Heroes Not Zombies

The irrational claims of “scientists”

Some people claim the term “scientist” as a label of authority. It drives them crazy when people don’t accept their authority. They believe that their views are the correct views and any alternative views are wrong views. I find that attitude horrendously arrogant. And far from rational.
Sir David King, the UK government’s Chief Scientist was complaining yesterday about people who promote views which are different from his own. Specifically he was complaining about people not supporting GM crops and nuclear power but decided to throw his hat into the anti-homeopathy ring while he was at it. Here are two of the irrational claims he made against homeopathy.

First he said homeopathy was not safe. This is a very hard claim to justify if you really claim to be objective and rational. I have heard it said that homeopathy won’t be taken seriously until it kills someone. Well, two hundred years on and there’s still total failure on that one!

Drugs are not safe. An estimated 10,000 people died from serious Adverse Drug Reactions in England in one year. £466 million was spent on hospital treatment of patients suffering serious reactions to drugs.

Surgery is not safe. My trainer when I was a trainee General Practitioner said to me “Be careful and remember if you send your patient to a man with a knife he’ll use it!” It was good advice. At an inquest into the death of a patient after cosmetic surgery –

Dr Steven Chan, who conducted the inquest, did not mince his words. “I have no doubt of the determination of the deceased when she agreed to go through with major surgery,” he said, “but the point must be made that all surgery could result in complications with devastating effects. There is no safe surgery.”

Hospitals are not safe. You wouldn’t want to be in hospital unless you really had to be.

But homeopathy is safe. Nobody has ever died from the effects of a homeopathic medicine. What people actually mean when they say homeopathy is not safe is that some practitioners who use homeopathy are not safe. Well you can say the same of doctors and surgeons, but the way to deal with that issue is training, clinical governance and regulation. The issue is the practice of unregulated or poorly regulated health care. “Where is the evidence that a homeopathically trained doctor is more dangerous than one without homeopathic training?” I recently asked the Editor of the Lancet who had claimed homeopathic practice was dangerous practice. So far, his reply is a deafening silence.

Second Sir David said there is not a jot of evidence that homeopathy works. Well, he can only say that if he hasn’t looked. There is evidence. Go here and read it for yourself. Having read and considered the evidence you might conclude that there is not enough evidence to be convincing enough to change your beliefs. But that’s not the same as saying there is no evidence. You might conclude that there is some evidence that homeopathy is more effective than placebo. Or you might critique the published research and highlight its methodological weaknesses but that’s normal in science. There isn’t a single piece of research into anything which is ‘perfect’. Every study can be, and should be, reviewed, analysed and criticised. What you can’t do is say the research doesn’t exist. What you can’t say is that “there is not one jot of evidence supporting the notion that homeopathic medicines are of any assistance whatsoever” which is what Sir David King said. Not unless you don’t know any better.

Scientists who claim to know The Truth and to tell the rest of us that they know absolutely certainly what is best for us give science a bad name. I enjoy science. It’s fascinating to explore and to learn about how things work. We need good science and good scientists. But science is increasingly showing us that life is complex and that if we want to understand how the world works we need to move away from the old habit of reductionism and simplification which promotes a two-value, unhelpful view of the world dividing everything into right or wrong, proven or unproven, true or false. Understanding and knowledge are never finished, never complete.

(thanks to mo79uk for drawing my attention to Sir David King’s remarks and for commenting –

A fair number of people, I think, have a fairly good or neutral opinion of homoeopathy because the swimming money pool of conventional medicine isn’t delivering all we hope for. And there’s no guarantee and infinite amount of time ever will. At least not for those of us living now. It’s fine to believe in conventional medicine, but when it doesn’t believe in making you better, it’s not foolish to entertain something we don’t understand.

People laughed when it was suggested the earth was round.)