He gives the signs and symptoms of PANDAS as:

“The hallmark trait for PANDAS is sudden acute and debilitating onset of intense anxiety and mood lability (‘something that is constantly changing) accompanied by Obsessive Compulsive-like issues and/or Tics in association with a streptococcal-A (GABHS) infection that has occurred immediately prior to the symptoms. In some instances, the onset will be 4 to 6 months after a strep infection because the antibiotics did not fully eradicate the bacteria. Many pediatricians do not know the latent variability of strep – Rheumatologists and Streptococcal Experts do.”

Symptom onset includes Primary ONSET of OCD* and/or Tics along with at least two other following symptoms:

•Tics or other abnormal movements
•Severe separation anxiety, Generalized anxiety
•Irritability, Emotional lability, Aggression, Personality Changes
•ADHD, Inability to concentrate
•Sensory sensitivities
•Deterioration in learning abilities and school performance
•Developmental and age regression (inc. Deterioration in handwriting)
•Sleep and night time difficulties
•Urinary Frequency or Daytime or night-time secondary enuresis

*OCD may present as severe anxiety

This appears to be describing a chronic condition. It is a common trait of chronic ailments that symptoms come and go with time so to take account for that, a trial of any proposed new treatment would need a large number of participants divided into a new treatment arm and a control arm receiving either current best practise or a placebo and the two compared. (Since it is thought that PANDAS symptoms are due to a strep infection not being properly eradicated some doctors treat with antibiotics.)

Unfortunately, this is not what Freestone proposes:

How the trial will be structured
•Recruitment Phase: I am aiming for at least 15 participants.
•Initial Questionnaire and Skype interview (lasting 20 – 30 minutes) – This is to establish a base line for the person’s symptoms and the most appropriate remedy(s) for the trial.
•Prescription Phase: Each participant will be given a prescription to order from a homeopathic pharmacy (full details on how to do this will be given).
•Protocol Phase: Each participant will take the remedies as prescribed for 2 months.
•Final Questionnaire: Each participant will be asked to fill in an online questionnaire to record their experiences of the trial.
•Publishing Phase: The results and (hopefully) the effective protocol will be published.

Where to start? A tiny trial is proposed. The results will be subject to confirmation bias. There is no control arm. Cargo cult science at its worst.

There is one further point. Medical trials are subject to the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004. In particular, Regulation 12 requires ethical approval before a trial can commence. No reference to this is made so I decided to email Mr Freestone with my concerns:

Dear Mr Freestone

I read with interest about your proposed trial to find a treatment for PANDAS. A couple of points occur to me:

1. Since PANDAS is a chronic condition, symptoms will come and go. How will you establish that any changes in the symptoms reported by participants are due to the reatment as there appears to be no placebo arm? Similarly, there is no comparison with current practise, so how will you establish which is better?

2. Has this trial received licensing and ethical approval under Regulation 12 of the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004? This regulation states in part:

“12.—(1) No person shall—
(a)start a clinical trial or cause a clinical trial to be started; or.
(b)conduct a clinical trial,.
unless the conditions specified in paragraph (3) are satisfied.
(2) No person shall—
(a)recruit an individual to be a subject in a trial;.
(b)issue an advertisement for the purpose of recruiting individuals to be subjects in a trial,.
unless the condition specified in paragraph (3)(a) has been satisfied.
(3) The conditions referred to in paragraphs (1) and (2) are—
(a)an ethics committee or an appeal panel appointed under Schedule 4 has given a favourable opinion in relation to the clinical trial; and.
(b)the clinical trial has been authorised by the licensing authority

From
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/1031/regulation/12/made

Yours sincerely

John Hawcock

As of the time of writing, no reply has been received.

The initial reporting was highly credulous and was headlined “Scientists Divided …” which phrase still appears in the url. Scathing criticism in the comments has resulted in the headline being changed to “Scientists sceptical … “. Kingsley is not a scientist and cannot be expected to know everything but it would have been easy enough for him to run this past someone with some basic scientific knowledge. Frankly, I don’t believe Kingsley was even thinking when he wrote:

… it was adapted from a bomb detector used by the Egyptian army…

Because it made many, me included, think of the bogus bomb detectors sold to the Iraqi and Afghan security forces. The Egyptian device was allegedly developed by Dr Gamal Shiha who would appear to be the G. Shiha who is the lead researcher on this poster presentation:

We developed a novel, rapid, non-invasive screening device C-FAST (trade mark), which is patented Bio-sensor slash spectroscopy based technology for the detection of hepatitis C virus. When the signal is picked up a pivoting antenna of the C- FAST is drawn like a compass needle, to indicate alignment between the patient and the frequency card in the C-FAST

Frankly this sounds like a dowsing rod with added techno-babble. The detector has allegedly been tested on hundreds of individuals but we are told nothing about the selection process or whether there was any blinding – so the supposed positive results could be down to see what you expect to see – self deception in other words.

The article describes the detector as looking “like a car radio antenna” which does not sound much like any kind of spectroscope. A GCSE science student might think to ask exactly how much energy Hepatitis C viruses (virii?) are emitting that they can line up a pivoting antenna from several feet away. What suggests to me that this could be a little more than self deception is the reference to the “frequency card”. This sounds remarkably like the bogus bomb detector:

Mr McCormick has said the device, sold from offices in Sparkford, Somerset, used special electronic cards slotted into it to detect explosives.

Mr McCormick’s devices did not work and he is under investigation for fraud.

This article illustrates everything that is wrong with media reporting of scientific and technological issues. Kingsley knows no science but instead of referring the matter to someone who does he opted to report it in a “he says this but someone else says that” manner, which gives the false notion that the science is in doubt. Guardian staffers weighed into the comments saying that you can’t expect journalists to understand science (!) and pointing out that the article was balanced – completely unaware that this bogus balance is the problem and gives the impression that there is some possibility that this useless “invention” actually works, with the attendant possibility that somebody could believe it and base their health care decisions on it.

The really ironic thing here is that Kingsley has missed a great story about chancers seeking to exploit the health service of a not-exactly-wealthy country that is still recovering from a revolution but his scientific ignorance has blinded him to it. You would think that the MMR debacle would have made the press realise that having science and medicine reported by people who don’t actually understand what they are writing about will result in distortion amd mis-information but evidently not.

(thanks to the Bad Science forumites whose posts on this issue have been a great help)

Oxford University PPE Course Convenors

Dear Sirs,

There are many famous and successful alumni of the Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree – indeed, a truly disproportionate number of the higher echelons of government and parliament hold PPE degrees. This is a credit to the success of the first P – you have obviously taught them politics very well.

However, given the country’s performance, maybe the Economics syllabus could be improved. I realize that it is not a precise discipline, but it is possible that you could revise parts of the syllabus to correct the obvious errors in belief held by your former students.

But, and this is the biggest “but” of all – I think your teaching of Philosophy requires a major overhaul. The current crop of PPE graduates in parliament on all sides of the House clearly do not know how to think things through properly, how to make decisions and how to consider what probable outcomes of those decisions will be. They have not been taught to think critically and analytically at all. C-, must try harder.

Yours faithfully, etc.

Soul-i is the world’s first portable alkaline water bottle that does not require any additional devices. The bottle itself has alkalizing properties and will turn the water content of any liquid drink alkaline.

And how does it do this?

Soul-i is made up of polyactide [sic] (PLA), alkaline earth metals, and various other natural materials. Due to the makeup of the product, Soul-i will bring the pH level of water up to anywhere between 7.7 and 9.5.

According to this, PLA is polylactic acid – a polymer which will break down under certain circumstances. Assuming it does in fact have an alkalising effect on water I can only assume that substances such as calcium hydroxide aka slaked lime and magnesium hydroxide aka milk of magnesia are embedded in a PLA matrix and as the plastic degrades, they are released into the water within. I don’t know why it doesn’t raise the pH beyond 9.5. Perhaps tha’s the point where the PLA is degraded so much that the bottle disintegrates.

A number of claims are made for the benefits of alkalised water:

1. Ionized water gives plenty of energy by providing a lot of oxygen

Dissolving the hydroxides of of alkaline earths in water does not produce oxygen, it produces metal ions and hydroxyl (-OH) ions. At room temperature the solubility of oxygen is 7.6 mg/l, so even if these bottles were miraculously introducing oxygen into the water, one bottle would provide about 4.6 mg of oxygen. Using the data provided here, I calculate thata single lungful of air contains about 1.7 g of oxygen, about 370 times as much.

2. Balances our body’s acidic state caused by various factors such as diet

Our bodies maintain their pH without random doping with alkalised water, otherwise we’d be dead.

3. Overall improvement in body constitution

No evidence is provided that drinking alkalised water is any more beneficial than any other kind of water. The same is true of claims 5, 6, 8 & 9.

4. Anti-oxidant; eliminates free oxygen radicals by increasing Oxygen Reduction Potential (ORP).

This is a good one in that it completely contradicts claim 1.

5. Helps with post-workout recovery
6. The optimum natural health solution

See above.

7. Has a sterilizing effect on the water

Possibly true. Although if you’ve filled the bottle from the tap in any First World country, the water will already be sterile.

8. Positive effects on skin care and weight loss
9. Helps alleviate complications associated with the atopy skin condition

See above.

10. Contains and releases minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, among others

Maybe. If it is constructed as I suggest above. Of course you can get all these minerals from your diet without spending twenty quid on a plastic bottle.

11. Lowers cholesterol

This is a medical claim for which no evidence is provided. It is the most dangerous claim in that it might encourage people who are on statins to reduce cholesterol to stop taking them – with potentially serious effects on their health. Such a claim could not be made if the site were based in the USA or UK.

12. Breaks down water molecule clusters into smaller ones for better absorption into the body

According to this, water molecules do cluster but the clusters last from a pico second to a nano second (quntillionth to a billionth of a second) so magic bottles are not necessary for this.

13. “Activates” water and produces high OH and Calcium ions

Apart from the undefined claim to “activate” water, this is a repeat of claim 10.

Pure water is said to have a pH level very close to 7.0 while our body’s ideal pH level is around 7.4. In order to maintain this pH level and avoid illnesses caused by an acidic body composition, drinking alkaline water is a must.

Your body is pretty good at maintaining its pH. If it turned acid you’d be dead so I can safely say that drinking alkaline water is not a “must”. This whole acid-bad alkali-good meme echos the alkali diet shills in this country and is clearly aimed at the same people. You do not need to spend twenty quid on a plastic bottle to stay healthy. Seriously, you don’t.

Given the prominence of the word “xocai” on the package you’d expect some sort of chocolate product. However, if we examine the list of ingredients we find that the first listed is whey protein isolate, a by-product of cheese manufacture used by some athletes to build muscle tissue. I will grant that the second commonest ingredient is cocoa fibre.

The third commenest is moltodextrin [digestion reistant type]. According to the link:-

Resistant maltodextrins are typically produced by purposeful rearrangement of starch or hydrolyzed starch to convert a portion of the normal alpha-1,4 glucose linkages to random 1,2-, 1,3- and 1,4-alpha or beta linkages. The human digestive system effectively digests only alpha- 1,4 linkages, therefore the other linkages render the molecules restant to digestion.

I am not really sure how adding artificially manipulated starch fits in with the claim to have no additives. I wonder if they do any better with the “no presevatives” claim? Looking down that list we find “High oleic sunflower oil (with tocopherol added to preserve freshness)”. Sounds like a preservative to me!

Other additives in the approximately fifty ingredients of this additive free meal replacement include sucralose an artificially chlorinated sugar known in Europe as the additive E955 and vanadyl sulfate which is extracted from petroleum residues.

I could go through the pros and cons of these and other additives but to be frank that would produce a very long and possibly not very interesting blogpost. Suffice to say that despite what it says on the package, this product is not additive and preservative free and despite the picture of cocoa beans and the description of the product as “extreme dark chocolate”, the biggest single constituent is not a chocolate product of any description. And the answer to the question posed in the blog-title is clearly “when it’s xocai meal replacement”.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 42,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

The perpetrator, Adam Paul Green, posted in the comments following the blog post but despite a lot of bluff, bluster and abuse he never once explained himself. Hardly surprising – until he pulled that stunt this blog was one of the top sites when you googled ‘xocai’. Clearly Green and co did not like my debunking of the dubious medical claims made for this chocolate and so created these sites in attempt to fool Google.

I was not happy about this and went as far as telephoning Go Daddy, his domain hosts, to complain. To describe them as unco-operative would be an understatement. Regretably, I had not thought to trademark ‘jaycueaitch’ as I did not think it necessary as it is an obvious variant of my name. If I had done so I would have an open and shut case against Green in the US courts. As it is, I don’t have the time to pursue a case against him. Pity – I would love to wipe the smug self-satisfied smirk off his face.

As it is, I probably got off lightly. Norwegian bloggers have also covered the dodgy claims made for this product – and also pointed out that it is little more than a multi-level marketting scam. This did not suit the Norwegian xocai sellers who responded with Mafia style threats, See here, here, here and here. This has all resulted in a lot of press and police interest in the Xocai sales network. It remains to be seen what the final outcome will be.

The British Press has continued in its woeful ignorance of all things scientific. The year began with research into premature aging being presented by the press as eternal youth being just around the corner. Plainly the journalists concerned did no investigation before churning out their rubbish. A few minutes on Google got me an email address for Dr Laura J. Nierdernhofer, the lead researcher who was happy to explain to me what the research was actually about and its actual significance.

January also suppled another pseudoscientific favourite, psychic powers.

Health mis-information was once again a theme throughout the year. The Scotsman on Sunday’s spurious linkage of thyroid problems and vegetarianism was debunked as was an article on electrosensitivity in the Evening Standard, antivax nonsense from Natural News, homeopaths conflating homeopathy and herbalism and the dead tree version of pseudomedical website What Doctors Don’t Tell You.

On this subject, the Guardian has been going down-hill since Ben Goldacre left. I did a couple of blog posts (here and here) on Guardian Weekend’s credulous coverage of La Prairie’s £656 for a 50ml bottle skin cream.

I also continued to examine the various means that quacks and others use to deflect criticism such as ad hom attacks, “whataboutery” and live blood quack Errol Denton accusing his critics of racism.

For various family-related reasons, my blogging tailed off in the latter half of the year. I hope to resume in the New Year – even if it does sometimes feel that I’m playing whack-a-mole with the stupid.

In this case, Denton accuses his critics Jo Brodie and Josephine Jones of being racists. Jones has written a number of blogposts showing that live blood analysis has not a jot of evidence to support it plus she and Brodie have reported such quacks to the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards, which has prompted rants such as this one:

Messages of support and mobilisation have began against this evil duo. One message left read Josephine Jones is “ a con artist and a criminal” others have joined the battle group and now the RACIST lynch mob will be challenged. More troops welcome to battle against this evil RACIST scum.

Sociopathic RACIST bullies Jo Brodie and cohort Josephine Jones are yet again in deep denial. Their denial of the fact that they are indeed RACISTS has become tedious with continuos attempts to use spin to change the subject.

What is the subject? Ah Yes Josephine Jones filthy Sociopathic RACIST. Jo Brodie Sociopathic RACIST. No twisting and slithering off the subject like a devious serpent. No using the ASA as an excuse it does not wash. No one has given these RACISTS the authority to be biased judge jury and executioner. The only authority is their Sociopathic MISLEADING RACIST minds.

Josephine Jones, Jo Brodie MISLEADING the public that you are not a RACIST is pathetic. The truth cuts like a knife to someone who is lying that is why it hurts you. If it were ludicrous that you are Sociopathic RACISTS (Which indeed you are) then you would merely laugh and ignore it. Errol Denton has been called a quack Doctor for the past 2 years by you and has laughed and ignored it. The fact that you are so desperate to try to ‘CON’ Vince everyone that you are not RACISTS speaks volumes about your shame. Sticks and stones may break ones bones but names can never harm one (unless it is the truth that is) People in glass houses should not throw stones. Stop MISLEADING the public Sociopathic RACISTS JO Brodie and Josephine Jones.

Jo Brodie Josephine Jones you are the archetypal Sociopathic RACIST NAZI. You hurl abuse and insults such as quack etc etc but you cannot take the truth when labeled RACISTS. FREEDOM of SPEECH you hurl to defame the characters of your victims. Then you say “Foul I am not a RACIST” Stop MISLEADING people you are RACISTS.

Your lynch mob will not stop the truth You ARE SOCIOPATHIC RACISTS. WHAT ARE YOU AGAIN? Oh YES SOCIOPATHIC RACISTS.

In my humble opinion his ravings could do with a good fisking by a psychiatrist. For the moment I’ll just stick to the implicit assumption that if a white person (assuming Jones and Brodie are in fact white of course) criticises a black, the motivation can only be racism. The best way of countering this is to look at the evidence. This has already been done:

Totting up these figures reveals that, of 107 identifiable individuals who are criticised on Jones’ blog, 83% are white, 12% are of unknown race, 3% are black and 2% are Asian. (The list includes every named person I could track down, but omits several companies whose owners can’t easily be found.)

Of the 94 inviduals whose ethnicity is known, 89 (95%) are white and 5% are non-white. According to this there are 9.1 million non-whites in the UK, ie they constitute 14% of the population and thus are under represented among Jones’ targets. The allegation of racism thus does not stand up.

On page 9 it is claimed that doctors say the increase in heart disease and cancer is due just to us living longer. This is a bit of a misrepresentation; while it is true that these diseases take time to develop and thus will be commoner in a long lived population the medical professions are well aware of other causes and take steps to address them. I know this because I was diagnosed with coronory heart disease last year and was entered into Phase III of a cardiac rehabilitation program (I have not actually had a heart attack and the cardiologist judged surgery to be unnecessary in my case) which included life-style advice such as increasing excercise, healthy eating and smoking cessation.

There is also a large dose of antivax propaganda focused particularly on Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. I went through the pros and cons of this vaccine here and here and don’t propose repeating myself. Sufficient to say that very few serious side effects have been reported and the vaccine will prevent several hundred deaths per year.

This publication goes for nonsense claims such as “your chances of getting cervical cancer are only eight times greater than your chances of being killed by an asteroid” whichy appears in large letters on page 31. Since, as far as we are aware, deaths by asteroid are somewhere between extremely few and non-existant the clear implication is that your chances of developing cervical cancer are similarly minute. In fact the text on the same page admits that in the UK in 2009 there were 2747 cervical cancer cases (and 759 deaths). The bogus asteroid death statistic would thereforte suggest that there were 343 asteroid deaths in the UK that year. Don’t know about you but I missed them being reported.

On pages 36 -38 there is an article linking diabetes to vitamin D defficiency which starts out by saying we should get out in the Sun more but quickly moves on to pushing vitamin D supplementation – a fact which surprises me not at all. It is even claimed that “increasing your levels of vitamin D actually reverses type 2 diabetes”. In fact the research suggests the issue is much less clear-cut:

“Supplementation trials with regular vitamin D for the protection against the development of T1D and T2D have generated some contradictory data, but many weaknesses can be identified in these trials as most were underpowered or open-labeled. However, the overwhelming strength of preclinical data and of the observational studies make vitamin D or its analogues strong candidates for the prevention or treatment of diabetes or its complications. However, proof of causality needs well-designed clinical trials and if positive, adequate dosing, regimen, and compound studies are needed to define the contribution of vitamin D status and therapy in the global diabetes problem. There are many confounding factors that need to be taken into consideration when translating successful vitamin D therapies in animal models into humans, for example, gender, age, lifestyle, and genetic background. To come to solid conclusions on the potential of vitamin D or its analogues in the prevention of or therapy for all forms of diabetes, it is clear that large prospective trials with carefully selected populations and end points will be needed, but should also receive high priority.”

Another health issue of the middle-aged which is addressed is hearing loss due to listening to loud music in one’s youth. Among the remedies suggested on page 41 is a daily dose (30 – 200mg) of the herb gingko biloba to “improve blood circulation to the ears” which alleged effect allegedly restores hearing loss and we are further told that the “higher the dose the better the result”. No mention of potential problems is made. According to this

Ginkgo may have undesirable effects, especially for individuals with blood circulation disorders and those taking anticoagulants such as aspirin or warfarin, although recent studies have found that ginkgo has little or no effect on the anticoagulant properties or pharmacodynamics of warfarin in healthy subjects. Ginkgo inhibits monoamine oxidase, and, therefore, people who are taking certain types of antidepressants (such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), as well as pregnant women may experience side effects.

In summary – taking the advice on offer in this magazine may do no harm to the worried well but to people with underlying health problems, it is potentially dangerous.

Last month the BBC produced some numbers relating to the Inquiry. Of interest to me was how often certain members of the ruling class claimed not to remember certain incidents or conversations. These are Government Ministers, media tycoons and political fixers, all of whom you might expect need to keep a good grasp of things in order to do their jobs properly.

Of course, everybody forgets things occasionally so what might be of interest is relative forgetfulness. For example, David Cameron uttered 25,890 words and had 49 incidents of forgetfulness, a relative forgetfulness (RF) of 1.9 incidents per thousand words. This makes him one of the most forgetful witnesses. Only former journalist and spin doctor Andy Coulson (RF = 2.7) has a worse memory. Other major forgetters were James Murdoch (RF = 1.8), Rebekah Brooks (RF = 1.7), Colin Myler (RF = 1.7) and Rupert Murdoch (RF = 1.5).

Among the people with better memories were Jeremy Hunt (RF = 0.96) and Tony Blair (RF = 0.79) which probably makes Blair the most direct and straight-forward of the merry crew. And that was a sentence I never expected to write.