INTERESTING TIMES

 On Monday October 14 I attended what was advertised as a movie about homeopathy.  It was listed in the email that goes out to all staff, faculty and students at NUNM, the National University of Natural Medicine.  I was one of two staff present, the other one being there because she was required to for her job.

I attended this event because I am writing a book about homeopathy, or rather about the culture and psychology that surrounds it.  I am not a believer.  The people who at the event made the assumption that I was, and I made no effort to dissuade them.  I presume that NUNM hosts these events because Boiron donates money, but I could be wrong.

The man who greeted me at the event was the same man I had called to RSVP.  He was nice enough but he had terrible breath and I had to steel myself not to take several steps back whenever he spoke.  He also had a huge pot belly.  When I walked in the door he was telling his own conversion story, about how 30 years ago he'd been sick and had exhausted all the options given by conventional medicine.  Then he'd tried homeopathy and gotten better, and he had never looked back.  It is this kind of uncritical conversion story that gets repeated ad nauseum by homeopathy believers.  I believe they need to repeat it, to hear themselves repeating it, to maintain their belief.  His breath turned my stomach and his story gave me no reason to respect his critical thinking prowess, so I escaped as quickly as possible, but not before I learned that he is a rep for Boiron, one of apparently just two for the entire west coast.  The other rep was also present and made no better representation of the health that can be attained by way of homeopathy.  She engaged me in conversation for a little while, marketing her ND practice in PDX and eating M&M's one by one.  If this is the best Boiron can do for reps they are definitely going down.

They were giving away free pizza and the host had asked me on the telephone what my favorite kind of pizza was.  I answered jalapeno and anchovy, but when I got there my favorite was not.  Apparently the restaurant did not have anchovies and only jar jalapenos though fresh are easily available.  All but one of the huge stack of pizzas were gluten free, however.  I suppose they think that all naturopaths avoid gluten.

The talk that came before the movie was supposed to be a summary of the regulatory status of homeopathy in the US, but really it was an advertisement for Boiron.  The focus was on Boiron's efforts to influence the FDA's position, on a great personal connection that Boiron has in the FDA, and on how the FDA regs don't really stop the sale of homeopathy.  I was somewhat irritable because being in the supplement business I know a little bit about how the FDA has impacted OUR sales of homeopathics, and the Boiron rep was clearly ignorant of that situation.  We've discontinued all sales of LM's (compounded liquid homeopathics),  remedies made from DEA-regulated drugs (opium, etc), and nosodes (remedies made from diseased material, like medorrhinum).  These changes have been in response to shifts in the FDA's stance. 

There was also angry mention of the Australian analysis of everything known about homeopathy which resulted in them dropping it from their publicly funded healthcare program.  They decided it was not effective for treating any condition.  France and other countries have dropped homeopathy from public funding due to lack of evidence, but the speaker at this event insisted that the Australian assessment was biased and wrong and would be reversed.  Yeah, right.

I learned little from this presentation but I did eat some pizza.  It was OK.

More interesting than the update about regulation was the bit that they said about the "grant" that Boiron had provided to the CEDH (Center for Education and Development of Clinical Homeopathy) to start a "Clinical Homeopathy" program, with the subtitle "Integrate Homeopathy Into Your Daily Practice".  It isn't really a grant, it is an expenditure on a marketing effort intended to brainwash more people into believing.  The CEDH exists to separate the name Boiron from the "educational" program. 

In the first "module" of the 4-part educational program they have 22 students enrolled, most of whom are NUNM students.  This makes sense as a lot of people enter naturopathic school already sure about homeopathy and intending to use it.  It also makes sense because shifts in the ND curriculum have removed all five of the homeopathy classes that I was required to take, and instruction in homeopathy is supposed to be blended in with the subject matter in "blocks" that address organ systems one at a time.  According to the students the majority of professors are not teaching much, if any homeopathy, and yet homeopathy is still on the ND clinical board exams.  The students are panicked about the exams and seeking training in homeopathy outside of the NUNM ND curriculum.  Boiron and the CEDH are taking advantage of this situation to secure their future market.

After the talking they finally started the movie, a good hour after the email had said it would begin.  Entitled Magic Pills, the movie is another brainwashing effort along the lines of Just One Drop.  This one attempts to directly address all the complaints that skeptics have about homeopathy, talking about confirmation bias as a reason that scientists won't even consider homeopathy, and repeating the usual homeopathy hypnotic anchor of "it works" (kind of like "build a wall" for Trump).  They also expressed quite a bit of anger at moles such as myself who do not believe but show up to their events and practices wanting to gain information to undermine their efforts.

From my perspective Magic Pills was a weaker piece of brainwashing than Just One Drop but the believers in the scant audience were nodding along.  The use of the title was an effort to take one of the phrases used by skeptics and turn it into a hypnotic anchor for the believers.  I was keeping a tally of all the mentions of "it works", all the testimonials by lay people, medical professionals and PhD's, and all the conversion stories.  These are the standard approaches of homeopaths in getting people to believe.  In the future it might be worth tracking "magic pills" references.  Skeptics should be aware that believers may have been brainwashed to specifically resist the terms that they are using.  Repetition is one of the essential tools of hypnosis/brainwashing.  I had to leave before the end which could be have been more powerful than the anti-skeptic lead-in, but I confess I did not regret leaving.  I had to take a shower when I got home.

He spoke tonight at Portland State University, sponsored by the Oregonians for Science and Reason.  The popular assumptions he challenged were the idea that fish fall from the sky because of waterspouts, swamp gasses cause lamplike lights, prevalent anti-government conspiracy theories,  the reliability of polygraph testing and the Myers Briggs personality inventory, the Rohrshach ink blot test, the idea that we repress memories and that vitamin C helps wihta cold, the usefulness of alternative medicine, the use of dowsing rods in Iraq to detect bombs, the dangers of nuclear meltdowns, and the origins of the Yeti.  In general I agreed with him but I found his take to be simplistic.  He says a lot of things that I don't believe, and is clearly quite biased.  Don't listen to anyone, including Brian Dunning: do your own damn homework.

I understand that it is necessary to study up on things, figure out where your position must be, and then to move forward.  I do it too. Sometimes things require re-study.  Sometimes new information intrudes and require that the thoughtful person apply critical thinking a second time to update their opinions.  This is where he appears to fall short.  He is so busy producing a weekly podcast that he can't be bothered to rethink anything, he has to keep moving.  He has a fine radio voice though, and 200,000K podcast subscribers if I am to believe what I am told.

Mind you, his science background is that of a computer scientist.  That lady who wrote that pro-homeopathy book that is so popular at NUNM was also a computer scientist.  I just want to say that a computer scientist is NOT A SCIENTIST.  A computer scientist is a programmer, a person who is good at the most basic kind of logic.  Logic is not science.  Science involves the scientific method, and requires a whole different level of neutralization of all our natural cognitive biases than simply applying logic to make a program do what it is supposed to do.  I'm getting pretty tired of being lectured to about science by so-called computer scientists.

I think my biggest beef with Dunning is his simplistic take on medicine.  His opinion jives with all of that in the skeptical world which is that "alternative medicine has failed all tests" and that is why we call it alternative, and by extension I presume that he means that conventional medicine has passed all tests.  This is utter nonsense.  It is obvious that there is plenty of evidence that has bearing on human health that has not been integrated by conventional medicine, and that there is plenty of conventional medicine that is based on outdated notions that were never very scientific to start with.  His worship of MD's and disparagement of herbs is an indication of his ignorance about medicine.

Then I had the bad luck to sit down between a retired MD and a retired nurse for a drink after the talk.  The MD told me about his Catholic upbringing and his X many years in the "skeptical community".  He asked me about vaccines and I told him I didn't agree with the ACIP schedule.   Then he told me about his N=1 experience of getting hep B (because he was not vaccinated) and what a bad experience that was.  I would have vaccinated him because he was a doctor working with needles but somehow he didn't get that done and had to learn the hard way. The RN told me that there is "science" that backs up the use of vaccines and that there is nothing I can say that will change her opinion in the least.  There was ZERO opportunity to have a nuanced discussion about where we do and do not have evidence, which vaccines are effective and which are not, how we can obtain the best herd immunity when it really matters, and how we can protect the people most at risk, because they thought that I am a vaccine denier before I even said a word, based on the fact that I have an ND degree and license.  These people, Dunning included, congratulate themselves on their critical thinking because they have debunked some popular assumptions for themselves, and then they take it no farther.

The truth is complex.  Medicine is a work in progress.  If we can take it to the level of talking about actual science, individual findings and studies about vaccines or vitamin C, then we will be able to talk.  If we can talk, discuss new findings and figure out what to study next, we might be able to devise studies to answer the new questions and eventually to refine our evaluation and treatment approaches.  If we can change those based on evidence, we can most likely improve outcomes.

I have HAD IT with being told that "the science says" WHATEVER by people who never actually read a study. Heck, they don't even read the abstracts or the summaries, they just parrot what they are told.  It's like "Simon Says" more than science.  Have you read a study about that in the last year?  In the last decade??  Have you taken a CE course about vaccines?  Or have you just lived inside that same damn bubble for the last 40 years. All you know is the news headlines, that vaccination rates are down and measles outbreaks are increasing? At least there's a little current events knowledge. That MD and that RN have worked in the field long enough to be brainwashed beyond any chance of critical thinking or new learning.  Now they are retired and they don't even study on it any more. They just know what they know.

This is the problem.  Medical professionals, and Dunning, your blind spots are getting bigger with each new study that comes out.  And all you who think you know the truth about vaccines; how about read up on it a little bit rather than assuming that everyone who disagrees with conventional practice is an idiot.  If we can't disagree and talk about it, then it will never get better.

Foresight isn't
a mysterious gift bestowed at birth.
It is the product of particular ways of thinking,
of gathering information,
of updating beliefs.
These habits of thought can be learned and cultivated
by any intelligent, thoughtful,
determined person.
--Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner on page 18 in
Superforecasting; the Art and Science of Prediction

Here's the article and poll in the BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3735
( Thoughts )

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.
-—Isaac Asimov

This is pretty cool: http://skepdic.com

In case you were taken by the idea of the Law of Attraction, and thought you could keep yourself from suffering or dying of cancer by keeping your thoughts pure----here's what happened to the writer who popularized this concept: http://www.squidoo.com/death-of-abraham-hicks-esther-and-jerry-hicks-creation.

In the process of googling various symbols that might be developed into a logo for my medical practice (I was studying on the rod of Aesclepius vs the rampant American confusion with the Caduceus) I ran across a blog that is distinctly American right wing Christian conservative in nature. The image that drew me in was this so-called "Obama Screw-U", which is derived from the Caduceus symbolizing treachery and profiteering:


That was humorous, but not exactly fair or kind. After a bit more surfing I found an article on Leftwing Pathology that posits that left wingers are essentially psychopathic. I will bypass the commentary on this page because in general it is name calling and not productive. But I do see how this is completely true from the conservative perspective.

Conservatism, most basically, is a limbic or mammalian mindedness emphasizing deep emotional connections, visceral aversions, and a strong instinctive sense of rightness vs wrongness. Liberalism is neocortical, involving the ability to weigh conflicting theories and integrate disparate data. To conservatives, liberals are immoral, or even psychopathic because they don't act from their hearts and guts. Liberals think about it, and make decisions based on information. The liberal method doesn't appreciate the power of people's personal attachments and belief systems. It hurts people's feelings. To the liberal, conservatives are dimwits who can't think rationally about anything. Of course the conservatives feel that they are the rational ones, they just consider different things to constitute "information".

It's about as bad as trying to get Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other.

Conservatives feel a great deal more emotional pain when they are asked to act contrary to their own values. Liberals are expert at rationalizing--or neocorticalizing, if you will. Liberals are capable of acting more like a psychopath and being indifferent to pain both inside and around them.

But there's a spectrum. Some people are nearer the middle between emotional/instinctive/believing and intellectual/rationalizing/skeptical. Some can see both sides. Our limbic systems are intact and we can love deeply and hold values that matter, at the same time that our neocortices are developed enough to see that sometimes fairness that hurts is better in the long run than unfairness that feels safe and good. Maybe we could spend a little more time and energy trying to understand and be human to each other. We may not be able to develop policy that satisfies the deeply held attachments of conservatives, but we can at least acknowledge when the situation calls for deeply painful compromise, and try to be kind. The liberal who can't understand conservatives is more foolish than the conservative that can't understand liberals.