Author: Ophelia Benson

Good old Prince Cholls – he plans to question publicly the Food Standards Agency’s conclusion that expensive organic food is no better for you than produce from intensive farms. His dedication to keeping his subjects entertained is impressive. (His care for their health not so much. And as for his critical thinking skills…)

“This study hasn’t changed His Royal Highness’s views one bit,” one of the Prince’s friends tells me. “Charles thinks it’s ludicrous to suggest that vegetables treated with chemicals or meat raised with antibiotics can be as good for you as proper food.”

And he comes to this conclusion via…well they don’t say.

Lord Melchett, who is the policy director of the Soil Association and a close ally of the Prince, tells me: “He believes in organic food.”

Ah. Well if it’s a matter of belief then there’s no more to be said.

Got a broken leg? Hepatitis? Chapped lips? Have you tried some nice medicine?

A pharmacy supplying homeopathic remedies to the Royal Family…, Ainsworths, has been accused of “quackery” for supplying bottles of pills labelled as “Swine Flu Formula” for people suffering from the disease…Ainsworths has been granted a Royal Warrant by the Queen and Prince Charles, who are both said to be supporters of homeopathy…Its treatment is in the form of small “sugar pills”, which dissolve under the tongue. It is sold in £7 bottles, containing 50 pills, which can be bought on the company’s website or over the counter of its central London store. The label on the bottles reads: “SFF (Swine Flu Formula). Treatment: One to be dissolved in the mouth three times a day until improved.”

£7 for fifty little sugar pills! What is the other £6.95 for? Overhead? Malpractice insurance? A day in Brighton?

A Telegraph reporter got a ‘pharmacist’ at Ainsworths to sell him some. She said ‘the pills would help the body “overcome the symptoms” of the virus.’

David Colquhoun and others pointed out that this is dangerous bullshit. Tony Pinkus, the director of Ainsworths, on the other hand, said something rather different.

“At Ainsworths we cater for our many homeopathic customers who have requested a remedy to alleviate the symptoms of swine flu. Most of our customers are people who routinely use homeopathy and find it a satisfactory alternative to allopathic or conventional medicine and are exercising their freedom of choice.”

They ‘cater for’ their customers who have asked for a remedy to alleviate the symptoms of swine flu by giving them a very expensive bottle of sugar pills? That’s a funny kind of ‘catering for.’ At that rate I could go to a restaurant and request a remedy to alleviate my hunger, and be given a brick, or a hank of magenta cashmere, or a hand-painted Breton soup bowl. And the bit about freedom of choice is very patriotic and nice, of course, but it’s a damn cynical way to defend quackery. I’m free to choose a hank of magenta cashmere for breakfast lunch and dinner, too, but if I keep it up I will either starve or die of wool-poisoning, so people who peddle me the stuff are being…unhelpful.

“The remedy is available on request and we do not advertise or encourage people to buy it. We also make it clear that homeopathy can be used in conjunction with conventional medicines and do not feel we are ignoring or going against any governmental guidelines.”

Now that’s interesting. They’re in the business, but they do not advertise or encourage people to buy it. Well why not? Because it doesn’t work? Because it doesn’t do anything? Because it’s just common or garden sugar? And yet they do put a label saying ‘SFF (Swine Flu Formula) Treatment’ on the bottle.

Dr Catherine Zollman, a Fellow of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health and a GP in Bristol, said she uses homeopathy in her every day care of patients. “Homeopathic treatment can be helpful where conventional medicine doesn’t have much to offer and there are ongoing symptoms in the patient which are causing distress. But it does have to be used with care and good assessment where serious progressive illness or disease has been ruled out.”

Helpful in what sense? Consoling for chronic pain or other misery when ‘conventional’ medicine isn’t working? ‘Helpful’ could mean anything or nothing. But even this Fellow of the prince’s whatsit is careful to warn against using it for anything real and treatable.

I would say more, but mindful of Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association, I will let you work it out for yourselves.

I mentioned that a commenter at The Intersection said I was lying. Tim Broderick, he is; here’s the central part of what he said:

When Ophelia Benson claims through her “questions” that Chris and Sheril have no evidence she is not telling the truth. It’s one thing for people who haven’t read the book to assert this – she has the book. So let me say that again and more emphatically: She is lying.

Here is the question from her own site: “How do you know overt atheism causes people to be hostile to science? How does that work? What is your evidence?”

From page 173 to page 185 there are detailed endnotes with citations to back up the assertions in Chapter 8…Benson doesn’t just disagree. She lies and asserts that they have nothing to back up their assertions.

Asking questions is not asserting, but never mind. He’s wrong on the substance too. This bit of chapter 8 for instance:

If the goal is to create an America more friendly toward science and reason, the combativeness of the New Atheists is strongly counterproductive. If anything, they work in ironic combination with their dire enemies, the anti-science conservative Christians who populate the creation science and intelligent design movements, to ensure we’ll continue to be polarized over subjects llike the teaching of evolution when we don’t have to be. America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former. The New Atheists err in insisting that such a choice needs to be made. Atheism is not the logical outcome of scientific reasoning, any more than intelligent design is a necessary corollary of religious faith. A great many scientists believe in God with no sense of internal contradiction, just as many religious believers accept evolution as the correct theory to explain the development, diversity, and inter-relatedness of life on Earth. The New Atheists, like the fundamentalists they so despise, are setting up a false dichotomy that can only damage the cause of scientific literacy for generations to come. [pp 97-8]

I would like to rip into the argument there, but won’t. (See Jason Rosenhouse on the subject.) But what I will do is point out that there is no endnote for that paragraph. None. Zero. You can easily check – the notes are on page 174. They go from one related to a passage on page 97 before that paragraph begins, to one on a passage on page 98 after that paragraph ends. That whole paragraph is note-free. So Tim Broderick was wrong.

The closest thing to a note for the overarching claim comes much later, for a passage on page 104 – and it’s worthless.

In fact, education researchers have found that defusing the tension over science and religion facilitates learning about evolution. “I submit that anti-religious rehtoric is counter-productive. It actually hampers science education,” a biologist at Davis and Elkins College in West Virgina. In Stover’s view, students who feel that evolution is a threat to their beliefs will not “want to learn,” and only reconiliatory discussion can open them up to evolution. (p. 183)

That’s just someone saying something, in the same way they are saying something. It doesn’t count as evidence. It could illustrate, or amplify, or clarify, but it can’t support.

So – are we clear? I wasn’t lying. M&K don’t provide support for all of their assertions, and some of what they purport to offer is actually worthless.