*Sorry for the random sound issues in the middle – apparently passing taxis were interfering with the radio mics. It was not – repeat NOT – any kind of nefarious hacking tactics from the tabloids…

Now you might think that’s because there was a recent hoax survey which claimed that a psychometric testing company had analysed the IQ of users of different browsers, and had determined that users of internet explorer 6 are most likely to be flat-out dumb, but that’s not actually why I’m calling you idiots. It just a shit browser, massively outdated and an all-round piece of trash, and if you’re using it, you’re objectively an idiot.

That aside, there is something interesting about this hoax survey story. For those that haven’t heard of it, last month the media was all over this story, and not just the usual suspects. The short version is that AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Company published a press release claiming that after surveying 101,326 people for their IQ and broswer of choice, and mapping this into a good solid graph, they were able to establish that internet explorer users had a ludicrously low IQ, around the 80 mark.

“The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser,” AptiQuant concluded. “From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers.”

Under an approximately common model, an IQ of 70-80 would be termed ‘borderline deficient’, and anything below 70 being ‘Definite feeble-mindedness’, so it was a pretty staggering correlation if true. Staggering enough to catch the eye of the BBC, CNN, the Daily Fail, the Telegraph and pretty much everywhere else (though many have deleted the initial news story now, annoyingly). At the time, I saw it (I obviously have a google alert to tell me when a new survey story appears, particularly one that’s in the Daily Mail), and I thought ‘huh, that’s clearly PR for this company AptiQuant’ and left it there. I never smelled a hoax, I just didn’t see it worth looking into any further. More on that in a moment.

However, it turns out it was a hoax after all, and soon after some digging work by the BBC uncovered the reality behind the story, newspapers left right and centre updated their coverage to reveal the massive hoax, how everyone had been had and how it was all the fault of one wag who made up the story. Again, more on THAT in a moment too.

The wag in question was one Tarandeep Gill, a web developer pissed off at having to keep supporting ie6 when it’s an old and useless browser, and figuring the story would be a fun way to shame people into upgrading and generally make them aware of the fact that ie6 should be phased out.

What I find particularly interesting is that at the same time that Tarandeep’s quote ‘elaborate hoax’ was being picked apart in the media, detailing how he fooled them and how his con trick was undone by good old-fashioned journalism, the following stories were in the newspaper:

From the Daily Mail:

It has always been considered rude to ask a lady her age. But it seems it’s also a step too far to inquire of her shoe size.

Women are becoming increasingly touchy about the length of their feet as average sizes go up.

Many are embarrassed because they think having large feet is masculine.

The result, according to a study, is that half of women fib to their friends and partners about the size of their shoes.

And 82 per cent of those with size eight or nine feet say their large footprint makes them feel particularly ashamed.

Debenhams, which carried out the research, said soaring demand for size nine shoes had prompted it to increase stocks of larger sizes by 80 per cent.

So, women are ashamed and embarrassed about their big feet, says store advertising a change in its larger-sized-shoe policy.

From the Guardian:

A culture of celebrity and television shows such as Big Brother and The Apprentice have impaired the confidence of a generation of British youngsters, according to a survey of 16- to 24-year-olds.

The research, overseen by academics from Teesside University, found that 82% of British youngsters said the UK’s celebrity culture had created “unachievable role models” which were damaging to their self-esteem.

Teesside youth and communities expert Professor Tony Chapman said the representative sample of 1,500 young adults was part of a long-term study into youth attitudes undertaken by O2, the mobile phone company, looking at the generation who entered adulthood and the job market during the downturn.

O2, of course, being the mobile phone providers who were the primary sponsor of Big Brother for the time it was on Channel 4.

From the Telegraph:

A fifth of married couples go a full week without kissing – with older people among the least romantic.

Even when couples do kiss it is usually a quick affair lasting no more than five seconds, according to a survey.

But younger sweethearts are more romantic with those aged between 18 and 24 saying they lock lips with a partner 11 times a week on average.

The findings have been released to launch a campaign by the British Heart Foundation to teach lifesaving skills such as the kiss of life to school children as part of the national curriculum.

And from the Mail again:

The magical combination of 6-7-8 has been hailed by psychologists as the happiest time of the year.

The sixth day at 7pm in the eighth month – or 7pm on August 6 – is the day people feel most content because of the high temperatures, school holidays and prospect of a summer break.

A study by loyalty scheme Nectar revealed that we smile most between 7pm and 8pm each day, are at our cheeriest on Saturdays and love August more than any other month.

And from the Express:

THE average family kitchen is the setting for 384 arguments, 192 heart-to-hearts, 26,280 meals – and seven sex romps, a study revealed yesterday.

Researchers found the typical family lives in a house for eight years during which time their kitchen sees the entire spectrum of life.

It will play host to 16 burned dinners, 1,824 kisses and six life-changing decisions. And it will be redecorated and refurbished twice.

The study also revealed 13 per cent of couples decide to get married after a kitchen discussion while 15 per cent settle for a divorce.

The survey of 3,000 people was commissioned by Siemens Home Appliances to mark the launch of a fridge freezer.

And from the Express:

RESEARCHERS have uncovered the top 20 tricks women use to make themselves feel seductive.

And it seems the oldest methods are the best – including lipstick with matching nail varnish and an alluring hint of cleavage.

Interestingly, a simple spray of favourite perfume comes top of the list for helping women feel sexy. A new hairdo and a happy smile also rank highly.

Women also hailed settling down into a warm bath, showing off their well-maintained legs and wearing a push-up bra as quick fixes for achieving the “it” factor.

The report also revealed that the average woman only feels truly irresistible once a week – usually on a Saturday night.

Sara Wolverson of Superdrug, which commissioned the research, said: “This poll clearly indicates that while women know exactly what they have to do in order to feel sexy, they obviously aren’t doing it often enough.

These are all from around the same week as the AptiQuant hoax, and trust me I could go on. And this is what I think is particularly interesting about the IQ hoax story – it’s an interesting definition of the word ‘hoax’. The hoaxer, Gill, identified a goal – to get the media to cover the crapness of ie6, invented some realistic-sounding findings – IE6 users are dumb, and presented the press release-friendly story as if true. And this was the ‘elaborate’ hoax the media congratulated themselves on seeing through and giggled about having been ‘had’ by.

Whereas we’ve seen a kitchen appliance brand, reward card scheme, cosmetics shop or whatever identify a goal – getting their name in the press, generating some realistic-sounding findings (often through the biased survey tactics and dodgy research methods I’ve gone over many times), and then presenting a press-release-friendly story as if it’s true… and that’s the news. Nobody says a word. It gets printed as if it wasn’t a carbon fucking copy of the method used by Gill.

It’s kinda like calling out a Bigfoot film as a hoax, because it was faked by an amateur rather than faked by a Bigfoot-film-faking professional. The fact is, it wasn’t so elaborate a hoax. The real elaborate hoax is the dodgy marketing researchers and public relation firms who not only successfully push the products that form their goals AND make a living out of this kind of thing, but even make the journalists who print their work completely oblivious to the fact that in so many cases, there’s almost nothing to tell them from the hoaxers they congratulate themselves in over-turning.

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.

Apparently, Croatian doctors are baffled after a teenage girl who fell into a mysterious coma woke up speaking fluent German. The teenager has been unable to speak Croatian – although can understand it when it is spoken to her – and now communicates only in German.

Pretty off-the-wall I think you’ll agree. This is the kind of thing that would have steadfast believers in past lives screaming “Proof!” in very loud voices, particularly if this unfortunate teenager didn’t speak German beforehand. Going by the tone of the article, you would think that this is what had actually happened. That would be a bona-fide miracle. However, despite it’s ‘mysterious event’ tone, the article is quick to point out that the girl in fact did know ‘a bit’ of German, although apparently her usage of the language following the coma was far superior to the mastery of the language she had when she was intially taken ill.

Apparently. (I’m getting used to that word, now.)

The parents of the girl, a thirteen-year-old from the Southern town of Knin, said that their daughter had only just started studying German at school and had been trying to read German books and watch German television – but had never been that good at german.

Yes. She was ‘studying’ it, ‘reading’ it and ‘watching’ TV programs in it, but despite all that she was, you know, a bit rubbish…

Excuse me while I prop up my dying sense of hope in a rational world and try to shake it violently awake.

The article is filled with references to the “mysterious coma” and “the unusual case”, and speaks of “getting to the bottom of the mystery”. It really tries its best to make it all seem as mystical and impossible-seeming as it can. Despite this, they are forced in their final paragraph to point out that the coma only lasted twenty-four hours and was probably caused by extremely high body temperature. So it seems as if the doctors aren’t quite as baffled as the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh axis of evil suggests.

In fact, the hospital director, Dujomir Marasovic, said:

“You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient.”

I like to think that the girl was a secret foreign languages junkie, staying up late in her room at night with a torch under the covers, speaking fluent German to herself.

Of course, the case is still unusual. A psychiatrist involved with the case, Dr Mijo Milas, wisely pointed out that:

“In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle; we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation – it’s just that we haven’t found it yet.”

Fair enough, and about as skeptical as you get in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh. Unfortunately, the wise Dr Milas then goes on to say:

“There are references to cases where people who have been seriously ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that in old Babylon or Egypt – at the moment though any speculation would remain just that – speculation – so it’s better to continue tests until we actually know something.”

Damn right it is! Personally I’d love to see ANY evidence of people suddenly speaking ancient languages following a coma, because I’m willing to bet money that if anyone ever did, they were probably students of ancient languages!

Gaahh…

That was the last gasp of my hope in a rational world.

Now, to the girl’s condition itself. The brain does funny things. People with brain injuries can lose short term memory, forget their own families, forget how to speak, all kinds of bizarre and unusual things. Severe stutterers can sometimes sing and speak their second languages fluently. Aphasia sufferers speak the wrong words because they simply can’t access the right ones, even though they’re attempting to make perfect sense, and grammatically they do. If this coma affected the parts of the girl’s brain which dealt with speech and language, I see no technical reason why something like this couldn’t happen. You don’t even need to be personally ‘fluent’ in the language as such. There is a gap between the amount of information you absorb and how efficiently and capably you can use that information. This girl may very well have read and heard more German words than she could personally recall consciously in a conversation. Somewhere she will have taken in that information, but just not immediately processed it for her conscious mind.

In addition, I would probably dispute the supposed high level of German she purportedly now speaks. That to me sounds like simple exaggeration, provided by those around the girl and then amplified by the reporters themselves. However, I can’t know that for sure, so I’ll leave that.

This story is fascinating and amazing on its own. Even if she woke only speaking the five words of German she knew and none of her first language, that would be fascinating enough on its own. It infuriates me when newspapers feel they have to portray stories like this in almost mystical terms, as if they’re reporting on a miracle. No: give us the facts, we’ll decide whether it’s a miracle or not. This tends to happen a lot with stories from abroad. I suspect it is because it makes it more difficult for readers and other journalists to verify the truthfulness of those stories. Indeed, I tried my best to find a source for this story outside of the identical articles in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh but found absolutely nothing.

In fact, I’m not sure it even exists. Maybe it’s all just made up.

What a miracle!

Fake orgasm story? Trot out a Meg Ryan pic

To help me vent my frustration and ongoing obsession with the dodgy PR stories that make the papers on a daily basis, I thought I’d start a bit of a ‘BadPR’ series, taking a look at stories as they appear in the papers, the press release that inspired them (often word-for-word inspiration, no less), and the companies who benefit. Regular readers of the blog will know the score, and irregular readers of the blog will soon pick it up, so without further intro I give you today’s offering:

Ex girls top at fake fun

The fake orgasm capital of Britain is Exeter, claims a new survey. A whopping 57 per cent of women in the Devon town admit to feigning it. Meanwhile, girls in Oxford were happiest in bed with only a third faking their big O. Nationally, one in 10 women admits acting most times. And a fifth said they thought about another man if they wanted satisfaction. – Source: The People

And, alternatively:

Poor show, chaps: Survey reveals nearly one in ten women fake it between the sheets

It is enough to make even the most confident lover a little worried. One in ten women fake an orgasm almost every single time they make love, according to a poll. Researchers found that 48 per cent of British women had faked the height of passion. But an Oscar-worthy 9 per cent admitted it happened every time they have sex. Seven per cent have ended a relationship because they were unsatisfied in bed but just one in ten of those told their partner the real reason for the break-up.  

Not surprisingly, one in five women claims to be extremely unhappy with their sex life, with 16 per cent complaining about a lack of foreplay, and 11 saying their partner orgasms too quickly. Even more worrying for men, the poll of 3,000 women revealed that almost 38 per cent of women reckon their partner would struggle to tell the difference between a real and fake orgasm. One in five women even admitted to thinking about another man in bed to help them reach orgasm, with a famous actor or a male friend the most popular people to fantasise about. - Source: Daily Mail

So, answers on a postcard – who do you think’s behind this? Let’s take a look at the themes of the story – half of women in Exeter are sexually dissatisfied, 10% of UK women aren’t fulfilled by their men, a fifth want other men; men are bad at sex, men don’t know what they’re doing, even men who are confident in bed should worry, men’s poor performance is often the reason for the end of a relationship.

Pretty much an anti-men message there, then. The aim of both articles seems to be to undermine men and make them doubt their performance. Any clues yet? Let’s take a look at the press release the articles were taken from:

FAKE IT

One in ten women fake an orgasm almost every single time they have sex, a new study has found. Researchers found that a whopping 48 per cent of British women have faked it in bed, with nine per cent admitting they do it most of the time, or even every time they have sex. Seven per cent have even dumped their other half because they didn’t satisfy them in bed, but just one in ten of those told them the real reason for the break-up. Not surprisingly, one in five women claims to be extremely unhappy with their sex life, with 16 per cent complaining about a lack of foreplay, and 11 saying their partner orgasms too quickly. - Source: One Poll (bless em)

Wow, that’s uncannily almost word-for-word what appeared in the papers! Funny that. Read on…

A spokesman for Stimul8, a fruit flavoured energy soft drink reputed for its aphrodisiac and performance enhancing ingredients, which commissioned the survey said: ”It appears guys in the UK have their work cut out if one in five women are saying they are extremely unhappy with their sex life. ’But it’s not all down to the blokes as women need to communicate a bit more with their partner to let them know what it is they really want. ’Although it may be down to tiredness or stress, if a guy isn’t doing it right, he’s not going to know unless he is told.”

I think we can stop there. “Stimul8, a fruit flavoured energy soft drink reputed for its aphrodisiac and performance enhancing ingredients”. So this is all to peddle a soft drink with dubious ‘reputed’ claims to aphrodisiac properties. Interesting wording – note how the claims are not only softened by ‘reputed’, they’re also attached to the ingredients, not the drink. Because claiming it about the drink, would require substantiation, and would be liable to ASA complaints. However, it seems you can makes claims about the ‘reputed’ benefits of ingredients, without needing to back it up with proof.

Do you like sex? Are you a susceptible moron? Then you should buy... Stimul8!

For completion, let’s take a look at the Stimul8 website – ooohh, bikini-clad girls, loud Nuts-style fonts and lots of shots of the magic liquid (erm, I mean Stimul8 there!), all hidden behind an age-verification warning. Attached to a press release aimed at undermining a guy’s sexual confidence. In order to sell a drink which claims to ‘enhance performance’:

Stimul8® is designed to enhance your performance. It comes in a discreet 60ml bottle so you can give yourself the edge anytime, anyplace, anywhere. We think this is the fruitiest tasting shot product on the market.

This fruity little number is packed with a special blend of leaves, roots and berries derived from Damiana, Korean Ginseng, Echinacea, Schizandra and Ginkgo Biloba – all renowned for their aphrodisiac properties. Add to that energy boosting L-Arginine, Caffeine, Anthocyanin, plus sugars and you’ve got a heady liquid performance enhancer.

I checked – all of those ingredients are indeed ‘renowned’ for their aphrodisiac properties (if by ‘renowned’ you accept ‘sometimes claimed to have’)… however, try and find a herb that hasn’t been claimed to have aphrodisiac properties. Really, try – I did: Marapuama, Catuba, Cajueiro, Suma, Maca, Avena Sativa, Yohumbune, Ajwain (aka Bishop’s Weed), Ashwaghandha, Shitawari and even Hemp (hemp for fuck’s sake!) were all claimed to have such properties on a single page I picked out of Google. It turns out, if you’re going to make up a property for a herb, a good one to pick is one that men are prone to be susceptible to – sexual performance. And with newspapers, PR departments and fucking soft drinks trying to perpetuate these fears for gain, it’s easy to see why this sexual hang-up persists.

Thanks for playing.

Sources

• The People –  http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=ex-girls-top-at-fake-fun%26method=full%26objectid=22109518%26siteid=93463-name_page.html
• Daily Mail – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256134/Poor-chaps-Survey-reveals-nearly-women-fake-sheets.html
• OnePoll – http://www.onepoll.com/press-archive/survey-reveals–women-fake-it

Speaking of the Daily Mail and my own relative silence of late, here’s something uber-old-hat by now (news these days moves so fast) but I felt I had to write it up partly because a) it’s batshit insane, b) it’s a good example of how fallacious arguments are entirely interchangeably applicable to a whole range of topics and c) it gives me a chance to make some cheap gags:

Vaccines ‘are making our dogs sick as vets cash in’ - Source: Daily Mail (obviously).

See what I mean? Replace ‘dogs’ for ‘babies’ and ‘vets’ for ‘doctors’, and you’ve got a textbook anti-vaccination statement, a la Miss McCarthy. And it doesn’t stop there:

“Vaccines given to dogs are making them ill, a pet charity claimed yesterday. Profit-hungry drug companies and vets are ‘frightening’ dog owners into inoculating their pets more often than necessary, according to Canine Health Concern.”

If this isn’t PR for the Canine Health Concern charity, I don’t know what is. And it doesn’t stop there, either:

“Some puppies have developed conditions including autism and epilepsy after a raft of injections, it warns”

Yep – doggie autism. Doggie vaccines cause doggie autism, or so says the Canine Health Concern charity. Now, a few things to bear in mind:

• Vaccines don’t cause autism. That’s established fact.
• Dogs don’t have autism, or at least if they do it’s not caused by vaccines.
• Canine Health Concern is not a very large charity, and does not often get national news coverage the size their ‘Vaccines cause autism’ story has.

Those facts established, let’s continue in the Mail:

“Catherine O’Driscoll, from the charity, said: ‘We are not anti-vaccination. What we are saying is that currently our pets are receiving far too many. The latest scientific research shows that after the first course of injections as a puppy most dogs are immune against these diseases for at least seven years, if not for life. Every year pet vaccination companies hold National Vaccination Month, a national campaign when pet owners whose boosters have lapsed by 18 months or more are terrified into having their pet jabbed.”

Well, I’m sorry, Catherine, but that sounds pretty anti-vaccine to me. And it’s surely easy to see just how pot/kettle/black it is to speak of animal owners who are being terrified by Big Pharma into having their pet jabbed… with stuff that will give them AUTISM!!!!1!!11!!

This, of course, is the same non-anti-vaccination Catherine O’Driscoll who has written two anti-vaccination and anti-medicine books (‘What Vets Don’t Tell You about Vaccines‘ and ‘Shock to the System: The Facts about Animal Vaccination, Pet Food and How to Keep Your Pets Healthy‘) - the first page of one mentions going to a homeopathic vet who opened her eyes to how things really are; page two of the other book has Catherine admit she was a ‘science virgin’ and that ‘most of us – even the scientists – are science virgins’. Not to mention this beauty on page three:

“What nobody understands, and nobody seems to know, is how great the vaccination risk is. Will my dog die if I give him a vaccine? Will my child have brain damage if I give her a vaccine?” – Source: Shock to the System

Answer: No, Catherine, he won’t, and she won’t, and thanks for equating your dog’s life to that of your child’s.

So it’s hard to take Catherine seriously as a genuine source of unbiased, educated information. Well, it’s hard, unless you’re the Mail I mean. But then again, the Mail also ran with the back-up, super-proof tale of Charlie the Autistic Spaniel, whose owner told of his personality post-vaccination:

“Shutting a door or moving the washing basket terrified him. Then sometimes, despite calling his name, he wouldn’t even come to you… I simply cannot think of another explanation for the sudden change in his personality”

I can: He’s a fucking dog.

Elsewhere in the article, the Mail merrily quotes the letter produced by the crazy CHC and signed by ’17 vets and other pet experts’. Note that’s 17 total, not 17 vets AND other pet experts. And Catherine counts as a pet expert, remember. I wonder how many vets would sign a letter backing the use of vaccines… Fortunately, I know a vet, who I got straight onto the phone to – MSS member and sometime-blogger ‘Redwinelover‘, who quickly put paid to the notion that, as O’Driscoll suggests, a simple blood test would determine whether an animal needed a booster shot:

“It would actually be much more expensive to pay for the blood test to see if the dog is covered for the various diseases than it is to give one booster, as the booster shot can cover all the necessary vaccinations. There’s a certain percentage of dogs that will need the vaccination each time, so the best practice is to vaccinate yearly – after an extra 6 months past the booster date, 5-10%” of dogs are no longer immune; after an extra 12 months past the booster date that rises to 10-20%.

Also, vets are culpable if they were to forego vaccinating an animal and it develop the illness.”

What’s more, she confirmed to me that dogs don’t develop autism - or at least that there’s nowhere near enough personality work done on dogs to determine what robust diagnostic criteria would be for doggie autism.

So, I’ve been pretty disparaging of the CHC and O’Driscoll so far, and perhaps that seems harsh or ad-hom-y. Well, let’s take a brief look at the CHC website, and see if the criticism is justified.

“CHC advocates real food for dogs.  That is, food that Mother Nature has designed, over millions of years, and which has made the species thrive for millions of years.”

Ooh, an appeal-to-nature fallacy, combined with the sheer idiocy to overlook that ‘Mother Nature’ isn’t the one responsible for how food and vegetables are today – instead millenia of selective breeding by humans have moulded crops into the food we know today.

“Emotional Freedom Techniques - Based on impressive new discoveries involving the body’s subtle energies, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) has been clinically effective in thousands of cases for Trauma & Abuse, Stress & Anxiety, Fears & Phobias, Depression, Addictive Cravings, Children’s Issues and hundreds of physical symptoms including headaches, body pains and breathing difficulties.”

Ooh, some mystical reference to ‘subtle energies’ and a healing system so completely bonkers in adults that we’ve featured it several times.

And what’s this in their ‘Complementary Healthcare’ list?

Animal Life and Death:

So, when your animals don’t heal, despite what you see as your best efforts, it is not that you are failing in your duty, or seeming not to be capable of healing anyone or keeping anyone safe, it is just that they see their going as the next best step, their own path to healing of the spirit rather than of the physical body.

Back Flower Remedies:

There are 38 Flower Remedies, developed by Dr Bach with the aim of raising our vibrations so that we can hear our Spiritual Selves and fulfil our life purposes… If the dog becomes fixated on something that happened – for example, he heard a loud bang outside and now refuses to go into the garden, then White Chestnut can help him get the distressing event out of his mind and carry on with life.

Contacts – including details for:

I think it’s fair to say O’Driscoll and the Canine Health Concern charity aren’t the most reliable, sensible, sane sources of animal health information. Quick, someone call the Mail and tell them they’ve made a mistake, I’m positive they’ll issue a correction…