Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
This is a book we could probably all do with reading, as a starting point for working out how accurate the science and health news ineptly fed to us by the media is. Ben Goldacre is a British medical doctor and science journalist. He has a weekly 'Bad Science' column worth reading in the Guardian newspaper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience. Recent articles include "Why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the overwhelming majority of scientists do?" (a constant frustration of mine).
Bad Science begins by poking fun at alternative therapies. For example, Aqua Detox is a 'detox' footbath which has been promoted by journalists in British newspapers including the Mirror, the Sunday Times and GQ magazine. The company claims on its website that "the Aqua DetoxTM system does detoxify the body and all the organs of the body, as well as re-balancing and re-energizing the body". The customer places their feet in the footbath, which has a small amount of salt added in an ionising unit to create positive sodium and negative chloride ions. The company's theory is that their body will absorb the ions and "a natural rebalancing of the cells in the body will take place" and attract toxins, which are then released in the footbath. After a while the water begins to turn a browny colour, supposedly due to all the toxins being released.
Goldacre points out that the company conveniently does not identify which toxins these are. They are just wonderfully vague and unmeasurable "toxins". Goldacre had an Aqua Detox treatment and took a sample of the water afterwards, which he then had tested in a lab. The only substance found in the water was lots of rusty iron. The water goes brown due to electrolysis: the iron electrodes in the footbath rust.
Another scam are 'detox foot patches', sold in high-street health food stores. They look like teabags and are stuck on your foot before you go to bed. When you wake up in the morning a sticky brown sludge is on the bottom of your foot and in the patch. This sludge is supposedly toxins released by your body overnight. However, if you squirt water on one of these bags, then put a hot cup of tea on top of it and wait for ten minutes, brown sludge will start forming. This is not because there are toxins in porcelain. If you examine the ingredients in the patches, 'pyroligneous acid' or wood vinegar is present. Like honey, this is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts and absorbs water. If there is moisture about, like sweaty feet, the wood vinegar will absorb it and produce a brown sludge.
A lot of everyday food and drink products now point out that they contain antioxidants, e.g. Ocean Spray cranberry juice. This is supposed to be a good thing, because antioxidants reduce free radical damage within the body, and free radicals might cause various diseases within the body, such as heart disease. The antioxidants do 'mop up' the free radicals within our body, but free radicals aren't all bad. They are vital for our bodies to kill off bacteria in phagocytic immune cells, for instance. You might be surprised to hear that a 2008 Cochrane review of all the placebo-controlled randomised trials on antioxidants that have ever been performed, describing the experiences of 230,000 people in total, showed that overall, antioxidant pills do not reduce deaths, and in fact they may increase your chance of dying. As a doctor, Goldacre recommends you eat lots of fruit and vegetables, exercise regularly, avoid obesity, don't drink too much and don't smoke.
Other subjects covered include skin cream, homeopathy, the placebo effect, fish-oil pills, anti-depressants, vitamin pills, nutritionists, MMR and MRSA. Goldacre does not patronise his audience by assuming they will not be able to understand the scientific arguments he is making, and goes into detail on the measures needed to carry out a fair clinical trial. After reading the book I feel I will have more confidence in judging whether a trial has been carried out properly, for example where has the study been published, how many subjects did it have, how were the subjects recruited, has it been randomised, was it placebo-controlled, if a new treatment is being studied, has it been compared with the best pre-existing current treatment? If you're going to change your lifestyle, avoid taking your kids for jabs or start taking a new pill because the media has just reported astonishing results from some new study, you might want to read the study itself first, because the media gets a lot wrong.
Bad Science begins by poking fun at alternative therapies. For example, Aqua Detox is a 'detox' footbath which has been promoted by journalists in British newspapers including the Mirror, the Sunday Times and GQ magazine. The company claims on its website that "the Aqua DetoxTM system does detoxify the body and all the organs of the body, as well as re-balancing and re-energizing the body". The customer places their feet in the footbath, which has a small amount of salt added in an ionising unit to create positive sodium and negative chloride ions. The company's theory is that their body will absorb the ions and "a natural rebalancing of the cells in the body will take place" and attract toxins, which are then released in the footbath. After a while the water begins to turn a browny colour, supposedly due to all the toxins being released.
Goldacre points out that the company conveniently does not identify which toxins these are. They are just wonderfully vague and unmeasurable "toxins". Goldacre had an Aqua Detox treatment and took a sample of the water afterwards, which he then had tested in a lab. The only substance found in the water was lots of rusty iron. The water goes brown due to electrolysis: the iron electrodes in the footbath rust.
Another scam are 'detox foot patches', sold in high-street health food stores. They look like teabags and are stuck on your foot before you go to bed. When you wake up in the morning a sticky brown sludge is on the bottom of your foot and in the patch. This sludge is supposedly toxins released by your body overnight. However, if you squirt water on one of these bags, then put a hot cup of tea on top of it and wait for ten minutes, brown sludge will start forming. This is not because there are toxins in porcelain. If you examine the ingredients in the patches, 'pyroligneous acid' or wood vinegar is present. Like honey, this is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts and absorbs water. If there is moisture about, like sweaty feet, the wood vinegar will absorb it and produce a brown sludge.
A lot of everyday food and drink products now point out that they contain antioxidants, e.g. Ocean Spray cranberry juice. This is supposed to be a good thing, because antioxidants reduce free radical damage within the body, and free radicals might cause various diseases within the body, such as heart disease. The antioxidants do 'mop up' the free radicals within our body, but free radicals aren't all bad. They are vital for our bodies to kill off bacteria in phagocytic immune cells, for instance. You might be surprised to hear that a 2008 Cochrane review of all the placebo-controlled randomised trials on antioxidants that have ever been performed, describing the experiences of 230,000 people in total, showed that overall, antioxidant pills do not reduce deaths, and in fact they may increase your chance of dying. As a doctor, Goldacre recommends you eat lots of fruit and vegetables, exercise regularly, avoid obesity, don't drink too much and don't smoke.
Other subjects covered include skin cream, homeopathy, the placebo effect, fish-oil pills, anti-depressants, vitamin pills, nutritionists, MMR and MRSA. Goldacre does not patronise his audience by assuming they will not be able to understand the scientific arguments he is making, and goes into detail on the measures needed to carry out a fair clinical trial. After reading the book I feel I will have more confidence in judging whether a trial has been carried out properly, for example where has the study been published, how many subjects did it have, how were the subjects recruited, has it been randomised, was it placebo-controlled, if a new treatment is being studied, has it been compared with the best pre-existing current treatment? If you're going to change your lifestyle, avoid taking your kids for jabs or start taking a new pill because the media has just reported astonishing results from some new study, you might want to read the study itself first, because the media gets a lot wrong.