on their site based entirely on anecdotal evidence. You can find it here look under ‘Stolen Lives Five’ report. There’s also a thread I started over on Bad Science here which has some interesting input. I emailed Allergy UK to see where they get their figures from but no response. I am not holding my breath.

Two of the usual suspects Derren Brown and Richard Dawkins have been in the UK news recently, Brown for his new TV show, and Dawkins due to his support for libel law reform.

‘Mentalist’, anti-psychic and all-round showman Brown has a new series that apparently has been under development ‘for over a year’ and was promising all sorts of exciting new tricks. Two shows in and the results have been less than impressive.

Must Remember To Buy Aspirin

The second show was even worse. Brown claimed that he would, gasp, ‘control the nation’ by means of a mysterious subliminal film. Basically it was nothing more than your bog standard stage hypnotist where some people humour the entertainer by eating an onion or whatever, except in this case all they had to do was to pretend not to be able to get out of their chairs. Some viewers played the game by phoning in to report they were stuck, until released by a special ‘relaxing’ blue film segment shown by Brown.

For all his showman bluster I’m afraid this series just hasn’t done it for Brown so far – his stunts are just too easy to rig for a TV audience (the possibility of multiple takes etc) and waffle about mysterious theories and automatic writing are a definite step in the wrong direction. However he still portrays himself as an illusionist rather than a psychic, so perhaps he’ll pull something a bit more interesting out of the bag later.

Dawkins, meanwhile, has been campaigning to change the English libel laws which he says are biased towards the plaintiff. He has the support of England’s third party the Liberal Democrats (unfortunately numerically pretty much the equivalent of having the staunch support of ACT). Dawkins was quoted as saying that due to the current state of the law, it was very hard to publicly criticise homoeopaths and the like for fear of being sued (although Ben Goldacre seems to have done a pretty good job in his great book ‘Bad Science’). Another doctor, Simon Singh is currently fighting a case where he is being sued for suggesting chiropractors might be not quite as sincere as they make out. This is seen as a very important case in determining how far scientists and others can go in their criticism. Although any changes in the law are a long way off, any groundswell of support or general coverage of the issue is most welcome.

The British Humanist Association has sparked a bit of controversy by attacking a creationist zoo called Noah’s Ark Farm, near Bristol. The BHA claims that the zoo misleads large numbers of visitors and wants the British and Irish Zoo Association and a number of other tourism agencies to delist them from their promotional material.

Creationism - No. Tapirs - Yes

Keeping on the theme of animals, a group of USA based atheists have come up with a terrific money making scheme involving post-Rapture pet care. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets offers pet care to those who believe that the worthy (ie those who believe in Jesus) will be swept up to heaven in what is commonly know as ‘The Rapture’. ‘You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind?’ the group’s website asks. Having signed up a number of certified blasphemers and sinners to act as animal minders, they are able to guarantee first rate pet care to those animals left behind post-Rapture – for a fee of course.

If you would like to cast your eyes over a truly bad piece of journalism, The Telegraph can help. This week someone called Lucy Pinney wrote a cringe-inducing article on the possibility of ‘remote viewing’ being useful in healthcare. Apart from being possibly the most credulous journalist in print, she was even criticised by her subject Andrew Usher (dean of British Institute Of Homeopathy), who took umbrage at an incorrect statement stating the NHS was investigating remote viewing. So not only does she write a piece free of any journalistic balance, she happily includes references to CIA studies on remote viewing (which found no evidence for it) as evidence, and on top of that misrepresents one of her main subjects. Way to go Lucy.

For those you who have a Facebook account, you may have noticed the advertisements that regularly pop up on the right side of the screen. Now I understand that Facebook is a business and that an important way of making money for the company is through advertising. However some of the ads that regularly feature are not just lame, but have the elements of a scam.

Specifically there are those ads that entice you in with the prospect of turning that keg into a six pack with minimal effort and a short timeframe. Such ads I have encountered have included are Dave’s Personal Blog and Getting Your Six Pack. While at a glance they appear to be different from each other, there are a large number of similarities between the two sites including in the layout and language used. In particular the endorsements received from members of the public are identical – right down the usernames and dates that the comments were posted. On the face of it looks like these guys who run these sites have been sucked into a multi-level marketing scam, until you click any one of the links and they lead to one website – acaiforcemax.com. I suspect that these websites are actually sockpuppets for acaiforcemax.com.

The websites provide the typical anecdote of the Joe Bloggs who obtains an incredible physique through the consumption of Acai berry fruit juice – the most recent fad in pseudo-nutritional supplements. There is no evidence for its efficacy as assisting with weight loss – nor for the range of other claims made for it such as cleansing colons (which is a scam in itself) and enhancing ones sexual prowess. Check out the Skeptic Doc’s blog entry on acai berries and what is interesting is that there is a range of other exotic items such as blueberry juice, grape juice, and red wine that have more anti-oxidants than acai juice.

However, if a person wants to part with their hard earned money for another useless supplement then go ahead – knock yourself out. What is more concerning is the deceptive techniques that many of these online companies use to trick people into subscribing for expensive products – and what you will find is that by signing up to one of the free trials of acai berries will mean that you will lose a lot more than a few kilos.

Lets take acaiforcemax.com, a website where whoever has registered the domain has gone to some lengths to protect themselves from identification. The free trial is aggressively pushed in the website and hey – if they are giving it away is there any harm in trying? As they make it clear that there are only limited supplies one better quickly work their way through the process to get their free trial. The first step is to take their test to see if you qualify. I decided to misrepresent myself as a 137cm tall, 72 year old Munchkin whose goal was to move from being 115kg to 160kg and strangely enough I qualified for a free trial!

You then need to provide them with a range of personal information including an e-mail address (bring on the acai berry spam) and the only cost involved is a US$4.95 postage fee for the free acai berries and guess what? You also are entitled to become a member of their Elite Customer Club.

The membership of this club means that you are also billed US$79.95 for the acai berry supply (that you have not asked for) and you also obtain access to their World Club Fitness and Weight Loss Resources for a meagre US$6.95 and US$8.95 per month. So in total this “free trial” will set you back US$100.80 (NZ$148) per month. You only need to Google the terms ‘acai berry scam’ to see the number of people who have fallen for this scam and find themselves jumping through numerous hoops to get the payments stopped.

My advice is that if something is marketed as free on the Internet it will be too good to be true.

London homeopathy purveyors Ainsworths have incurred the wrath of the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for selling a remedy known as ‘Swine Flu Formula’. The company claims their pills ‘override the symptoms’ of Swine Flu. This is compounded by the fact that the company has a royal warrant, which means it apparently sells its goods to members of the royal family – no prizes for guessing which ones. The MHRA is investigating the company and I could find no mention of the product on their website, which is well worth looking at. What did disturb me was that you can quite happily order whichever remedy you want on their site without any sort of check, which would seem incredibly dangerous (presuming that they actually contained something other than water of course).

In light of the recent furore over the research by the Food Standards Agency stating that organic food has no better nutritional content than ‘normal’ food (see article below) the head of the Whole Foods chain here has said indeed the shops sell ‘ a bunch of junk’ (he’s American). What effect this has on sales remains to be seen.

A Degree - Why earn one when you can just make your own?

And in a shock revelation that will surprise pretty much no-one, it has been revealed that L Ron Hubbard’s claim to have been awarded a PhD was a complete fabrication. The British consulate investigated Hubbard in the 1970’s because they were concerned about the possibility of a libel case after they banned Scientologists from entering the country in 1968. Subsequent investigations found Hubbard and his cronies had created a fake entity, Sequoia University, and promptly awarded each other degrees. The ‘university’ had never been accredited by the state and it fact didn’t even have any premises. The story has made the papers now as the Times have managed to obtain classified Health Department documents under the Freedom of Information Act. No response from Tom Cruise as yet.

Organic Pig...or is it?

Here in the UK organic food has become quite a major money spinner, with most large supermarket chains offering organic options. For example if I pop into my local Sainsburys I can buy the standard issue tomato for say £1.78 per kg, or buy the organic range ones for quite a bit more. There are also shops that specialise in organic produce where I could, if was substantially richer or insane, buy a single avocado for £1.80 ($4.50).

Today the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) released a report , which took the form of a ‘systematic review of literature’, carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). LSHTM’s team of researchers, reviewed all papers published over the past 50 years that related to the nutrient content and health differences between organic and conventional food. This systematic review is the most comprehensive study in this area that has been carried out to date (according to the FSA). The conclusion it reached was that “organic food is no healthier and provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food “.

This set off something of a firestorm in the newspapers comments section which brought up some very good points.

1)Just exactly what is organic food anyway?
To me the term has always been very woolly, conjuring up visions of hardy smock-wearing individuals toiling in the fields whilst chewing on barley stalks. I assumed it meant that no ‘artificial’ pesticides or fertiliser had been used on crops and no hormones, antibiotics, moisturising cream etc administered to animals. But what is an artificial fertiliser? I can use crop rotation and plant lupins or some other nitrogen fixing plant one year to fertilise the soil, but why not just bung on some nitrogen fertiliser and grow more food crops instead? Does that make me non-organic? Which brings me onto the next point…
2)Who defines what organic food is?
Here in the UK it is in fact the European Union which has set down a Compendium of UK Organic Standards. Farmers who want to label their produce must adhere to the standards and be certified by a Government approved body such as the Soil Association. The UK Soil Association does have an attempt at defining organic on their website saying that ‘artificial chemical fertilisers are prohibited’ (so nitrogen fertiliser is out) in preference of clover crop rotation. However they also say that pesticides are ’severely restricted’ (ie not banned) although it seems OK to use copper sulphate as a fungicide.

It was interesting to see the polarising effect of this study, which divided people mainly into two camps. One side was more or less along the lines of ‘I don’t want to put chemicals into my body so therefore organic is better’ while the others were put off by the expense and lack of clarity over exactly what the supposed benefits were, assuming nutrition is not one of them. Clearly modern farming practise has greatly increased food production, which presumably is a good thing.

Unfortunately the effects of fertiliser/pesticide or agricultural practises on the environment were outside the remit of this report. I think a most people do take the overall environmental impact into consideration when buying organic and although I haven’t seen any studies it seems to me quite obvious that they can have an impact – look at the problems with the Rotorua Lakes or Mad Cow disease (BSE) for example. Certainly when it comes to animal welfare and to an extent GMO crops I would tend to be on the side of ‘organic’.
However I think the study is useful in order to show those who run a mile at the word ‘chemical’ that in fact their $2 carrot and my 20c one aren’t actually as different as they may think.

Close Personal Friends

Uri’s Story: Uri Geller, well known source of amusement for many, has squeezed the last few drops of fame by association  out of his ‘close personal’ friendship with Michael Jackson by appearing in a documentary on the UK’s ITV channel. An almost evangelical sounding Geller waxed lyrical over his time spent with Jackson, pausing to break down in tears from time to time. He peppered his dialogue with references to ‘energy’, managed to squeeze in a reference to his attempt to help Jacksons broken foot while confessing he was ‘not a healer’ and even got in a spoon bend. Most amusing moment was when MJ left a message on Geller’s answering machine expressing his heartfelt desire to be the first pop star to moonwalk on the actual moon – at least he wasn’t a lunar conspiracy theorist. Hopefully this shoddy, hastily thrown together and frankly weird programme will be the last we hear of him for a while, although somehow I doubt it. If it’s shown in NZ I’d recommend it for amusement value only.
Hatch ‘n’ Match
The Church of England have upset almost everyone (again) by launching a new service that combines baptism and marriage in a sort of ecclesiastical buy one, get one free offer, with the aim of increasing church attendances.  Conservative christians are upset that the new scheme acts as tacit approval of sex before marriage, while most non-religious commentators found themselves unable to stop laughing.
Meanwhile the UK police force proves it is an equal opportunity employer, and sensitive to the needs of its officers by allowing pagans in the force to have their own allocated days off (summer solstice etc). Apparently there are more than 500 pagan police officers in the UK. A representative of the Police Association said “This is nothing to do with black magic, or devil worshipping.Witchcraft is not the hocus pocus, puff of smoke, turning people into frogs stuff you see on the TV.” PC Andy Pardy, of Hertfordshire Police, a Heathen who worships Norse gods, said the public had nothing to fear. Which I think we can all agree, is good news.