Or, as you might like to summarise it, hello – because that seemingly-complex string of numbers, values, algebraic representations and powers is actually supposed to be the formula for the perfect handshake. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself here, so I’ll take it from the obligatory start, by which I mean the Daily Mail:

Firm squeeze and three shakes: Scientists devise formula for the perfect handshake

It has been traditional greeting, a symbol of peace and a key part of business deals for thousands of years.

But today scientists announced that they have created a formula for the perfect handshake after it was revealed that seven in ten Britons are nervous about getting it wrong.

Regular followers of this blog will know the drill by now, but let’s go through the motions at least a little more. However, if you are a regular reader of this blog, and know about the general fourth paragraph reveal rule, you’ll know what’s coming next in the article:

More than two-thirds (70 per cent) of people said they lacked confidence when it came to performing the gesture, according to a survey for Chevrolet.

Yep – the double-whammy reference to a survey, and therefore the unmistakable whiff of PR, and also the mention of the survey’s paymasters and beneficiaries: Chevrolet. The only real surprise should be that the company’s name came as early as the third paragraph, but it’s more of a rule of thumb than a hard and fast law.

Staff at the car firm will be instructed on the ideal technique with a five-step process and given the mathematical formula in a new handshake training guide.

Excellent – I know when I buy large motorvehicles it’s not only a concern but a cast-iron demand of mine that the forecourt staff are trained in complex algebraic equations to perform fairly everyday tasks. Next on Chevvy’s list of formulas to develop is the formula for duping gullible young couples into extended finance packages, followed presumably by a formula for reading the Daily Mail without noticing which articles are little more than extended adverts.

Still, there’s a bit more to this than the general survey stuff we’ve covered before here - by which I mean the leading questions, the engagement of a polling populace more interested in getting to the end of the questions than answering honestly, and the manipulation of statistical analysis to make a survey sing your hymn. Take, for example, the stat of ‘more than two thirds of people lack confidence when shaking hands’ – imagine the following question and answers (which I’ve made up for the purposes of this article – I’ve not seen the original poll data):

How confident are you in your ability to give the perfect handshake?

• A: Extremely confident
• B: Fairly confident
• C: Not very confident

From this simple re-wording alone, I think it’s clear that most people would plump with option B – who amongst us is extremely confident at giving the PERFECT handshake? Presumably only the most arrogant of palm-pressers. What’s more, let’s assume an even distribution and that 33% of those polled fall into each camp, we can see that 1/3 are extremely confident, 1/3 are fairly confident and 1/3 are not very confident. How many of those polled were not extremely confident in their PERFECT shaking ability? Two thirds. This little trick is known as lumping the middle, or something equally lacking in poetry.

The formula angle is a slightly different trick, however – no less obvious once you’re used to spotting it, but somehow more annoying and damaging to the real work being done by scientists. After all, what most informs the stereotypical tabloid view of those ‘zany boffins’, but the classic ‘scientists discover the formula for the perfect cup of tea’ type stories? With our Bad PR goggles on (readers should have collected enough tokens from the back of Bad PR blogs by now to have sent away for their very own pair), that Chevrolet mention really stands out. Not least when you read their original press release on the subject:

The mathematical formula has been developed for car brand Chevrolet as part of a handshake training guide for its staff to prepare them ahead of the launch of the new 5 Year Promise offer, which aims to offer peace of mind and reassurance to its customers.

Did the University of Manchester really, independently, come up with a perfect handshake formula, and then Chevrolet offer to sponsor it into the press? Or did Chevrolet perhaps give a grant to the University of Manchester, to do with as they please, with the proviso that they – although staying out of the research itself – would get a hat-tip in the press release? Either of these scenarios would be fine, respectable, perfectly legitimate.

Or did Chevrolet decide handshaking is a big part of greeting people, that their salesmen greet a lot of people, and so if they were seen to be the best handshakers they would gain kudos – and using this theory tout around relevant academics to come up with a formula they could attach to a pre-made press release? Well, Manchester’s not so far from Liverpool, and skepticism’s not so far from the kind of circles of people who work for universities, so after a few phone calls I was actually able to ascertain that Professor Geoffrey Beattie, the psychologist in the article, did indeed agree to come up with a formula which could be neatly slotted into Chevvy’s PR machine (which, doubtlessly, is an overly ostentatious and large machine with an inordinate gas-guzzling engine and go-fast stripes).

Why would an academic agree to put his name to a story like this? Much like the journalists who reprint it as if it was news, there’s no real malice or malevolence involved I’m sure – to a psychology professor, it’s a chance to get a version of psychology into the news, to stir up interest. OK, the story itself is a bit wishy-washy, and it’s hardly groundbreaking research (or indeed research at all – it’s more of a back-of-the-Chevvy-manual calculation, as we’ll see in a moment), but if it makes people think about psychology then that’s a good thing. What’s more, while it generates interest in the academic themselves, subsequent interviews can give opportunities to push some real science into the conversation, so it could seem like a good thing to do – despite the reality being, unfortunately, that when added to the myriad of other ‘zany boffins’ stories it serves only to feed the stereotype that scientists are ‘mad’, ‘zany’, ‘loony’ or – worst of all – wasteful. ‘Why are they spending their time and research money mathematicising handshakes when the world’s icecaps are melting‘, the tabloid reader may worry. Presumably a tabloid reader who invents words like ‘mathematicising’. Suffice to say the same tabloid doesn’t go on to explain the relationship between academic and corporate PR budgets, and the funding that being in the public eye can encourage.

This, of course, is nothing new – in fact looking around for other examples it appears Ben Goldacre was courted by the ‘Jessica Alba has the perfect wiggle, say zany boffins’ story in 2007 (a story, it’s worth pointing out, that I wish I’d been doing the Bad PR thing at the time of):

This important study was the work of a team – apparently – headed by Professor Richard Weber of Cambridge University, and I was particularly delighted to see it finally in print since, in the name of research, I discussed the possibility of prostituting my own good reputation for this same piece of guff with the very same PR company in June.

Here was their opening email: “We are conducting a survey into the celebrity top ten sexiest walks for my client Veet (hair removal cream) and we would like to back up our survey with an equation from an expert to work out which celebrity has the sexiest walk, with theory behind it. We would like help from a doctor of psychology or someone similar who can come up with equations to back up our findings, as we feel that having an expert comment and an equation will give the story more weight.” It got them on to the news pages of the Daily Telegraph.

So, is there any scientific value to these kinds of PR pieces, beyond potentially popularising other more serious work ? Well, yes and no – take, for example, the quote from Professor Beattie, as it features in the Chevvy release:

Professor Geoffrey Beattie, Head of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester, who devised the formula comments: “The human handshake is one of the most crucial elements of impression formation and is used as a source of information for making a judgement about another person.  A handshake reveals aspects of the personality of the person giving it – for example, a soft handshake can indicate insecurity, whilst a quick-to-let-go handshake can suggest arrogance – so it is surprising that up until now there has not been a guide showing people how they should shake hands.

This does indeed seem to me to be genuine psychology, based on arguably sound science. However, following Beattie’s quote we have:

Les Turton from Chevrolet comments: “It is easy to overlook everyday rituals, but as the handshake is used to complete agreements it is important our staff are well trained so they and can pass on trust and reassurance to our customers. The simple five-step guide for the perfect handshake should mean they are well prepared ahead of the introduction of our new 5 Year Promise ensuring all our deals are concluded in the proper way.”

Which immediately pricks the bubble of credibility.

What’s more, the formula itself isn’t actually all that groundbreaking, despite its grandiose appearance. Quoting it in full, with legend:

PH = √ (e² + ve²)(d²) + (cg + dr)² + π{(4<s>2)(4<p>2)}² + (vi + t + te)² + {(4<c>2)(4<du>2)}²

(e) is eye contact (1=none; 5=direct) 5; (ve) is verbal greeting (1=totally inappropriate; 5=totally appropriate) 5; (d) is Duchenne smile – smiling in eyes and mouth, plus symmetry on both sides of face, and slower offset (1=totally non-Duchenne smile (false smile); 5=totally Duchenne) 5; (cg) completeness of grip (1=very incomplete; 5=full) 5; (dr) is dryness of hand (1=damp; 5=dry) 4; (s) is strength (1= weak; 5=strong) 3; (p) is position of hand (1=back towards own body; 5=other person’s bodily zone) 3; (vi) is vigour (1=too low/too high; 5=mid) 3; (t) is temperature of hands (1=too cold/too hot; 5=mid) 3; (te) is texture of hands (5=mid; 1=too rough/too smooth) 3; (c) is control (1=low; 5=high) 3; (du) is duration (1= brief; 5=long) 3.

Decoding the formula then, we can see the perfect handshake involves:

• Direct eye contact
• Use of a ‘totally appropriate’ verbal greeting (as opposed to a ‘totally inappropriate’ one)
• A fully genuine smile
• A complete or firm grip
• A hand which is not totally dry, but on the dryer side of medium (ie not clammy)
• Neither very strong nor very weak
• Neither too close to yourself, nor too close to the other shaker
• Of medium vigour
• Neither too hot nor too cold hands (Goldilocks hands, I suppose)
• Neither too rough nor too smooth hands
• Neither too controlling nor too loose
• Neither too long not too short

Looking at the list of features, are there any you couldn’t have guessed? And, in the context of those measurements, do the accoutrements of mathematics genuinely mean anything? For example, one component tells us to multiple a medium level of strength by a mid-range position, and then multiply them by 2π. Unless we’re shaking hands in a big circle, what has π got to do with it?

So, there we go – a whistle-stop tour of another tool in your Bad PR toolbox: when you see a zany scientist and a crazy formula, check the story for interested parties. And if they appear in the fourth paragraph, so much the better.

This grey fella sure has his health problems

This week I want to take you both to the seaside, to take a look at something listener submitted, Blackpool-based, and textbook-woo. So, with a tip of the hat to Hoopy1888 on Twitter, I present to you – Magnetic Zone, and their Magnetic Health Bracelet.

Now, confusing as the name might seem, this isn’t a bracelet you wrap around magnets to help them stay healthy – this isn’t about the health of your magnets at all. Instead, this is about trying to use magnets to make YOU healthy. Confusing, I know, but stick with me, and I’ll talk you through the leaflet that our listener sent to my via the magic of twitpic. The leaflet – which is available on the MSS site and linked from the show notes – starts promisingly, with the printed name ‘Magnetic Zone’ hastily surrounded by scrawled writing either side of it, to read ‘www.magneticzone.co.uk’. Which is always nicely professional – especially when you visit the site, and find nothing but a black holding page with garish yellow text giving you an email address to contact, and nothing else. I know that’s how I like to get MY health advice.

Still, as the leaflet declares, these products promise that they ‘Change your health for the better’ – which is an amazing claim, presumably in oppostion to all of those bracelets that seek to change your health for the worse. Handcuffs, I suppose you’d call them.

So, what can these mystery bracelets do for you? Well, despite not yet saying anything about them – again, another sure sign that we’re dealing with a genuine health product here – the leaflet gives us a charming grey silhouette of a man with little lines coming off to list the ailments he can be relieved of via the use of Magnetic Health Bracelets (promotional price from £10, the handwritten scrawl appears to inform us). Here’s that list:

• Unexplained tiredness
• Insomnia (erm, so tiredness again, sort of. Good)
• Migraine headaches
• Stress, nervousness & anxiety
• Frozen shoulder
• Neck pains
• Respiration problems
• Tachycardia
• Tennis Elbow
• Muscular pains
• Obesity - in which the arrow fantastically points to the grey man’s stomach. Excellent.
• Back Pains
• High Cholesterol
• Wrist pains
• Digestive problems
• Sciatica
• Arthritis
• Poor circulation
• Painful periods (bear in mind, the diagram is clearly of a man. Which suggests to me that any periods would indeed be particularly painful)
• Knee pains
• Rheumatism
• Joint pains
• Varicose veins
• Phlebitis
• Gout
• Ankle pains

Quite a revolutionary device then, I’m sure you’ll agree. So, with your ears still ringing from all of these amazing benefits, you might be wondering – how the hell does this magic device work, and more to the point, where can I get one? Well hold your horses, I’m getting there. As the leaflet tells us:

• It’s safe
• It’s natural
• It’s drug free

How does it work?! Erm, it doesn't.

These are the only 3 true things I think I’ve found on this whole leaflet. That said, I’ve not checked the phone number works, so there might be a 4th. Yes, it’s safe – it’s a magnet. It might well be natural – again, it’s a magnet. And drug free? Yep again – magnet. However, and vitally missing from the list there, it’s worth noting – it doesn’t work, is not effective, and is a waste of your time and money. Looking at the blurb about why it’s meant to work, you see why:

How Does It Work?

Magnetic therapy is based on the biological effect of magnetic fields on the living organism.

The biological effect of magnetic fields on the living organism, by which they mean – no effect at all. That said, extremely high levels of magnetic fields applied directly to the brain have exhibited effects, but we’re talking about high-powered electro-magnets there – not wrist-held natural magnets, which are often barely strong enough to stick to a fridge, let alone right your wrongs.

Many illness and ailments are caused by electrical imbalance within the body.

No, they’re not.

When magnets are worn close to the pulse they react to the 4% iron content within the blood, triggering tiny electrical impulses similar to the body’s own natural repair signals.

No they don’t, for the very simple reason that the 4% iron content within the blood is non ferromagnetic, which means they’re not attracted to the magnet. We know this, because when somebody undergoes an FMRI – a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan – the 4% iron of their blood is not torn from their veins and arteries and fired onto the incredibly high-powered magnet. What’s more, even if the iron in the blood were attracted to the magnet, it wouldn’t trigger electrical impulses – it would trigger mild magnetic conductivity, if the magnet was even strong enough to penetrate the skin, which the inverse square law almost certainly dictates it wouldn’t be. Further, even if the magnets were somehow weirdly triggering electrical impulses, there’s no way these could be similar to the body’s own natural repair signals, whatever that even means. Finally, I’m not even sure the blood is even 4% iron – so they might well have just pulled that out of their arses to sound knowledgeable. In summary – that sentence of around 30 words, is wrong in almost as many ways.

This magnetism also attracts blood directly to painful areas within the body, thus carrying away damaged and toxic materials which cause pain.

Again, no – blood isn’t magnetically attracted anywhere. And if it were, it would be dangerous – your blood is a circulatory system, thus it needs to circulate. Using weird magnetic forces (which we know blood isn’t attracted to) to draw it to one place would presumably result in it staying there – and that’s a bad thing. As for the ‘damaged and toxic materials’, this makes no sense, especially given that toxicity is a) bullshit and b) nothing to do with any of the aforementioned ailments, not least Tachycardia, Tennis Elbow and Frozen Shoulder. Finally – again, it’s a circulatory system, so stuff just moves around – so where’s the blood taking all of those supposedly baddifying toxins too? Presumably just somewhere else in the body, somewhere that doesn’t have a magic magnet to save it! So, wrong in so many areas, again.

The electrical impulses will also autonomously stimulate the production of the body’s natural painkiller, endorphine, which not only relieves pain but relaxes the body’s stimuli, thus negating the effects of stress, migraine and other pressure induced ailments.

Kudos for random use of autonomous there – completely meaningless, naturally. And while it’s true that endorphin is indeed the natural painkiller, it doesn’t relax the body’s stimuli, because this appears to be something again entirely made up by Magnetic Zone, and I can’t fathom what it means. Stimuli is something your sense are perceiving, something you’re reacting to. So internal chemicals can’t affect external stimuli. What’s more, last I checked, stress and migraines were not pressure induced ailments. Unless they mean emotional pressure, presumably the emotional pressure of figuring out how to use an internal chemical to relax external stimuli.

Even if you’re not in obvious pain, magnetisim is proven to multiply the white cells in our blood, which is a cruial part of the body’s defence system, hence helping to fight off viral illness and building immunity against colds, influenza and other air borne infections.

Again – nope. They use the word ‘proven’ to mean ‘we just made up that’, and of course magnets have absolutely no effect on white cells in the blood. Or red cells. Or in fact any other cells you have in your blood, unless those cells are inexplicably made of metal. The immunity against various and sunder illnesses is of course therefore meaningless handwavery too.
The magnet magicians then go on to claim

All our bracelets are made of the finest materials and are protected by a unique process called MICRON COATING

Which is indeed a unique claim, given that a micron is a unit of measurement also called the Micrometre, which is one millionth of a metre. With that in mind, to see just how barmy the claim of the unique ‘micron coating’ process is, replace micron with a different unit of measurement – maybe it’s a ‘unique process called centimetre coating’ or ‘hectare coating’. It’s drivel coated in – presumably a micron – of technical language to try and sound medical.

Still, good skepticism isn’t about just accepting what people give you, the rhetoric of skepticism, so don’t let me put you off – if you still want a Magnetic Health Bracelet, Magnetic Zone are available at www.magneticzone.co.uk or you can buy direct from the leaflet, whose handwritten scrawl informs us that you can mail order by calling 07859 069 631 Thats 07859 069 631. They do assure you that they do not charge any postage or packing fee, but given the level of accuracy from the rest of the leaflet I wouldn’t be totally confident that that was true. Or, indeed, that you’d ever see your magic bracelet or indeed your money again if you did decide to buy one.

PS: For anyone who thought the title was needlessly sweary, I refer you to this meme.

Homöopathie: Es gibt nichts in ihm

It’s admittedly and regretfully rather rare that we at the Merseyside Skeptics Society cover stories of a non-English language nature. That’s entirely mea culpa, malheureusement my non-English language abilities are limited at ‘meilleur’. Still, it would be ridiculous of us not to mention the Wünderbar developments coming out of Germany, where top magazine Der Spiegel ran with the cover story:

Homoöpathie: Die groβe Illusion (‘Homeopathy: The grand illusion’) – Source: Der Spiegel

This, of course, is HUGE. Not least because Germany is oft-cited as a prime example of a healthcare system in which homeopathy is given the ‘respect’ it deserves (I’d argue 10:23 actually gave the respect homeopathy REALLY deserves), but also because Germany is the home of homoeopathy and Hahnemann – all of which making the prospect of the magic water getting ‘Das Boot’ from the German equivalent of the NHS an incredibly sweet pill to swallow.

Far be it from me to wallow in all of the delicious, delicious developments too much, but here’s a glimpse at the online version of the Der Spiegel article, for any of our Deutsch companions out there. What’s that at the bottom? Why, that would be the 10:23 Campaign, cited as an influence! Needless to say (although I will anyway), our collective bosoms swell with pride here at 10:23 HQ. My aforementioned linguistic limitations prevent me from doing it justice in the original German, and the Google translate is admirable if patchy (“Many patients believe the cash to pay only that which helps also detectable. Ennoble why the health insurance with their approach to homeopathy.” – I swear Google hires Master Yoda to do their translating…). With that in mind, allow me to quote from the English version of Deutsche World:

The 200-year-old dubious medical treatment may soon be dropped from German medical insurance providers as a cost-saving measure. The the United Kingdom may also do the same.

Too right we might.

In recent days, the over-two-centuries-old practice of homeopathy has come under fire in Germany.

Dr. Karl Lauterbach, the chair of the parliamentary health committee, recently called for public health insurers to stop funding the practice, which typically involves solutions of small amounts of herbs or other medicines heavily diluted with water and then shaken or stirred to “add energy” to the solution.

According to its proponents, homeopathy can heal patients as well – if not better – than conventional medicine, while its detractors, including nearly all medical doctors and scientists, say that it is no more powerful than a placebo.

What’s more:

“If everybody pays for his beer, then he can pay for his homeopathy,” said Dr. Kay Brune, a professor in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuernberg, in southern Germany.

Brune added that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that homeopathy actually causes any meaningful and healing bio-chemical reactions in patients, but that doesn’t stop people from believing in a practice that has been so deeply ingrained into the German psyche.

“Homeopathy has a very long tradition in Germany,” he added in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “The founder, Hahnemann was a brilliant physician. But at that time doing nothing was helpful to the patient. In 200 years, the pseudo-science has not taken any steps forward.”

Now, of course, we aren’t arrogant enough for one second to think that we had a huge part to play in this – but if the actions of the 10:23 Campaign and our amazing support (not least the hundreds of national and international ‘overdoses’ who joined in back in January) had even a small effect on this development, I safely speak for everyone at 10:23 and the MSS in saying how immensely proud we are to have been involved.

What’s been staggering over the last 6 months, and in fact back to October when we started letting the 10:23 cat a little out of the bag, is the phenomenal response we’ve had from ordinary people – not just doctors and working scientists. We’ve been blown away by the level of involvement support, coverage and interest 10:23 has had so far, and as we’re starting to see the homeopathic dominoes tumbling here in the UK – and in Germany too, now – the level of interest continues to amaze me. On our side we have the science, we have the support, and we have the momentum.

Homeopathy: There’s nothing in it / Es gibt nichts in ihm

It is page 92 of Lord Robert Baden-Powell’s ‘Scouting For Boys: A Handbook For Instruction in Good Citizenship’, originally published in 1908. This scan comes from the 1963 edition.

Only two days in and Weol got in there first with the correct answer, followed swiftly by Nemo. Other suggestions we recieved were an illustration from the ‘The Giant Book of Fantastic Facts’, or drawings of Mike, Marsh and myself (who’s who, I wonder?), presumably as part of a bizarre promo for Skeptics With a K!

So, you’re here, you’re reading, let’s have a look at the next picture. What/who are we looking at in the picture below?

On Friday of last week, I got a phone call. From Ormskirk police. The polite and friendly officer assured me there was nothing to worry about, but that he was looking into alleged threats of violence coming from people on Facebook. Specifically, within the group page of the Merseyside Skeptics Society. And aimed at non-psychic non-detective Joe ‘I’ll just pop to your toilet‘ Power.

This was news to me. It was also utterly untrue.

As I explained to the officer, we at the Merseyside Skeptics Society have never made threats to anyone, ever, and nor would we; further, we’d NEVER condone physical or personal threats made by anyone else. Aside from a complete and utter aversion to violence – which for one thing has been shown by many people in history to be a truly terrible way to get a point across – making personal threats would go completely against the whole point of what the MSS is about: examining the evidence, and pointing out where the claim (and subsequently the claimant) is lacking. In fact, when I met Joe over a year ago, I went to great lengths to remain calm and even-tempered while he continually insulted me in increasingly bizarre and surreal ways. Paedophile? OK Joe, go for it. Homosexual? Sure, if you like. Atheist? Absolutely (well one out of three isn’t bad, for the Man Who Talks To Dead People. Or at least 1/3rd of dead people, presumably).

Fortunately, having spoken to me for a good five minutes, the officer was able to assure me that he was quite confident no wrong-doing nor anything malicious had taken place. After I’d explained Joe’s full history with the MSS, our polite insistence that Joe at some point, some time, in some way – any way at all – shows some evidence that he can indeed contact the dead, and the fact that when I met Joe a year ago I ended the conversation by wishing him well – after I’d explained all of this, the officer concluded that I’ve almost certainly not gone beyond practising freedom of speech, which is true.

He also asked whether I’d mind clarifying my lack of violent or threatening intent to Joe – which I’m more than happy to do: I’ve never, in anyway, suggested or advocated anything threatening in the direction of Joe or his family.

You can probably imagine my surprise – and, indeed, deep disappointment – to now hear from Joe via the police, with tales of his wife being ‘unable to sleep’ due to worrying about threats made against him. It’s a shame, but not really that much of a surprise, that Joe decided to go direct to the police with these unfounded allegations of threats, rather than email me – I am, after all, easily reachable and more than amiable. I’m sure it’s nothing more than a simple misunderstanding, which I’m happy to clear up. Because, were it that Joe was creating spurious reports of threats in order to use the police to silence entirely reasonable criticism of the magical claims he makes, that would represent a serious waste of police time, which is in itself not a laughing matter. Still, Joe’s not one for wasting police time, really, so I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.

Wasting Police Time

In 2009, in an article in the Liverpool Echo, Joe Power claimed to be using his psychic powers to track the abductor of Madeleine McCann, who famously went missing from a family trip in Portugal in 2007. Joe said in 2009 that he had ‘seen the face of the person who abducted Madeleine and it is not dissimilar to the sketch which the detectives released‘. To this day, Madeleine has not been found, and Joe’s tips (happily shared with the newspaper) have proven fruitless. Joe’s book came out soon after the article made the papers, and his book signing was advertised at the foot of the article in which he talked about a child who had been abducted. Those are the facts. Here are some more.

In February 2008, 9-year old Shannon Matthews was kidnapped. Interested in lending his talents to the search, Joe took the Sunday People newspaper along to the house of Shannon’s mother, where he spent time giving her a reading in order to locate her missing child. Joe comfortingly predicted that her child was taken by a man driving a car with a baby seat and a brown cushion in the back, and a religious card hanging from the rear-view mirror. All of these predictions did not prove to be true. In March 2008, Shannon was found. In April 2008, Karen Matthews – Shannon’s mother, and the person Joe spent an afternoon having photos taken with – was charged with child neglect and perverting the course of justice. In December 2008, she was sentenced – along with her boyfriend – to eight years after being found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and peverting the course of justice. If Joe Power was able to psychically tell at the time – as he now claims – that he knew of Karen’s involvement, he was strangely happy to pose for photographs with a child abductor and was bizarrely content to leave Shannon in her kidnappers clutches for a further six days. Fortunately, the police located Shannon safely, after a neighbour reported of hearing child’s footsteps in her abductor’s home. Joe Power’s website prominently features Shannon’s kidnapping, including a photo of Joe taken with her kidnapper.

In 2006, Joe spoke to the Daily Mirror about the murder of Sally Anne Bowman, explaining how he:

“told police the killer could have the surname White and first name Stephan or Stephen. He might live in a block of flats by railway lines and have been in a park before the murder. And Mr Power believes the killer, who he thinks is a delivery driver aged between 24 and 26, met part-time hairdresser Sally Anne through the friend of a friend.”

In March 2008, the police caught and arrested Sally’s killer – Mark Dixie, 34, a chef. DNA confirmed the match. To this day, Joe’s involvement in the Sally Anne Bowman case is put forward as proof of his talents. Mark Dixie was not called Stephan. Or Stephen.

In 1999, Joe claims to have provided ‘stunningly correct’ information to the police, in helping to locate the body of missing 22-year old Lynsey Quy. As Joe states on his website:

I took this information to police and still have the receipt for my statement. I was frustrated police did not follow up on my meticulous information, so I wrote a letter to the chief inspector Bob Marsden and took it to the police station in person. I never heard from him.  Five months later, Marsden was replaced with a new chief inspector named Jeff Sloane who never saw my information. Police eventually pressured Lynsey’s husband Mitchell into a confession and indeed they located her body parts at the fairground and near the railway tracks.

When contacted about Joe’s involvement, Det. Supt. Geoff Sloan, senior investigating officer, said:

I wish to state, categorically, that as the Senior Investigating Officer on the Lyndsey Quy murder, I made a policy decision not to use psychics on the investigation. Joe Power has allegedly made claims that he assisted the enquiry but this is not the case.

Joe’s website does not correctly spell the name of the senior investigating officer in a case Joe claims to have helped solve.

In 2005, Joe claimed to know the whereabouts of the remains of Helen McCourt – whose body had gone unfound for 17 years. He told multiple papers, including the Wigan Today, that “her body lies in Carr Lane, between her village and Prescot, possibly in or near an old fishing lodge.” Helen’s body has never been found.

In all of Joe’s involvements with the police, he has never produced anything which has demonstrably proven to be true. He has, however, featured his involvement in murder, kidnapping and missing persons cases in much of his publicity materials.

So, just to summarise: nobody involved with the Merseyside Skeptics Society – or anyone that I even know of – has ever made threats to Joe or his family, and we absolutely never will. However, we will continue to examine Joe’s work, to document where he might be using tragedy and bereavement for publicity gain, and will be delighted if he’s ever, at all, able to demonstrate even one of the fantastic claims he makes. Furthermore, given that these intellectual tussles with Joe have increased the popularity and presence of the Merseyside Skeptics Society no end – not to mention that Joe’s been responsible for providing more than 10,000 hits to this very website in the last 12 months, I’d actually like to take this opportunity to formally thank Joe for his outstanding contribution to skepticism in the Merseyside area. I look forward to his future endeavours, and the many Google hits they’ll gain us. Thank you Joe, and all the best!

Once again our perennial Question of The Week has arrived, providing our lovely listeners/readers/trolls with the opportunity to take a break from their lives and have a good old skeptical think.

Many thanks to all of you who responded to our previous Question of The Week, which can be found here. We got some interesting answers. Like that one, this week’s Question comes via a suggestion from one of our listeners, long-standing visitor to this blog, DaveTheDrummer, who said:

“If you were contacted by a wealthy benefactor who was willing to fund the activities of the society and donate substantial sums of money to the cause, and by substantial I mean several tens of thousands of pounds, what would you do with those funds?”

What, indeed?

So this week’s Question of The Week is: If You Were Given A Million Pounds to Promote Skepticism, How Would You Spend It?

Would you set up a woo-fighting army? Maybe you’d send all the homeopaths away on a spaceship like Douglas Adams’ middle men were? Maybe you’d just give it all to charity or to your favourite skeptic? Whatever it is, we want to know. Just bear in mind that we don’t actually have a million pounds to give. In case you were wondering. And salivating.

We look forward to your answers!

Exporters raided in bomb detector fraud inquiry

Police have raided three companies suspected of selling ineffective bomb detectors to overseas markets, in a case that raises questions of whether Britain has done all it can to curb the much-criticised trade.

City of London police said yesterday that they had raided five properties and planned to interview a number of individuals as part of an expanding investigation into the sale of the hand-held devices, which critics say have endangered lives in Iraq and elsewhere.

The police action was launched after Britain introduced a ban in January on the export of the devices, but applied it only to Iraq and Afghanistan because it said it lacked the power to extend it to countries in which UK and allied forces were not engaged.

The police said they executed five search warrants at premises in Kent, Devon and Nottingham linked to the companies Grosvenor Scientific, Scandec Inc and Global Technical, seizing a large amount of cash and several hundred explosive detection devices and their component parts – Source: Financial Times

Now, Global Technical I had heard of – in fact I wrote about their GT200 back in April. It’s great to see the police taking action, finally. Still, while we’re aware of the actions of ATSC (whose CEO Jim McCormick is still on police bail after his arrest earlier this year over the same charges these new companies now face), and both Scantec and Global Technical are well documented too, Grosvenor Scientific appear to be somewhat off the radar – with very little information to be found on them. Even the internet, so often a fountain of knowledge, has only the following to offer (courtesy of friend-of-the-MSS Gittins):

Name & Registered Office:
GROSVENOR SCIENTIFIC LIMITED
THE OLD MILKING PARLOUR
CADHAY
OTTERY ST. MARY
DEVON
UNITED KINGDOM
EX11 1QT
Company No. 07144016

MSS Board member Pete was also able to ascertain that the company incorporated on 2nd February 2010 – very recently, then. Which does make me wonder – what we have here is a company selling devices that are as ineffectual as the ADE651, which was set up after the ADE651 was exposed as being useless and banned from sale to Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it plausible that Grosvenor Scientific, set up the month after the ADE651 was exposed and banned, is actually selling the same devices under a different name and company, in order to circumvent the ban? I’d say it was more than plausible, and we’ll know more as further details come in.

If you have any details on Grosvenor Scientific (especially if you live in the Devon area near to the offices in The Old Milking Parlour, Cadhay), please get in touch – the more we can discover about these seeming peddlers of dangerous dowsing rods, the more we can help clamp down on their sale.

Police appealed for anyone with information about the devices’ manufacture, sale or distribution to call 020 7601 6969 or e-mail OACU@cityoflondon.police.uk

For more information on these woo bomb detectors, check out Professor Bruce Hood’s blog.

Oliver the Missing Mog

Psychics, eh? Is there anything they can’t do? They can cure/heal/treat/help cancer, use their magic to confirm police reports and wear flat caps with their arses hanging out, and they can contact dead people who never actually existed. They’re a marvellous lot!

But that’s not the full extent of the psychic realm, it seems, as the BBC reported last week:

‘An Indian psychic is helping to search for cat which went missing from a Lincolnshire village. Oliver, a four-year-old tabby and white cat, went missing from Boothby Graffoe in October.

Owner Sue Machen, 56, has paid £1,000 for Hertfordshire-based company Animal Search UK to hunt for the animal.

It has employed psychic Sarita Gupta, who is based in Bangalore, to help in the search, a move which has been criticised by a sceptics’ society’. - Source: BBC

That’s right – we’re dealing psychic pet detectives! Which, to be clear, isn’t a detective who specialises in finding psychic pets (I can’t really see how one could make a full career out of that, really), but instead people who claim to use their psychic powers to detect and locate missing pets. Obviously.

So, what’s the story here? Well, it’s pretty simple - Oliver is a white and grey tabby cat. He has a white stomach and legs, and is tabby down his back and tail. He also has a distinctive black spot on the left side of his pink nose. And he’s missing. His owner Sue Machen, ‘distraught’ (according to the Fail) turned to Animal Search UK to locate him, and – as the newspapers report – they hired Indian mystic, magic woman and general all-round superhero Sarita Gupta to locate said missing moggy.

Miss Gupta, it’s reported, had similar success a fortnight ago in finding a tabby called Chiquitita in Birmingham, so she has form in this area, as Tom Watkins of Animal Search UK attests:

‘We did a search in Birmingham recently where the owner contacted her and was told the cat would be found where children play.

‘We then got a call from somebody – and when we searched a local garden, the cat was found trapped in a Wendy house. It was quite remarkable.’ – Source: Daily Fail

Remarkable indeed. So, what’s the Gupta feeling for the location of dear Ollie?

‘Ms Gupta believes the cat has been adopted as a stray by a new family, who do not know he has an owner.’ – Source: BBC

Amazing. Or not, as the spokesperson for the sceptics society explained to the BBC:

‘Looking at the advice given by the psychic in both cases, we have the suggestion that the cat is staying with another family, and the idea that lost cats like to be near children. Both of these are incredibly obvious scenarios to suggest for a missing cat, and would likely be the suggestions you’d get from someone without psychic powers – and without the need for a fee, too’. - Source: BBC

Now there’s some REAL wisdom, if you ask me. Which they did – because the very cool thing is, when the BBC saw a story of a missing cat and a psychic, they turned to we Merseyside Skeptics for balance. I can’t begin to tell you how happy it makes me that they actually bothered putting balance into the tale. In fact, in full, what I told the BBC was:

‘Looking at the advice given by the psychic in both cases, we have the suggestion that the cat is staying with another family, and the idea that lost cats like to be near children. Both of these are incredibly obvious scenarios to suggest for a missing cat, and would likely be the suggestions you’d get from someone without psychic powers – and without the need for a fee, too.

I’m sure if the cat is living with another family, people will feel it proves Ms Gupta’s psychic skills. However, if the same advice had been given by a non-psychic party, purely as an educated guess, nobody would suggest psychic powers were at play.

Of course, if Ms Gupta were interested in demonstrating that her skills work in less predictable and obvious scenarios, the Merseyside Skeptics Society would be only to happy to help put her powers to a fair and reasonable test’. – Source: Erm, Me.

And I stand by that – if Ms Gupta, or any other psychic, is in any way interested in demonstrating their talents, please contact me and we’ll discuss it: press@merseysideskeptics.org.uk. I check my email obsessively, and promise I’ll get back to you immediately.

Still, that’s not quite everything, where our little Ollie is concerned. Never one to shy away from a bit of research, I thought I’d check out what Animal Search UK have to say about the case of Oliver and the psychic. Fortunately, their website prominently displays their contact details, so I thought ‘why not?’

Interestingly enough, I was able to get straight through to Tom Watkins, who’s the lead investigator in the case of missing Oliver. He was happy to discuss the case, although entirely reticent to give me any details not already in the public domain (which is understandable, I suppose). First of all, I asked if employing psychics is the norm for their pet searching – as it turns out, they don’t hire psychics, they only consider psychic information when provided to them via the owners independently consulting a witch of their own accord. So strike one for the Daily Fail, who titled their whole piece ‘Distraught owner of missing cat pays team of PSYCHICS £1,000 to find her moggy’.

Further, when I asked how much stock his company places in the information of psychics, Tom told me: ‘We listen to them if the owners want us to, we don’t place too much stock in what they say, but we don’t discount anything’.

Interestingly, Tom was also able to confirm to me that the moggy in Birmingham was indeed located pretty much exactly where the psychic said it would be – in the sense that it was somewhere that children play. OK, sure a wendy house seems like a great hit there (although, of course, missing cats are more likely to be found by/with children than you’d imagine, I expect). However, Tom would not share any other details of that case, when I asked. Data protection? Possibly. I’ll come back to that.

Even more interestingly, Tom seemed to be a little confused as to the timelines involved with missing Ollie. As the papers have all reported, the psychic has been drafted in to help. When I asked Tom when this involvement occurred, he told me it was last week (roughly the time of the article). Which I found a little interesting, given that the website ‘ThisIsLincolnshire’ reported on Sue’s contact with a psychic back in December 2009. As I say, not one to shy away from the research. So, of course, I mentioned this to Tom… who confirmed that Sue contacted psychics to locate her missing cat 6 months ago. And, amazingly, the cat still isn’t found. Which says an awful lot about the quality of the psychic’s information, if you ask me.

So, bearing all of this in mind, one particular question springs to mind: Why is it that a story which essentially boils down to ‘psychic fails to help find missing cat after 6 months of involvement’ makes the national press, while supposedly a week before the story the same psychic successfully helped locate a missing cat in Birmingham, in a tale that’s not even been reported in local media in Birmingham?

Why is it that the success story gets no column inches, whereas the ongoing and unsuccessful search makes headlines across the world?

And why is there not a single report of a cat called Chiquitita in Birmingham, a missing cat being found in a wendy house, or Animal Search UK locating a missing cat in Birmingham? Isn’t it strange that even the company themselves don’t feature this amazing success story on their website, despite having a ‘Latest News‘ page and a ‘Happy Tails‘ page?

Is it me, or does anyone sense a shaggy cat story here?

Finally, just to cap off the story, it’s worth noting that the tale gets a whopping 850-word write-up in the Mail, in the most glowing and positive of terms, with the psychic angle largely peripheral throughout. As would be consistent, say, with a piece of PR.

However, alongside the honest, up-front, god-fearing quacks and charlatans, we’ve had to fight the homeo-forces on another front: the media. Almost universally, when homeopathy is discussed in the media, they ask a homeopath. At best, they also ask a healthcare professional, or (failing that) me, to represent the other side, while leaning the conversation in the favour of the water-wizard. The homeopath gets the first and last word, and the balance of the debate is very firmly on terra homeo. That’s when they’re not just outright selling homeopathic treatments, or allowing homeopaths to wax lyrical about how ‘it worked for me’ and ‘it can’t be placebo as it works on my baby/animal/etc’. This is the battle ground, and it’s this fight we choose to fight – so be it.

But it still pisses me off when it’s the BBC drinking the homeopathic Kool-Aid.

I mean, I love the BBC – they’re meant to be fair, unbiased by commercial concerns, free to investigate and report, educate and entertain, and all that good stuff. Sure, they may spend a little too much money giving Graham Norton a career, or padding out Saturday night’s with Dr Who and fancy dancing (neither of which I particularly care for), but they’re still ace. Except, when they do this:

The view of the regulatory body for pharmacists, who are consulting their members about how the products are currently marketed, is that people who buy homeopathic products should be advised that they do not work and only have a placebo effect.

But according to homeopaths, the real issue behind the consultation is the threat complementary medicine is posing to the highly lucrative relationship between the drug companies and the Health Service.

Face – meet palm.

The Newsline report featured here is really one of the most shockingly-biased, intellectually-dishonest and factually-bereft pieces of reporting I’ve ever seen. In 2 minutes, it manages to squeeze more logical fallacies, outright and long-debunked inaccuracies (the placebo effect DOES work on babies) and Big Pharma innuendo than I thought possible, and serves it up with a huge helping of the kind of smug-snark that only comes with CAM. If you want a summary of what I felt was utterly unprofessional about the report, check out below, where I’ve included the full text of the complaint letter I sent to the BBC yesterday (if you’re equally offended by the report, please feel free to complain to them too, and you can use my complaint as a template if you like. Please do, I urge you, the actually listen to these). Needless to say, the report followed the classic media pattern of interviewing homeopaths, rather than healthcare experts, and allowing their countless statements and facts to go unchecked – with the added bonus of backing their claims of Big Pharma conspiracy to keep the poor homeopath down, and topping off with an appeal by the ‘Health correspondent’ to find a way of accepting homeopathy into the bosom of actual healthcare. Based on nothing more than anecdote, rumour and conjecture, naturally. What do you want – proof? Evidence? Journalistic integrity?!

The BBC should not be behaving like we’d expect the Daily Mail to behave – they’re meant to be better than this. This is the organisation who gave us Brian Cox, Simon Singh and David Attenborough, yet – as was pointed out to me on Twitter yesterday – for insiders in the corporation, anti-science is rife:

“Producer on BBC series on alternative medicine told me he enjoyed “taking scientists down a peg or two”, hence his pro-woo film”

“…Full stand up row in the office with him. But scientist who presented show also at fault”

‘Taking scientists down a peg or two’ – I couldn’t have summed up the feel of the Newsline piece any better myself. We expect this of the Daily Fail, and we expect it of crackpots and quacks like Dana, Nancy and Greg. We don’t expect this of our BBC. You’re better than this. Start acting like it.

Dear BBC

The article entitled ‘Health Focus: Homeopathy’ contains a large number of issues which are great cause for concern:

• The tone and bias of the article leaves a clear impression that homeopathy is effective, given that the case for ineffectiveness is not stated (it’s merely stated that the regulatory body advise it be considered ineffective), whereas the counterarguments to this position are detailed, with language leading the reader towards believing the claim as being likely correct (‘real issue‘, ‘threat to the highly lucrative relationship‘)
• The videos are clearly supportve of homeopathy, starting with ‘it’s an alternative way of treating and illness, but more and more people are turning to homeopathy‘. This lacks both balance and scientific/factual insight.
• The interview puts forward that babies do not experience the placebo effect – this is factually inaccurate, but goes uncorrected – leaving the viewer under the false misapprehension that this statement is true, and that placebos really are not active on babies.
• ‘It has worked for my family for years‘ – again, this is a factually unproven statement that the viewer is not encouraged to question, despite being demonstrably implausible
• ‘Once frowned upon by conventional doctors‘ implies it’s now accepted – it is not, and conventional doctors are still aware that the evidence proves homeopathy does not work
• ‘here, there are only 5 (homeopathically) registered doctors‘ – clearly the implication from the journalist is that there should be more homeopathy in Northern Ireland – this is blatant editorialising, and is not supported in the views of healthcare experts
• ‘house of commons reports raised questions about its effectiveness‘ – in fact, the report examined the evidence and concluded homeopathy was not effect – no questions were raised, they were demonstrably answered
• ‘…unreliable… cannot for the basis of any NHS treatment‘ – this is a cynically-selected quote – in actual fact, the report concluded comprehensively that homeopathy can be reliably shown not to be effective, as the authors will gladly attest to (please contact me if you’d like me to demonstrate this)
• The balance of the whole piece is entirely lop-sided, interviewing a pharmacist for 15 seconds on the issue of labelling, before returning to a pro-homeopathy stance with an interview with a homeopath
• ‘some feel there’s more behind this current debate…’ – here, the journalist (and by extension, the BBC) are clearly and implicitly adding weight to the unfounded accusations of collusion and conspiracy between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. This is disappointing in the extreme, and in my view is deeply irresponsible journalism.
• ‘In Europe, there are over 100million people for whom homeopathic medicine is their first choice of treatment‘ – an unproven claim, not supported by the data in the video, and disproven by even a cursory level of research
• The statment regarding the growing ‘success’ of homeopathy is misleading – this success is not clinical success, nor scientific success, nor is it a growth in usage; the clear implication is that the opposition to homeopathy is financially based, rather than based on the paucity of evidence for this unproven treatment. This goes unchecked, again, by the report.
• ‘Where the real challenge lies is for the homeopaths and the pharmacists to work together, to provide a service that’s safe, productive, and cost-effective‘ – again, this is biased and baseless. There is no challenge in getting homeopaths to work with pharmacists – the challenge is in proving homeopathy has a place in healthcare, and it has failed this challenge consistently. Further, the implication from the reporter is clearly that only homeopathy is ‘safe, productive and cost-effective‘ – again, this is baseless and irresponsible editorialising, and is not supported by data.

Having watched this video, and the supporting extended pro-homeopathy interview, a number of times, I must conclude that it’s one of the most biased, one-sided and evidence-free pieces of reporting I’ve witnessed by the BBC. Not once is the lack of evidence for homeopathy addressed, indeed there’s not even a qualified medical professional involved in the whole report. Facts supporting homeopathy are not questioned (if they were addressed even in passing it would be clear that those presented here are simply false), and no facts regarding the continual failure of homeopaths to show any efficacy of their pills and tinctures are presented.

In short, I find this to be an irresponsible, biased and potentially very misleading article, which does nothing to add clarity to the public understanding of healthcare.

Yours dissapointedly
Michael

PS – it’s not all bad news on the homeopathy front, of course: not with the closure of the Price of Wales quackfest FIH; the BMA Young Doctors going on record with ‘Homeopathy is akin to withcraft; and a little-birdy-style rumour regarding some pretty interesting developments with NHS Primary Care Trusts here in our very own Liverpool… more of which to follow soon I’m sure…

However, there’s always room for more, and that’s where you come in. We’re interested in your ideas for skeptical events. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a brand new idea, it can be something you’ve just heard of and thought was a good idea. Either way, we want to hear your ideas.

So the Question of The Week is this: What new skeptical events can you come up with?

Maybe you’ve been nurturing the idea of starting up a Skeptics In The Sauna, or have an idea for the perfect skeptical holiday. It doesn’t have to be an event. Feel free to branch out. It’s common for skepticism to advertise itself in the form of podcasts – maybe you have an idea for a new skeptical outlet? Whatever it is, let us know. Then we can steal it and get all the credit…

Please leave your ideas in the comments field below.