[BPSDB]This programme was a rerun of Jane Elliot’s famous experiment that demonstrated that “superiority” and “inferiority” of different groups is a social construct.

In brief: forty years ago, Elliot divided her class of (entirely white) schoolchildren into two groups based on eyecolour and then told them that blue-eyed children were inferior in every way to brown-eyed children. The children went along with this: the brown-eyed began looking down on the blue-eyed and, more significantly, the blue-eyed began doing less well in their schoolwork. Elliot did not set up a control group where the brown-eyed were deemed inferior. A pity, because if she had, and the brown-eyed in that group had begun to slide academically, this would have increased the strength of the thesis that the worth of a person cannot be deduced from a physical attribute and that any differences that do manifest are social constructs. Such an experiment will not be done now as it is rather unlikely that any ethics committee would pass it.

Nevertheless, Elliot made a valid point: the discrimination on the basis of eye-colour was purely arbitrary yet acting on it caused real problems for the blue-eyed. The obvious inference from this is that the arbitrary division of society by skin colour is going to result in the group deemed inferior not achieving as much and that this difference also is a social construct.

The experiment as shown on Channel 4 used 21st century British adults, not 1960s American schoolchildren. One might expect that this would have some effect on the way the victims experimental subjects reacted to the scenario but regretably, this does not seem to have occurred to Elliot, who was plainly thrown whenever anybody departed from the script she carried in her head.

She had a very aggressive attitude to the subjects (who, until the experiment started, had no idea what was going to happen; they had merely been told that it was a “social experiment”), particulary the blue-eyed. At first I assumed that she was merely acting her part but in the post “experiment” interview, she continued to exhibit the same attitude. Nastiness is obviously her default setting. When the groups were separated at the start, she explained to the brown-eyed how they were going to be the superior group. At this point, one young man stated that he had no wish to be an aggressor and requested to be transferred to the other group. To my mind, this suggested that modern adults are less likely to accept arbitrary authority than 1960s schoolchildren but it would appear that Elliot did not want to consider this. She had him thrown out of the study.

It became increasingly plain that Elliot had a preconceived notion: “whites are racist”. She kept banging on about whites needing to be shown what being on the receiving end of discrimination was like. Now I will admit that, as a white male in a white-majority society that is run by whites, I have no direct experience of discrimination and the same can be said of the white subjects. However, this is a long way from saying we are racist.

Ironically, Elliot appeared to be so focussed on ‘white equals racist’ that she missed evidence that supported the idea that priveleging one group arbitrarily can lead to discriminatory behaviour; possibly because the person exhibiting the behaviour was black.

Pearl, the black woman in question, said that whites “needed to be taught a lesson” – plainly feeling that the blue-eyed were responsible for racism she had experienced simply because they were white. Guilt by association. Blood guilt even. I’m so glad she’s not my boss.

At the end of the experiment, all subjects were given an intelligence test. Elliot plainly wanted to demonstrate that a priveleged group holding the levers of power will rig things to look like they deserve their priveleges. However, she did this very crudely by giving the brown-eyed the answers in advance. A woman in this group kicked up at this and pointed out that the results were meaningless as Elliot had cheated.

At this point Elliot truely demonstrated that she was no scientist. The objector was an experimental subject so her reactions were an outcome of the experiment. Elliot did not see it and castigated her for “preventing the group from learning anything”.

The conclusions I draw from the programme (which was no doubt carefully editted) was that if you privelege any group members of that group are going to oppress the non-priveleged (yes, Pearl, I am looking at you now) and that some people will object to injustice – even if they are beneficiaries of the injustice. Society has moved on at least a little in the last four decades. Elliot plainly has not.

[BPSDB]I previously wrote here on the Times OnLine’s slightly inaccurate description of the effect of ‘Health & Safety’ on school science practicals and illustrated my point with examples of supposedly banned experiments still performed at my school. One commenter pointed out that this was really just anecdotal evidence and countered with an anecdote of her own to the effect that practical work had decreased at the school attended by her daughters.

This is a very fair point. While it is a fact that a short discussion with a CLEAPSS or Health and Safety Executive staffer will confirm that the supposedly banned experiments are in fact perfectly legal, it is quite possible that some teachers have a misconceived idea as to what they are allowed to do (probably from reading shite articles in the press and on line). What the Times article does not tell us if this is how widespread the problem is – assuming it is in fact the case.

I emailed Professors John Holman and David Phillips to ask what evidence they had to say that practical work was being restricted. Phillips never bothered to reply but I did get a courteous reply from John Holman which, however, did not add to what had appeared in the article.

I emailed again, requesting a link to any evidence that he had and stated explicitly that I am a blogger and intended to blog on the matter. As yet, he has not replied. Draw your own conclusions as to why.

[BPSDB]As far as I can tell, David Herzog is an independeant evangelist but his methods seem to be taken from the same book as those of the UCKG.

Take the article which appeared in the Friday 16 October issue of the Evening Standard for instance. They quote an attendee at one of his events as saying “He put two big baskets at the altar to put money into, so you would have to walk to the front where everyone would see who gave and who didn’t.” Similarly, the UCKG require their faithful to place their “sacrifice” (preferably of a monetary nature) on the altar.

The attendee also quotes Herzog as saying that the more they gave the more God would deliver. Reminds me of the UCKG’s magazine “Faith in Action” which, as I have noted previously, pretty much says that if you hold out on God not only will miracles not be forthcoming but he will arrange for bad things to happen to you as well.

Lest either the UCKG or Herzog be deciding at this point to resort to Britain’s notoriously oppressive libel laws, let me repeat that I do not believe that there is any connection between them. I merely observe that the similarity in their methods offers an interesting insight ino the evangelist mindset.

Where the UCKG have their ‘demon summonings’, Herzog has instant miracles. At an event in Singapore, for example, one man claimed that he had just found a gold tooth in his mouth. We have only his word that it was not there before. Forgive me if I have my doubts. A woman claimed that she had just lost weight and held out her loose waistband as ‘proof’. We have no independant evidence that a large woman entered wearing her clothes as opposed to, say, a slim woman wearing oversized clothes.

A testimony on Herzog’s own website appears to condone dishonesty:-

Dear David and Stephanie Herzog,
Last year in 2008, you came to minister at a church in Wisconsin. A few of us rented a car to drive from Chicago to see you. Well, I had calculated how much money I had to save for the car rental and for gas. Just before going inside of the church, I had decided to give no more than $20.00. My first thought was to give $5.00 but all of that changed after the offering was being lifted. During this time a voice told me to give $50.00 out of all the money I had in my pocket, just $50.00. So when I took it out you said,” when you give, throw it up in the air and say I expect it to return double”. I did just that. About 2 weeks had gone by maybe a little longer, by then I had forgotten all about giving the $50.00. Well, I happened to be in a Walgreen’s store waiting in a somewhat long line. During this time waiting I was looking on the floor (something I always do). Nothing was on the floor at the time. I looked up because it was my turn to check out. Just as the person before me left I noticed under the counter on the floor what looked like a dollar. I was hopping nobody else saw it. As soon as I got closer I picked it up and saw it was $50.00 folded so I put it in my pocket. I said thank you JESUS. When I went to my car I took the money out of my pocket in folded the $50.00 bill and saw there was another $50.00 bill. (they were new bills) I sat there in shock and thanking GOD because I had newer found that much money before. Then I remembered the offering I was told to give and what you said to say while giving it. I thanked JESUS even more.

Be Blessed
Melita Warren

I am not sure what the legal position is in the States but in Britain Melita Warren would be guilty of “theft by finding”. Whatever the legal postion, it does not seem to occur to her that somebody in front of her in the queue dropped the money and now the poor sod is short of $100.

These dubious ‘miracles’ have the same purpose as the UCKG’s faux summonnings and exorcisms – to convince the faithful that the evangelist has God’s favour. One thing nobody seems to ask these people is where in the Bible does it say that God performs miracles in exchange for cash? Mine fails to mention it.

[BPSDB]Sometimes I think that the Press and I live in parallel universes. What else can explain the fact that they publish stuff as news that I know to be false? They even claim that stuff I do on a regular basis as part of my job as a school lab technician never actually happens.

Take this, the claim that interesting science experiments no longer happen in school laboratories because of misplaced health and safety fears:-

“The fear of burns, spillages and volatile reactions means that even mundane procedures such as distillation are often viewed online rather than performed in the laboratory. Professor John Holman, the Government’s chief adviser on science in schools, and Professor David Phillips, incoming president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, told The Times that it was vital for pupils to learn how to handle hazardous substances and to experiment.

The first sentence in the above paragraph is a fabrication. Distillation is done in the lab not viewed online at the school where I work and I have never heard of any school that does things differently. The Times does not place it in quotes which suggests that no-one other than the writer has used those exact words but note how it is immediately followed by naming Professor John Holman and Professor David Phillips and so implying it is they who have said it. Note to self. Find contact details for the Professors and ask them what they actually said.

Professor Holman, who is also director of the National Science Learning Centre, said trainee teachers spent too little time preparing exciting practicals. “There is much less practical work now because of a huge focus on exams,” he said. “Schools are so aware of health and safety — they will say, ‘That’s too dangerous’.

My own experience is that there is not less practical work. However I am aware that a sample size of 1 does not tell a great deal about the state of science education in the country as a whole. It is a pity Professor Holman does not supply any evidence at all for his assertion. And this from the Director of the National Science Learning Centre and the Government Chief Advisor on Science in Schools too. The statement that “schools are so aware of health and safety — they will say, ‘That’s too dangerous.’”, is, I am afraid to say, excrement of the male bovine. First, I do not see the problem with being aware of health and safety issues. Second, schools will rarely, if ever, say “that’s too dangerous” – they will say “Have you done a risk assessment and have you provided adequate personal protective equipment?”

The article then gives us some experiments the writer thinks are going to disappear:-

“Experiments at risk

Ammonium dichromate volcano Make a pile of ammonium dichromate and set the tip alight using a magnesium fuse. The result is a tiny volcano, complete with ash, steam and nitrogen gas

The thermite reaction Mix metal powder with metal-oxide to create thermite and set it alight. The mix will burn at an exceptionally high temperature

Potassium in water The classic school experiment. Drop potassium into water and it reacts violently, making hydrogen, which then ignites in a small fireball”

I’ve never set up the first of the above three but the other two are regulars in our department. I have never had any indications from CLEAPSS (the school science safety advisory service) that there is any suggestion that these experiments be banned.

Teachers still devise their own demonstrations too. Our head of chemistry has come up with an excellent one that presumably does not happen in the Times’s parallel universe. A small candle is placed in a copper calorimeter and heated over a bunsen burner. The wax melts and starts burning. You then tape a small beaker to the end of a metre rule, half fill it with water then, holding the other end of the metre rule, tip the water into the burning wax. The result is a jet of flame that reaches the ceiling. An excelent demonstration as to why trying to put out chip-pan fires with water is a really bad idea. Figuring out what has happened is a good excercise for the students, too.

I left a comment on the Times article on Tuesday evening saying briefly that school science still includes interesting experiments and perhaps they should talk to people who work in science education before they publish stories such as this. Strangely, it has not yet appeared. They have allowed plenty of comments slagging off Labour/Liberals/bureaucrats/socialists however and saying how terrible excessive regulation is.

Clearly, this excessive regulation of school science is a figment of the Murdoch Empire’s imagination but it fits into the meme of “Health & Safety gone mad” which is so beloved by the Tories. By convincing the electorate that health and safety regulations are far more restrictive than is actually the case and they will be more accepting in cuts in real safety legislation on the grounds of “making a bonfire of red tape” or “allowing Britain to be competitive”. Light touch regulation of the finance sector for competitive reasons used to be a mantra too. Need I remind you how well that turned out?

[BPSDB]
This post also appears on Lay Science.

Lord Drayson seems convinced that the media has learned the relevent lessons over the MMR debacle. At a conference of science journalists on 1 July he told delegates that lessons had been learned since MMR and repeats the assertion during a debate with Ben Goldacre here. Is he right to be so confident?

First off, he is praising science journalists and as Ben points out both in this debate and elsewhere, most of the serious scaremongering was not written by specialist science and health journalists but by general reporters.

Second, less than a week after the conference , we have this story in the Daily Express which continues to stoke fears of the MMR vaccine.

The headline reads:

Doctor’s MMR Fears”

and the first sentence informs us that there are “Fresh fears for the safety of MMR vaccinations”. And this is by the Express’s Health reporter, Lucy Johnston.

We also have another way of testing Drayson’s hypothesis. Over recent months the NHS has rolled out the HPV vaccine. The HP virus causes 70% of cervical cancers. Cervical cancer, despite screening, kills about one thousand women per year, its most famous victim this year was ‘reality’ star Jade Goody. This vaccine could thus save about 700 women per year. How have the press greeted this?

With scare-mongering. As I pointed out here, the Mail bigged up minor side effects and referred to the vaccine as the ‘promiscuity jab’. The HP virus is sexually transmitted and social conservatives, such as the readers and writers of the Mail, believe that removing the fear of disease and death will encourage teenagers to have sex. There is not a shred of evidence to support this notion and since teenagers have been having illicit sex since time immemorial it is clear that the prospect of disease and death does not discourage them. Teenagers believe that they are immortal and that bad shit happens to other people. As anyone who has a teenager knows, they rarely think about consequences at all. In other words, if they are contemplating sex then the HPV vaccination status of the girl concerned will not enter ino their thinking.

And of course when Natalie Morton died a few hours after receiving the vaccination they went to town and published a scare-mongering rant which relied heavily on quotes from Jackie Fletcher of JABS. When the post-mortem revealed that Natalie had in fact died of a chest tumour the on-line version of this article was extensively rewritten but the Mail did not formally retract their previous statements or indeed acknowledge their rewriting of history. One is reminded of the scene in 1984 where Winston Smith rewrites archives to remove stories that the powers that be find inconvenient.

Furthermore, they still quote Richard Halvorsen here saying that her death calls into question the vaccination program even though her death is not vaccine related.

The Express is even worse: in one headline it refers to the “cancer jab horror”, see here. Martin Robbins refers to this in a twitter exchange with Drayson:

mjrobbins:Is this what Lord Drayson meant by lessons learned? “PARENTS’ REVOLT AFTER GIRL DIES IN CANCER JAB HORROR”

lorddrayson:Frankly? Yes. It says “most unlikely that the HPV vaccine is the cause of death”

In today’s Sunday Express Lucy Johnston claims that the vaccine is as deadly as the cancer it is intended to prevent. Really? Deaths that will be prevented by the vaccine = 700 per year; deaths caused by the vaccine so far = 0. Johnston’s claim is totally without foundation.

Drayson seems to think that a reference to the Government/NHS “insisting” that the vaccine is safe makes stories such as these ok. I find this attitude surprisingly naive for any adult, let alone one who has been a businessman and is now a Government Minister. Whenever the tabloids refer to this government “insistance” they never give the reasons for it. When this “insistance” is referred to after references to alleged side-effects of the vaccine, “insists” becomes a very emotionally-loaded term. What it means in this context is “keeps repeating despite our evidence”. This is doubtless intentional because it suits these nespapers’ real agenda which is to bash the Government.

Lest you think that I am exaggerating here, let me remind you of Martin Robbins’ discovery that the Irish edition of the Daily Mail is attacking the Irish Government for not rolling out the HPV vaccine. Clearly they do not believe what they are writing. If they want to knock the Government, that is their choice in a free society. It should not be open to them to achieve this aim by telling lies that, if believed, will kill hundreds of people per year.

Lessons learned? Regrettably, I think not.

[BPSDB]I have previously covered the Daily Mail’s attempts to whip up fear over the HPV vaccine. When Natalie Morton tragically died shortly after receiving this vaccine, certain elements in the antivaxx movement must have thought Christmas had come early.

The Daily Mail led the charge with an appalling piece by David Martin which linked the vaccine and her death and gave huge prominence to Jackie Fletcher of JABS.

It turns out that Natalie Morton had a chest tumour and it would appear that it was this that killed her. Have the Daily Mail issued a retraction? Of course not. Instead they have quietly edited the article, Ministry of Truth style, to remove the extensive rehash of the JABS line and generally pretend they never said what they said – the current incarnation is here.

They follow up with this which continues to scare-monger by claiming the vaccine is a “mass experiment”. It prominently links to another of their articles in which Richard Halvorsen says:-

“the sudden death of Coventry schoolgirl Natalie Morton after a jab against cervical cancer highlights the reality that the vaccination programmes are not without their risks.”

So the Mail continues to give the impression that Natalie Morton’s death was caused by the vaccine despite the fact that it is becoming clear that she died of other causes? Why?

A clue might be found in the fact that the Mail frequently refers to the vaccine as the “promiscuity jab” – claiming that by eliminating one of the risks associated with sexual activity, teenage girls will be encouraged to have sex. The Mail disapproves of sex outside marriage and evidently wish it to potentially carry the death penalty. According to Halvorsen “only” 911 women per year die of cervical cancer. This vaccine would prevent 70% of them: 638 deaths per year. If the Mail get ther way and succeed in getting this vaccine banned, over a human lifetime they will be resposible for close to 50,000 needless deaths. Not something I’d want on my conscience.

[BPSDB]We all know that homeopaths sell their marks patients sugar or water and claimm it contains the mystical memory of magical medicine. One Dr Batmanghelidj goes one step further and claims that water itself is a panacea. He is interviewed by Mike Adams, the self-styled “Health Ranger” here.

Batmangheldi promulgates the same myth as that beloved of the bottled water companies – that we must drink water regularly because we are unable to tell when we need it:-

“…from the age of 20 onwards, we gradually, imperceptibly become dehydrated without knowing it. We lose our perception of thirst. By the age of 70 we may be totally thirsty and obviously thirsty and yet not recognize the need to drink water, even when water is put next to us.

This was done as an experiment. A scientist asked a group of elderly people to withhold from drinking water for 24 hours, and similarly with young people. After 24 hours when water was made available, the elderly did not recognize that they were thirsty.”

This sounds fascinating, especially as one would have thought that several hundred million years of evolution would have weeded out animals that did not drink when they were thirsty and needed water. Unfortunately no references are given for this experiment. Not even the name of the scientist is given.

Elsewhere in the interview Adams says, regarding diuretics:-

“Isn’t this an example of the arrogance of modern medicine in believing that it knows more than nature, it knows more than the body?

Which rather contradicts Batmangheldi’s assertion that the body is unable to let us know when we need water but neither he nor Adams seem aware of this. For someone who claimed to be a qualified medical docor, Batmangheldi’s grasp of basic science was a little shaky:-

We should not wait to get thirsty, because water is the main source of energy. By the time you get thirsty, you will have lost energy from the water that you should have drunk and made available before you get thirsty. So, if you don’t allow the gas tank of your car to come dry before you stop and take some gas, then why should you let your body become thirsty so that it stalls on the roadside before you drink water?

Water is most certainly not a source of energy. Your body actually gets energy from oxidising sugars and fats. It is rather difficult to oxidise water.

According to Dr B, just about any kind of pain is caused by localised dehydration:-

“The human body also has its emergency calls for water. These are localized emergency calls. We call these heartburn, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, migraine headaches, colitis pain, fibromyalgiac pain, even angina pain — signs of dehydration in the body.

And the mechanism is very simple — when there isn’t enough water to be evenly distributed and certain parts of the body are working but not receiving enough water to deal with its toxic waste and metabolism, and the toxic waste builds up that area, the nerve endings in that area register the chemical environmental change with the brain. And the brain translates this information for the conscious mind in the form of pain.”

Localised dehydration does not happen, the process of osmosis ensures that water remains evenly distributed throughout the body. This misinformation is quite dangerous – it would be rather unwise of an angina sufferer to believe she could cure herself with a drink of water.

From pig-ignorance Dr B. quickly moves on to even more dangerous nonsense, claiming that AIDS is not caused by HIV infection. He describes this as “a fraudulent statement by those people who presented it”. He further ‘explains’:-

“the human body is the product of many, many years of having fought various viral diseases, and has survived. Smallpox, polio, measles, and all the other viruses that can kill very easily, and the body has an ability to mount a defense system against these hot viruses, viruses that actually very quickly can kill. But having survived those, how is it possible that the slow virus would kill us in the name of AIDS? I can’t understand it.”

What can you say about this pseudo-scientific gibberish? First he is arguing from personal incredulity. In his view the fact that he does not understand something and therefore does not believe it is proof that it is not true. Second he is arguing that because people sometimes recover from smallpox and other fast acting viral diseases, AIDS cannot be a viral killer as it acts slowly. Apart from the fact that immunity from one disease does not grant immunity to a totally dissimilar one, AIDS actully ‘kills’ by weakening the immune system so that the sufferer falls prey to opportunistic infections and it is these which actually kill. Dr B rejects the knowledge acquired over the past twenty years in favour of his own notion that dehydration prevents essential amino acids getting to the bodies cells and so the body cannibalises itself.

Dr B thinks that many other diseaes such as cancer and depression are also caused by dehydration and offers no more evidence than he does for his AIDS denialism, other than to say that Big Pharma is making gigabucks from selling drugs so are “suppressing” the fact that water is such a wonderful cure-all. The obvious answer to this is that while it may be true that privately run health care systems – such as that of the US, may thrive on keeping treatments as expensive as possible, state-run health care systems such as Britain’s National Health Service would happlily reduce their pharmaceutical bills by treating patients with water – if it worked.

[BPSDB]In a debate about Greenpeace’s alleged predeliction for, shall we say, embellishing facts over on Bad Science, attention was drawn to this. Greenpeace oppose fusion research and think that the money being spent on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) would be better spent on renewable energy. That is their right but they do not help their case here.

First off, they are right to say that fusion is not going to be the solution to climate change. A commercial fusion powerplant is decades away (Cynics sometimes say we are 40 years from commercial fusion – and always will be) but we need to limit carbon dioxide emissions now. Having said that, if fusion research pays off then there will be enough energy to maintain an advanced industrial civilisation for everybody for literally millions of years. Greenpeace’s statement that it will lead to a dead end is a statement of faith not scientific fact. Research is being done because nobody knows whether fusion is viable or not.

The press release then says:

“Today, the nuclear industry presents itself as the solution to climate change in a massive green-washing drive. Far from being a solution, the nuclear option stalls real action to combat dangerous climate change. It is taking away the money for real solutions that are ready and economically available at a large scale, such as wind energy.”

The nuclear industry runs fission plants which Greenpeace oppose of course. Here they conflate commercial fission plants with ITER. I cannot be certain as to why but people who know little physics might be fooled into thinking fission and ITER are pretty much the same thing.

Greenpeace appear to be ignoring the fact that our energy has to be supplied from somewhere. Their spokesperson Jan Van de Putte talks of renewables but they will simply not be enough. Domestic solar panels and wind generators are becoming increasingly common and do indeed reduce ones demands on the National Grid but they do not reduce the demand to zero. So even if we all lived in houses fitted with solar panels and windmills, we would still require commercially produced electricity. And that is just for domestic use. Add in industrial needs and the requirement increases yet further. Van de Putte talks blithely of renewables but the wind farms and solar panels needed to deliver all our electricity needs would cover an enormous area. Already NIMBYs are opposing the building of wind farms. So for the time being, we are going to need fission reactors.

The release then goes on to say:-

“Fusion energy – if it would ever operate – would create a serious waste problem, would emit large amounts of radioactive material and could be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons.”

I really do not know to what “serious waste problem” they refer. Now it is true that if a reactor uses deuterium-tritium fusion then there will be a lot of neutrons flying about and they will make the reactor vessel radioactive over time. However, Greenpeace refer to the emission of radioactve material which implies gaseous waste. The end product of fusion is helium which is not the slightest bit radioactive. Tritium is indeed a radioactive gas but since it iwill be a fuel in this kind of reactor one presumes the operators will not be too keen on their plants emitting any.

As for producing materials for nuclear weapons, I suppose the reactors could be surrounded with uranium so that the fusion neutrons will produce plutonium but frankly the military will find it easier to continue to produce plutonium in breeder reactors. Tritium and deuterium can be used in fusion bombs but deuterium is obtained by electrolising heavy water and tritium is currently produced without the need for fusion reactors.

If Greenpeace are serious about tackling climate change, they would do well to refrain from issuing press releases that contain factoids that the reasonably well informed can spot as nonsense. By doing so, they risk turning the undecided against them and actually damaging the environmental cause.

[BPSDB]The pill-pushers over at naturalnews are now telling us how wonderful strontium supplements are. This is a classical illustration of why you should not take health advice from supplement fans.

In her paean to the wonderfulness of strontium Melanie Grimes (apparantly an adjunct faculty member at Bastyr University. She’s also a homeopath – quite why she’s pushing supplements is not clear. I would have thought that they are dangerously allopathic.) claims that there are “no known side effects” of this supplement. She obviously has not done much research because according to Wikipedia “The most common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, headache and eczema, but with only 2–4% increase compared with placebo group”. While this suggests that the side effects are not a major problem, clearly it is still a long way from having “no known side effects”.

As well as the above, the net doctor website adds
Blood clots in the blood vessels (venous thromboembolism, eg deep vein thrombosis).
Fainting.
Memory loss.
Seizures.
Vomiting.
Sore mouth.
Abdominal pain.
Allergic reactions.

This site also points out that strontium ranelate is used for treating osteoporosis in post-menopausal women and should not be used by children, pregnant or breastfeeding women, people with severely decreased kidney function or those who have previously shown an allergic reaction to it. Grimes neglects to mention any of this.

She also fails to mention that the effectiveness of the medicine may be reduced if calcium supplements, mulivitamins or other medicines containing calcium are taken from two hours before to two hours after taking strontium ranelate. Would it be terribly patronising to say that anybody who takes health advice from naturalnews.com is likely to be taking these supplements?

Nor does she mention that this medicine may also reduce the absorption of tetracycline antibiotics. This will of course make them less effective and help breed resistant strains of bacteria, making the diseases harder to treat. This will feed into the nutritionistas and homeopaths notions that antibiotics don’t work but I thought it was supposed to be Big Pharma who sold drugs to make us sicker?

[BPSDB]It is clearly time for scare stories about microwave radiation again. The “Body Matters” pages in the Monday 7 September issue (paper edition only. Not online for some reason) of the METRO carried a story by Yanar Alkayat headed “The hidden dangers in your pocket“. If that is not scary enough, alongside it is an X-ray photograph of someone using a mobile phone. The unspoken implication is that microwaves have similar effects to X rays, which is nonsense.

I strongly suspect that the picture has been photoshopped. The phone hides the bones of the hand holding it, meaning the user is pointing it away from his/her ear – a rather strange way to use a phone.

Things do not get better when you get to the text of the story. It claims that Wi-Fi is “on every street corner” which is not true but does give the impression that we are being bathed in microwave radiation wherever we go.. The second paragraph quotes Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch (for which a web address is given), which is described as “an independent organisation researching electromagnetic fields and health”. Many people will interpret “independent” as “unbiased” or “lacking a commercial interest” which is not the case here as the power watch website links to an online store selling stuff to protect you from “electrosmog”.

The story treats electromagnetic hypersensitivity as proven fact, which is far from being the case. Let me be quite clear, I am not disputing that people claiming to be electrosensitive genuinely have the symptoms they describe. I am disputing that they are caused by microwaves. In a provocation experiment shown on Panorama a while back, a woman claiming to be so electrosensitive that she had to sleep in an aluminium-foil lined room could only correctly say whether a source of microwaves was on or off two times out of three – quite possibly little more than chance.

A side-bar claims, amongst other things, that Sweden recognises electromagnetic sensitivity as a medical condition. Not strictly true – the Swedish health authorities recognise that the symptoms sufferers describe are genuine (and so pays benefits to those unable to work) but to the best of my knowledge does not accept that microwaves are the cause.

It is claimed that “long term exposure [to mobile phone radiation] has been linked to male infertility and sperm quality”. We are not told who has made this link nor where the evidence has been published. No medical paper is cited – not even a web address is given. The same applies to the claim that microwaves can cause DNA and cellular changes at levels below the limits set by the International Commission for Non-ionising Radiation Proterction.

Note the existance of the above body and the limits it sets because a few lines later Alkayat is claiming that “The effect of Wi-Fi on our health has never been tested or regulated”. What are exposure limits if not regulations? The canard of non-regulation leads into Philips warning us that “this constant soup of radiation could be making us unwell”. Note the use of the word “could” – I rather think that this means he has no actual evidence but then there is no evidence that this constant soup of radiation exists either.

If your mobile phone wasn’t enough to scare you we are told that “several studies from Russia and Japan have found a significant decrease in vitamins B, C and E, as well as essential minerals, in foods cooked in the microwave. In one study broccoli lost 97 percent of its antioxidants.” Again, no references or links are given. Any form of cooking, be it microwaving or traditional heating, will denature organic compounds like vitamins to some extent. I would love to know the mechanism by which minerals (which are simple salts for the most part) are leeched out by microwaving.

We are then told that cordless landline phones could also be affecting our health because they operate on a “similar” frequency to mobile phones . Actually it is ten percent lower. However we can avoid these dangers by purchasing a low-radiation device. Funnily enough the price (£79.99), name of suppliers (Orchid) and their web address (www.lowradiation.co.uk) are given.

In the final paragraph we are told that baby monitors also “shockingly” operate on a “similar” frequency. This would only be shocking if phone microwaves were dangerous but the evidence we have is that this is not the case.

In short, this story is full of sly implications and at least one outright lie. No references or links are given for the studies which allegedly demonstrate the dangers of microwaves. The only links we are given are for supplies of devices that will allegedly protect us from these dangers. You can draw your own conclusions from this; with Britain’s oppressive libel laws in mind, I refuse to draw any.