Ben Goldacre - Bad Science

Review by Malcolm Martland on show 1st October 2009
This book is one in the same vein as John Diamond’s Snake Oil and Phil Hammond’s Trust Me I’m a Doctor – but even although the author is a medical doctor he does expand his comments to more than just medicine. Ben Goldacre writes a column every Saturday in the Guardian which is where I first came across him.

I have to say it does help having a scientific and medical background but some of the advertising myths and errors we are subjected to in the media affect us all. Cosmetic advertising for a start – face creams and shampoos with trillium or ceramide for example – some claiming to have action supported by clinical trials or scientific tests – but the advertising is often misleading and refers not to the shampoo preparation in question. Basically a lot of the advertising is just commercial enticement – the products Andy McDowell promotes certainly don’t hide her crows feet!

He discusses the “Brain Gym” and while agreeing that mind exercises can help improve your mental agility there is also a cluster of rubbish that goes with it – like preparing for a session by “holding water in your mouth so that it can be absorbed directly into your brain” well that is new physiology to me – OK there may be very slight absorption of some fluids by the buccal cavity but I always thought fluids were mainly absorbed by the stomach and intestines – but who am I to judge.

The there is the old chestnut homeopathy – here there is no science just bunkum – and I’m not sorry if I offend anyone who thinks it is OK – they are delusional - tales of its success are anecdotal, clinical trials are flawed or just simply negative. The principle – if there is one - is that substances that cause symptoms similar to the disease if sufficiently diluted in water – many hundreds of times can be used to treat individuals with those symptoms. The dilutions are measured for example as 300C for something that has been diluted 1:100 three hundred times. The way each dilution is made is called a succussion. Apparently the water molecules memorise the shape of the original compound – bit like a peanut remembering the shape of your settee.

Ben Goldacre got into trouble with: “How does a water molecule know to forget every other mole¬cule it's seen before? How does it know to treat my bruise with its memory of arnica, rather than a memory of Isaac Asimov's faeces? I wrote this in the newspaper once, and a homeopath complained to the Press Complaints Commission. It's not about the dilution, he said: it's the succussion. You have to bang the flask of water briskly ten times on a leather and horsehair surface, and that's what makes the water remember a molecule. Because I did not mention this, he explained, I had deliberately made homeopaths sound stupid. This is another universe of fool¬ishness.”

But to be fair he does agree that part of the holistic approach of some homeopaths may benefit some – spending time discussing the patient’s problem, sharing their worries and giving sensible advice is beneficial in itself irrespective of the actual mediation employed.
He discusses the myths promoted by some nutritionist – the nonsense du jour - he calls it. Super foods, detox and so on – he comments that if he’s had a few late nights and too much booze he takes it easy for a couple of days, eat salads and avoids alcohol for a couple of days – but a celebrities would call the same procedure detox. The human body is the most amazing metabolic factory that detoxifies so many complex substances that using the term detox for a simple diet is just an insult. He does say: “If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you'd know it all already. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don't drink too much, don't smoke, and don't get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health.”

There is even a whole chapter devoted to Dr Gillian McKieth PhD. We’ve probably all watched her show with victims having the products of their colonic irrigation broadcast to the entire nation. Well I have to be careful here because apparently she is quite litigious – but first she is not a medical doctor, second Ben Goldacre unmasks her qualifications as bought from a correspondence college. I don’t want to get too deep into this but read the book he trashes her techniques and products far better than I could – or would dare.

I do like the way he challenges the lack of statistics – or maybe the bad statistics – employed by celebs. who quote what they want without any scientific backup – sometimes they just lie. We see this all the time on the TV – a few weeks ago on Breakfast I saw someone saying caffeine was no longer a diuretic – she was unchallenged – I couldn’t believe it. We should always question what we hear on TV and read in magazines – an awful lot of it is just hogwash.

A salutary read, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

Malcolm Martland 1st October 2009