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.

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!

“We are music, health and education audio and book publishers. We specialize in music medicine, music instruction, weight loss , alternative therapies and film scoring“

An eclectic mix there, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m sure you’ll also allow me to skip over the film scoring and piano lessons, and get right down to the good stuff – taking a look at the alternative therapies on offer, this film-scoring-music-guru will merrily peddle you products for ‘Internal Cleansing‘, weight loss products and books, as well as – amazingly – a weight loss photo. Which is literally just a photoshopped photo of the current-sized-You, adjusted in order to make you look slimmer. And black and white. Apparently, this is a great motivational technique. Yeah.

On top of all that, the good maestro advises on a dangerous-sounding 10-Point Colon Cleanse – because, I don’t know about you, but I always take digestive advice from someone with a B.A. degree in piano performance (from UCLA, no less).Surprisingly, Howard’s not a doctor, or any kind of science-acquainted person. In fact, one of the few things I particularly like about the site is that his bio describes him as being an ‘unlikely “expert” in the field of weight loss.’

You can say that again.

Still, his weight loss ideas are nothing compared to his other field of expertise – music medicine. Music. Medicine. It’s these claims that I particularly took interest in, and I’m quoting the website here:

Music Therapy for Transformation

Sound Feelings music therapy for transformation offers drug-free audio products for specific illnesses and conditions. Our recordings provide a music therapy alternative to traditional expressive arts therapy. Self-help entrainment music resolves stress and blocks which encourages a relaxing recovery. The following medical music titles are piano instrumentals geared for mind/body self-reflection, cellular release and self-improvement. See also: homeopathic music, designer music, therapeutic music, energy medicine.

Yikes.

As you can imagine, I had a lot of questions regarding the information on the site, and the health credentials of a man who describes himself as having use of music to heal. I mean, who wouldn’t have questions about that? Fortunately, I found the following:

Sound Feelings frequently asked questions (FAQS) about our alternative medicine and music instruction products. Hopefully you will find answers to your questions about our self-help stress management and music training tools

Excellent, an FAQ! And what’s the only question in the FAQ?

Why is your company spamming me?

Yikes! Things are not always as they seem. It may appear as if Sound Feelings is spamming you or that we are sending you viruses! But we are not. We have NEVER done anything like that and we are very angry that other people are implicating us and we are very, very sorry for any inconvenience that you may have experienced due to this fiasco.

So it’s a site which offers miraculous, magic music, who’s main and most-asked question is regarding their spamming practices. No, no, that’s entirely normal, that’s how all health advice tends to work…

At this juncture, you’re doubtlessly curious as to how these miracle-melodies sound, right? How about a sample?

• Feeling stressed? Not a problem! Simply listen to this clip and feel your stress melt away!
• Feeling fat? Not a problem! Simply listen to this clip and feel that fat melt away!
• Suffering from AIDS or Cancer? Not a problem! Simply listen to these clips and feel your AIDS and/or Cancer melt away!

Unbelievable. Fortunately, the website does offer instruction on how to best use the tapes to fight cancer:

“The listener should be process-oriented rather than goal-oriented to appreciate this music for cancer”

I guess this makes total sense, after all if you go around being goal-oriented you might expect your cancer to be cured by the music…

For the pedants amongst you, the full list of illnesses and ailments the Music Man Who Comes From Down The Way can cure (What Can He Cu-re?) reads:

The following information gives you guidelines on creating your own healing music sequence, even if you do not play an instrument! However, for your convenience, you may wish to use music that has already been created for this purpose.

If so, you may purchase our music for specific illnesses and conditions, including: stress, chronic pain, insomnia, addictions, smoking, cardiovascular illnesses, post-traumatic-stress syndrome, TMJ, panic disorder/anxiety, overweight, anorexia, bulimia, depression, low self-esteem, stress, creative or emotional blocks, anger, fear, sadness, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, inner child processing (adults), stress and insomnia for the pregnant woman, anxiety and pain during birth, colic and anxiety in the newborn infant, breastfeeding, emotional armor, conflicts, infertility, cancer, anger, AIDS, infection, fear, lack of self-respect, immune system suppression, scleroderma, dementia anxiety, death and dying, frustration, individual transformational music, self-reflection, heightened awareness, relaxation, and inspiration.

Excellent. Some deeper digging around the site produced an extended FAQ, with the following

Has the music been tested anywhere?

We have letters from people from all over the world praising the benefits of the tapes for various situations. However, because we have not yet acquired clinical documentation, no cures or claims are implied. Since 1984, we have actually invited over 150 agencies and universities to become involved in testing our music. Unfortunately, funding always seems to be the issue.

In short – no, it’s not been tested.

Even if we were to come up with the huge funding required ourselves, would this self-funded research satisfy the hardened skeptic? Probably not. Our suggestion is to try the music and to take advantage of our 90-day, no-risk guarantee.

No-risk? Take this music CD to cure your AIDS/Cancer, and if it doesn’t work you get your money back?!

Another Frequently Asked Question reads:

Why do certain parts of the music seem irritating to me?

Well, I can answer that one – because it’s dangerous pseudoscientific bullshit. And it doesn’t even sound nice to listen to.

The research was published in the international peer-reviewed journal Acupuncture in Medicine, and was carried out by eight dentists, including the research leader Dr Palle Rosted. It involved twenty people, each of whom spent five minutes recieving treatment in the chair prior to their check-up, with needles placed at two specific acupuncture points on their head reputed to aid relaxation(for those who care, the points were GV20 and EX6). The patients were asked to rate how anxious they felt before and after the acupuncture using a scale known as the Beck Anxiety Inventory (how much of an experimental Beck album you can listen to before you start to prefer going to the dentist’s). Scores on the BIA typically fell from 26.5 to 11.5 after the acupuncture.

All patients were in their forties, and had had the phobia for between two and thirty years. Many had tried other methods, including hypnosis and relaxation techniques, but none had apparently worked for them. I have to wonder whether these were done right before the check-up like the acupuncture was? It seems to me that this could make all the difference in drawing a qualified conclusion.

The small sample size is also a problem, although Dr Rosted does acknowledge this:

“Although it’s a small number of patients that we’ve looked at, all of the patients benefited. These were patients who would have previously run screaming out of the door or would have to have been held down by a dental assistant to have their teeth checked.”

Bloody hell, I’d be scared of the dentist’s if they forcibly held me down!

The big problem for me here apart from the small sample size is the reliability of the patients’ self-assessment. Simply asking them how they felt doesn’t seem to me to be solid enough as evidence. However, all twenty patients were apparently able to go through with the check-up following the acupuncture and I don’t think it would be unskeptical to accept the researchers’ claims that bigger studies are now warranted. If something is potentially going on here other than placebo, we need to attempt to know for sure, even if it’s just to rule it out.

What I would like to know is over how many years this study was carried out, and how many visits it covered. To emphasise how badly the patients suffered from their phobia, the report points out that on dentist visits prior to the study, three of the patients had to be knocked out with general anaesthetic, six needed strong sedatives, and on fourteen occasions treatment had to be cancelled because the patient could not go through with it. What we don’t hear is how many times it wasn’t cancelled. Maybe some of these patients had successfully visited the dentist more often than they’d had to leave. Maybe all fourteen cancellations were the same person. Also, was the treatment on each of these occasions different? Were they all just check-ups or did they involve fillings or other more intrusive procedures: there’s a big difference between a metal stick in your mouth and a drill. Other small but important facts we need to know are whether the cancellations were early visits or later ones. The patients may have chickened out the first few times, but made many subsequent successful visits since. We are not being given enough information to make a realistic judgement.

The news report claims that Dr Rosted denies the results were due to the placebo effect, and that the acupuncture was ‘doing something’. It also claims that Rosted says that anecdotal evidence suggests acupuncture could help even when patients need more complex treatments like extractions or fillings, not just check-ups. Although it may not be suitable for those who also have a fear of needles!! 

Silliness aside, the news report doesn’t present Rosted as the most scientifically minded person. However, on researching various reports on the same story I quickly realised that not once anywhere is there a direct quote from Dr Rosted putting forth these more debatable claims, and I suspect that this is probably a case of journalistic misrepresentation and that Dr Rosted has actually done nothing more than conduct a reasonable study in a reasonable manner. The woo in this article seems to be wafting from the journalist’s direction. It’s worth pointing out that it is Rosted himself who says that more study is needed, too.

Ah, journalism, where did you go?

Researchers are now planning a randomised controlled trial with more patients to test the therapy against sham acupuncture. I for one welcome any attempt to further our knowledge. It is the only way you can excise bunk from medicine and science. Personally, I’m not convinced there’s anything to acupuncture beyond placebo, and I think there’s some wishful thinking going on here, but these kind of trials need to be done. Researchers’ jobs would be a lot easier though if it wasn’t for needlessly subjective and suggestive ‘journalism’ such as this. But that’s a rant for another day.

The youth of Japan are apparently currently obsessed with a new selection of ringtones created by a company called the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory. This isn’t another ‘Crazy Frog’ though.  If it was, I would have shot myself rather than write this post. No, it’s something altogether more interesting, although just as moronic. These ringtones are “therapeutic ringtones”. Yes, forget acupuncture, hypnotherapy or the pleasures of a good sit down: simply play the ringtone on your phone and all your cares and health troubles will float away down the winding river of easy cures, along with your wallet and your self respect. Only in Japan. Well, for now.

The Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory has good credentials. Its head, Matsumi Suzuki, used to work for the National Research Institute of Police Science, where he made award-winning advances in the field of voiceprints. He also developed the now well-known synthetic mosquito noise that is inaudible to the over-60s but apparently annoys the hell out of local good-for-nothing kids who like to hang around outside off-licenses. Incidentally, this can also be found on mobile phones around the world, usually played by good-for-nothing kids who like to hang around outside off-licenses, and playing with their mobile phones.

Suzuki followed up this sterling work by becoming head of the aformentioned Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, and producing stupid novelty ringtones. Perfectly logical career step, I think you’ll agree.

So what are these “therapeutic ringtones”? Put simply, they’re just ringtones, but with an added (and made-up) therapeutic twist. We’re going way beyond soothing pan-pipes and whale-song here, though. There’s no shortage of conditions and problems they can’t combat. Here’s a brief selection of what they can do:

- Cure a hangover.

- Induce sleep.

- Prevent sleep.

- Scare away crows (apparently Tokyo has a big problem with crows attacking bin bags in the early hours).

- Inspire sluggardly housewives into doing housework (sexism not mine!).

- Improve your skin tone using alpha waves (maybe it’s just the glow from the screen?).

- Alleviate hayfever.

The ringtone for alleviating hayfever is my favourite. It is called the Ohana Sukkuri melody, and it is basically a series of sounds emitted at different frequencies so that, in the company’s words: “people can choose the sound that resonates most to their sinus and causes pollen lodged there to fall from the nasal cavity”.

I love the image of Japanese teenagers holding their chirping mobile phones against their noses in the middle of summer in the hope that pollen will somehow vibrate out of their nasal cavity. Couldn’t they just blow their nose? Jeez, next we’ll be brushing our tongues with our toothbrushes! Ah, no wait..

The ringtone for improving skin tone is apparently a bit of electro-Schubert mixed with woodland noises, while the one intended to rouse bored housewives is a high-energy rhythm. The ringtone intended to induce sleep is basically a lullaby, while its opposite is a dance track. A lot of thought has gone into this, I’m sure. Maybe there’s one which plays Coldplay-style dirges to calm down people who suffer from mania? Or you could have the sound of the Pope’s head being cut off with a rough plank to wake up fainting victims. The variations are endless!

As I’m sure you all guessed long ago, these ringtones are complete tat, and quite frankly I think even the kids buying them know this. It’s just a bit of fun, and harmless I suppose, but I’m feeling in an evil Skeptic mood today, so have no problem deriding this nonsense loudly in an aggressive manner in order to get cheap laughs. Both the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory and Index, the content provider which sells the tones, fully admit there is no scientific evidence for any of them, yet still throw out euphemistic lines to reel people in: for example, while there is no evidence of the hayfever ringtone’s pollen-shaking power, it is apparently “generally understood” that it will work. That’s ok, then. Yes, let’s bite the bit of made-up anecdotal evidence and run, run like the wind! Therapeutic ringtones worked for me!

We also have Index’s comment that “the number of downloads suggests the ringtones must be working to a certain extent”, as well as authoritative scientific statements such as the one about how the hangover-cure “pulse melodies” are attuned to our bodies’ “medical rhythms”.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Made-up science follows the same patterns the world over, kind of like the way bullshit smells the same no matter what country you live in.

Of course, as I said before, it’s just a fad. Come next year the youth of Japan will have a new distraction, and no-one will have been hurt or damaged by the flash-flood of woo they’ve just experienced, but that doesn’t stop it being as annoying as a fat, naked frog riding a motorbike and making stupid noises. Plus, there’s one important thing you’ve got to remember: it might only be Japan now, but it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way to these shores.

Don’t worry, you could just relax with your new ringtone.

Enter our hero of the hour, Ms/iss/rs(?) Beverley Turner, and her little excursion into something one or two of you will recognise…

“Even though I have this feeling, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Got it yet?

*Taps Karate Chop Point 7 times*

“This Feeling” – including this wonderful comment by helloish123:

“Thank You…. This really works… I did this tapping today, $1200 cash all in $100 bills came to me unexpectedly. I had others ask to borrow money from me and I paid them both cash of what they asked me for and SOLD a house as well… I focused on releasing blockage of money flow. This works….enjoy jamie”

Yes, that’s it…  I can see the wide-eyed look of incredulity spreading like across your face like warm butter across hot toast:  The one and only – the 100% totally not “woo-woo or anything new-agey like that”, oh no – Emotional Freedom Technique and its merry entailment of gobshitery, insanity (“It could be long line in the fast food restaurant (sic) and I would feel like ripping slow people’s heads off – straight to EFT I go.”) and outrageous claims of efficacy over anything ranging from feeling a bit under the weather, to a lack of mathematical ability, to headaches, to short-sightedness (with added, extra quantum-woo) and, of course, the big one that they have to be able to claim:  Cancer.

Yes, this article – no relation to “This Feeling” – published in the Telegraph-ing horseshit to the masses – and penned by that presenter off of ‘Taste’, apparently, on Sky3 (does that channel really exist, or is it a barely noticed apparition in our collective subconscious?), is married to an Olympic gold medal winner, apparently, and now, apparently, qualified to flood the national psyche with healthcare advice which, in her own words, makes you “feel a bit of a wally” undertaking it.  I know, Bev, you must have felt a bit of a wally picking up that cheque as well…

Still.. It’s only about a bit of tapping, giggling and sticking it to The Man and his pesky Treatments-That-Actually-Work-But-I-Don’t-Understand in London’s LaLaLand of  well-monied, but missing-a-screw-or-two set, isn’t it?  No harm done, eh?  Of course not.

Apart from the harm you’re doing in directing people towards a nonsense non-treatment that, with a laugh and a joke, a nod and a wink, tells the credulous mass who have been conditioned to taking all manner of advice from ‘celebrities’, even homeopathic celebrities (almost certainly no celeb…  you see where I’m going), that they can stop taking their medication, because “…it (EFT) may may (sic) substantially reduce or eliminate diabetes symptoms….”

This insane article doesn’t, in itself, promote the use of EFT for severe physical conditions, but it does recommend this treatment for severe psychological trauma, with nothing but scant, ridiculously biased and credulous anecdotes as ‘evidence’.  The person doing this promotion has absolutely no right, no qualification and no hard facts to fall back on in defence of this piece.  It reeks of advertising dressed up as journalism, written with the force of semi-celebrity behind it, and immediately creditable via its publication in a broadsheet with a circulation close to 1.9 million readers per day.

Beverley Turner writes silly, trite books about her terrible time in the really, terribly machismo, anti-feminist world of F1 (dog bites man, news at 11); presents a terribly pro-feminist, err, middle-class TV cookery show and comments on healthcare that a good portion of almost 2,000,000 readers/day will ingest uncritically.  This person has a dream-like life, apparently untouched by the heinous tragedies that she then uses as pseudo-evidence for this PR piece, or to give it the old-fashioned name ’propaganda’, for people who want to sell 21^st Century Snake-Oil-as-Talk-Therapy to the masses.

I wonder if she’s happy to Telegraph credibility towards EFT for diabetes as promoted by its founder, Mr Gary – Slugbrows – Craig?

She, and the Telegraph are living in fantasyland, but not everyone can join them.  Most of us are stuck in the real world.

And what is it to have your middle-class, fashionable food fantasies brought, nodding and winking into the real world?

As most of our attempts at recreating Delia will testify:  A Nightmare.

I was so overcome with joy when I discovered what I am about to tell you that I am now writing with my eyes full of salty tears, warm and wet with emotion… Friends! I come to you with Good News!

Are you – a beautiful, delicate human soul – suffering from some sort of emotional pain, or physical ailment? Do your unique thoughts blossom as the daisies in the meadow, but often gravitate onto grave issues that induce effects from the mild melancholic to chronic, debilitating depression, perhaps interfering with your mathematical abilities? Do intrusive, perhaps obsessive thoughts on your disruptive encounters with precious friends or beloved family trouble you in your daily life, causing a phobia of lifts or dyslexia? Are the ongoing effects of war and rape pushing up your golf handicap, troubling your urination or just leaving you with an untidy room?

• Would you like to completely overcome all of these problems and many more in just minutes?
• Would you like to harness the completely unverifiable, but incredibly powerful meridian and chakra knowledge of the ancient Chinese? Then…

*shudders* For a minute there, I felt like a Chopra.

Where was I?

Ah yes! What we all really want in these twisted, perverted modern times is the ability to have all of our guilty pleasures without any of the guilt, take heart from our healthy pleasures without spending time on them, in short to have our horseshit without the pressing need for a horse. Sugar-free sweets, fat-free butter, exertion-free exercise, arsenic-free arsenic solution, cure-free cures and, of course, needle-free acupuncture.

Those deliciously died brows, like a pair of slugs engaged in a fireside chat over a light ale, hang upon the gentle brow of the ‘genius’ that is the inventor of our needle-free future, Gary Craig. Gary has brought us the impossible dream, a therapy so advanced that it will literally solve all of humankind’s emotional and physical problems, while leaving those blessed beings touched by this healing only with the lingering effects of being tapped. Yes! Gary – who isn’t the love child of Richard Dawkins and Jackie Stewart, despite those glorious brows – screams at us, though really I’m sure his tapping has calmed him to the point where he barely whispers his message, that the Emotional Freedom Technique (emofree.com – yes. Emofree. And?) is “a powerful new discovery that combines two well-established sciences”. What are these two well-established sciences? Well I’m glad you asked, and so is Gary. Here’s the list:

Mind Body Medicine.

Acupuncture (without needles).

At this point I started to wonder which dictionary this chap uses when he throws around a term like ‘science’ in relation to ‘acupuncture’ (which is surely just ‘acu’ if the puncturing is dropped, no?), leaving aside ‘Mind Body Medicine’ which is as empty and fatuous a term as anyone who spends a few minutes digging around in google is likely to find. Why would anyone think acupuncture is a science?

Well, there are scientific studies that find some benefit from acupuncture, so it might be reasonable to accept that and go along with the wisdom of the ancient Chinese. … Unless you look at the scientific studies that show acupuncture is ineffective, or look to the studies that show sham acupuncture as at least, sometimes more effective than ‘proper’ acupuncture. Acupuncture works by convincing people, through ritual, authority and the fairly scary procedure involved, that it will be effective, producing a classic conditioned response. More salivating dog than salvation from dog-eaters.

So how does it work then? Well, for an ‘authoritative’ guide there’s a free e-book or two floating around and a suite of videos on that there youtube to bring you well up to speed, like this one from tapping.org – that’s right…tapping.org.

What?

Anyway, the video:

It does ask you to suspend your disbelief for a while… perhaps the rest of your life, in fact. The soothing music certainly helps in that regard, but for those of you who are unwilling or unable to invest yourselves in 19 minutes of pure, unadulterated comedy, then here’s your brief, very brief, overview:

1. Cultivate the feeling you wish to work on.
2. Tap on a point on your body (The karate chop point on your hand is mentioned in that video)
3. Repeat a mantra of deeply-meaningful, meaningless nonsense. (“Even though I have this feeling, I deeply and completely accept myself.”)
4. Repeat

Then you need to ‘clear your nerve channels’ – I know that sounds ridiculously new-agey, and of course we wouldn’t want to be spouting anything ridiculously new-agey or “woo-woo” this is just a standing wave in a specific part of your nervous system that needs to be unblocked. No, really. They say this. With a straight face. Standing waves of negative energy blocking your nervous system.

Genius… Right, err… Clearing the nerve channel. Here we are:

1. Tap the bridge of your nose with two fingers and say “This feeling”.
2. Tap the side of your eye and say “This feeling”.
3. Repeat for under your eye, under the nose, on your chin while saying “This feeling”
4. With the flat of your hand, tap your collar bone and say, guess what?… “This feeling”
5. Back to tapping with your fingers, this time on your fingers and thumb, except for the ring finger (Which can be different in each culture. Strange to skip that… almost as though there’s nothing to this but bs… anyway… ) and, of course… “This feeling”

That’s it! And you don’t have to worry about getting it exactly right in exactly the right spot… it’s all connected and it all works…

So there we are with a debunked list of ‘well-established sciences’, a bizarre ritual and EFT (acu?) is standing proudly, chest puffed, atop the twin pillars of Empty Verbiage and Placebo – the foundations of woo are strong in this one. What mighty, intractable problems of modern life could possibly resist it?

Clearly, this isn’t a medical procedure, we want to make that quite clear from the off… You know, they’d get in trouble for saying that, and Gary goes out of his way to cover his arse on the front page:

“Nothing contained herein should be considered a medical claim or medical advice. For more, read our EFT Info and Disclaimer Document…”

Which is fair and right and just, we wouldn’t want people to think they could skip some of their pills, lotions, scans, samples, biopsies, injections, special dietary requirements, sessions or radiotherapy would we Gary? Of course we wouldn’t Gary. Well said, Gaz.

Hold on, Gary… What the fuck is this?

“…we urge you to bring these procedures to the attention of your physician(s) as they may reduce the need for drugs, surgeries, radiation and the like.”

So come on, what do you reckon this works for Gary?

Weight loss

OCD

ASTHMA

Abuse

Allergies

Bulimia

Smoking

Addictions

ADHD

Depression

Anorexia

DIABETES

PTSD

Phobias

Dyslexia

Detoxing

BLOOD PRESSURE

Headaches

Short/Long

Sightedness

Really, Gary? The root problem with Diabetes, Asthma and Blood Pressure is ‘emotional’? All we need to do to rid ourselves of these modern, killer plagues is tap away on our karate chop point? Is that it? Ahh… but we should remember, shouldn’t we, that you ‘urge’ people to go to their GP as they ’may’ be able to reduce their reliance on medicine that has unequivocal benefits based on the ‘benefits’ of this utter nonsense you’re peddling. These sensible, everyday people who are taking their advice on healthcare from the internet…

…and Short/Long sightedness? Are we supposed to believe that the changing shape of our eyes over time is in part or in whole due to emotional problems? What’s this about…

“At the end of each session, I give the client a one page EFT instruction sheet. I ask her to read it to ensure that the instructions match what we did in our session and I give her the instructions to use on her own. She picked up the sheet and said in astonishment, “I can read it without my glasses; I didn’t realize I was so angry it affected my vision.”

About a week later she gave me this testimonial. “I found that EFT relaxed me enough that my vision improved doing training and has remained as a lasting benefit.”

Rich Block” - Source: Emo Free

Rich Block. Richard Block.

Richard, or ‘Dick’.

Block, or ‘Head’.

This whole thing reads like a wind-up, and the videos seem like a really contrived comedy routine. The great and lasting sadness to all of this, for me, is that there are pharmacies who are involved in pushing this in our midst, there’s one about 100m from my door.

This woo factory: Orrell Park Therapy, is owned by its neighbour: Orrell Park Pharmacy, with Diana Cheung, as the trained pharmacist owner offering such ‘complimentary’ delights (in the medicine, rather than the free mint sense, one presumes):

Acupuncture

Reflexology

Aromatherapy

Hopi [Ear] Candles

Lymphatic Drainage Massage

Alexander Technique Reiki

And….

Emotional Freedom Technique

That’s right folks, you too can indulge yourself with a treatment of tapping karate points around your body while muttering nonsense for JUST 40 of your hard-earned, or ill-gotten, depending on your disposition, pounds.

I leave you with the words of what appears to be a fully qualified MD who pushes EFT. Eric Robins:

“…I’m not really a miracle worker at all, you just get used to seeing patients having really miraculous healings…”

Thanks, Mr Miracleworkerman. Pure. Comedy. Gold.

…and just to let you know, the temptation to misspell dyslexia up at the top was almost overpowering. Almost.

When: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 8.00 – 11.00 PM
Where: The Vines (aka the Big House), 81 Lime Street, Liverpool

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances our booked guest speaker Andy Lewis is unable to make this event. However, all is not lost – in honour of the first anniversary of the Merseyside Skeptics Society we’ve decided to replace Andy’s talk with a number of short talks on a variety of topics:

• Emotional Freedom Technique, by Allan Callister – a look at the latest craze for face-tapping therapy
• Bad Logic, Mike Hall – examining logical failures, with examples from the world of religion
• PR and the Media, Michael Marshall – how PR gained control of journalism, and where we go from here
• How Science Works, Tom Williamson – what is science, how do we do it and how do we know it works?

Plus, a live recording of the Skeptics with a K show.

Andy Lewis developed the web site quackometer.net that explores the pseudo-medical claims of alternative medicine web sites and their impact on society. Despite his detractors claims, he does not own a yacht in the South of France paid for by Big Pharma. He has yet to secure a single penny from such sources for his work.

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