Aromatheutics get slap on the wrist from the ASA.

Just a quick update on the quacks at Aromatheutics Ltd. They got the well deserved slap on the wrist by the ASA for their nonsense "PainSolv" device following my complaint.

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_45102.htm

Another success, but I can't help thinking we need a better method of policing. After making lots of money selling nonsense to the sick and vulnerable, they deserve a proper fine - not just a warning not to place the ad again. At the very least, any profits gained from the venture should be taken away.

If you can profit from this sort of thing even when you get caught, where is the incentive not to deceive?

Pamella - Deluded Clairvoyant?

With the current British weather being as it is, there isn't too much to do outside. Might as well get another reading.

Blaby was holding a Mind, Body & Soul fair. These fairs are usually jam-packed with psychics/mediums/clairvoyants, so I thought I'd pop along.

Now I wish to make an important point about my visits to these mystics. While I find it highly unlikely that they possess any sort of supernatural powers, I always go along with an open (albeit informed) mind and give them the opportunity to demonstrate their powers.

They don't normally get the opportunity to do this. Their usual punters, by giving information, do not allow them to show what information can be found by methods other than cold reading. The fact that to date, those I've visited have failed to demonstrate any other way of retrieving information is in no way due to lack of opportunity.

Happily, Pamella, a "medium" from Nottingham allowed me to record the entire session. She told me she doesn't normally record readings as the recorder doesn't pick her voice up very well. She put this down to the fact that she was partly "on a different plane".

Luckily, my Canon Digital Ixus 70 (a digital camera with built-in sound recorder) was able to pick up her voice quite well. I'd recommend this model to anyone wishing to pick up sound travelling "on a different plane". Those guys at Canon are geniuses.

As you'll hear from the MP3, most of it is ambiguous - but she does make the following verifiable/falsifiable claims:

• My mother's grandmother (didn't say which) was brought up on a farm, or within a rural type of environment and used to read tea leaves or playing cards and was "in spirit" before I was born. She used potions (1:48). I've no idea if this is true, but its not unreasonable in 1885, especially with my mother having 2 grandmothers.
  
• She suggested that I listen to "my boss" (06:59) This implies that I have a boss. MISS, I own my own business.
• I've got a promotion coming at work within 16 months (14:02). MISS, I'm at the top already.
  

I may have missed one - if you notice any more claims that are verifiable/falsifiable please add a comment and I'll review it.

It gets funny at 15:35:
Mystic:"So does all that make sense?"
Me: "Not really"
Mystic: "Well it does, and you see, erm, it does and this is will happen whatever is going on in your life. This is what will happen and you can't argue with cards."

At about 19:57, she starts to get annoyed and accuses me of not coming with the "right intention". I'm asked to leave.

It seems clear: If you don't give Pamella any information, she can't get it from anywhere else.

I don't think that Pamella is a fraud, I do think she genuinely believes that she has these powers. But if she is going to charge people for a service, she should first verify her ability to fulfil that service.

Download the MP3 here: http://www.mediafire.com/?jh0b5oi4mat

Joanne Jordan, Fraudulent Psychic Medium or just Deluded?

This morning, I made a telephone call to Star Crystals & Healing in Oadby, Leicester, who were hosting a psychic for the day to do "readings". Cold?

Thanks to the recent Consumer Protections from Unfair Trading Regulations 2007, "psychics" need to advertise their services as for "scientific experiments" unless they have evidence to back them up. As Joanne Jordan did not do this, I assumed she must be a genuine psychic with proven powers - so I phoned to check. The lady on the phone insisted that this "psychic" was for real. So I booked a session. And recorded it.

Rather unsurprisingly, if you don't tell Joanne Jordan, Psychic Medium everything, apparently she can't get it from either the cards or the dead.

After about 15 minutes (12:36 on the MP3 linked below) of Joanne not producing anything relevant and insisting that it works better if the communication was two-way, I got a bit bored and decided to see what happened if I fed her some false information. "Psychic baiting" is the term used for this by Ian Rowland, author of the excellent Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading.

Joanne Jordan was soon making contact with my father who died of cancer (he's currently on holiday in France and to my knowledge, cancer free and alive).

What was most worrying however, was when Joanne Jordan was telling me that the cards were showing that someone very close to me was lying to me, and implying that it was my wife. For a typical gullible punter, this could have destroyed their relationship. They'd be living in a state of permanent suspicion to their partner simply because this woman is able to get away with charging £35 to make stuff up.

So - is Joanne Jordan a Fraudulent Psychic Medium or is she just self-deluded? I'm not really sure. But even if it's the later, she's certainly guilty of charging for her "powers" before properly checking she's got them. As I've shown, it's not difficult to do a simple test.

You can hear the MP3 here: http://www.mediafire.com/?tg1mcmgwwa0

I'll try to do more similar recordings, though it will be difficult while I'm in Tignes.

Bioflow: Looks like some success with the ASA

(You can click on the image to see it full size)

Is my first fatwa on its way?

Leicester Secular Society had a talk/debate this evening on Shariah Law. The speaker was a Sharia "judge" from the Islamist organisation Sunnah Leicester.

The point of his argument was to argue in favour of implementing Shariah Law, and the basis of it was to compare the worst problems of various international societies past and present against Sharia Law. There were two main problems with the argument given, (1) we were told nothing of Sharia, so it wasn't really what you'd call a comparison, and (2) it clearly committed the informal fallacy known of the false dilemma: there are more possible forms of society than those mentioned. Oh, and (3) he only compared Shariah with any given society on one or two points; not really what you'd call a proper cost-benefit analysis.

To break down the argument into it's fundamental components:

1. Shariah is based laws from Allah, Society A is based upon laws from man.


2. Society idea A (which was thought up by men) had problem X.


3. You wouldn't get X in Shariah.


4. Therefore; Shariah is better than society A.


5. Repeat above arguments with societies B-F


6. Therefore; Shariah is the best possible society.

As you may have noticed from the argument above; nothing was said about Shariah law (except that it doesn't have X). Which isn't really what you'd expect from a talk titled "Shariah Law". Perhaps it should have been titled "Shariah Law Surprise".

Anyway - onto how I'm on my way to my first fatwa. Someone at the back (one of the Muslims) had said that without Shariah there is much more of {crime A, crime B, crime C}. His list included rape.

Now, the thing is (sorry, we're going back a bit in time here for a bit of background) Muhammad invited the ruler of Egypt to join Islam. And although he didn't respond with a definite "yes"; he did respond with a gift. And that gift included a couple of Coptic Christian Slave girls accompanied by an elderly eunuch. This may sound funny now, but I'm sure it wasn't at the time. Especially if you were one of the slaves. And I wouldn't want to be the eunuch either.

Muhammad kept the slaves and had sex with them. His wives complained. But Muhammad had a "revelation" to deal with this. This essence of this revelation is Muhammad can shag is slaves whenever he wants, Allah said so, stop winging on about it. Sura (66:1-5).

So.... back to the more recent past. This chap had just talked about all the rape that's going on because of the lack of Shariah law. I thought that it would be fair to point out that Mohammad kept sex slaves and used them - and was therefore a rapist. Not an unreasonable amount of conjecture I thought.

"Listen, you better watch your mouth" I heard in a rather threatening voice. "Are you threatening me with violence?" I asked. "Yes" three of them responded.

I think it was Alexei Sayle who said something like "I'm convinced that it would be really funny if someone took the piss out of fundamentalist Islam. I'm also convinced that it shouldn't be me". He had a good point.

I was then informed by some members of the secular society that the particular brand of Islam being offered tonight was of the fundamentalist variety. Which to be fair should have been obvious from the beards alone. And the dress code. Oh, and their clearly stated goals of turning the whole world into a single state implementing Shariah Law.

Thankfully, a couple of society members escorted me to my car so I managed to get away unscathed.

There are good and bad sides to this. The bad side is obviously that I've been threatened with religiously motivated violence from a group of about 25 Islamic fundamentalists. The good side is that; when someone resorts to threatening violence, you must have won the argument.

Nutri-Energetics Systems

At a psychic fair in October 2007, I came across a stand advertising "Nutri-Energetics Systems - A New Paradigm in Healthcare". Could it be that I had found the holy grail of pseudo-science?



According to their literature (click on the picture to see it in full-resolution), it's a

"revolutionary approach to health, the culmination of 25 years of work into how physics explains biology - through the mapping of the quantum electrodynamics body-field"

.... and it marvel at the multi-disciplinary science:

"the NES-Professional system integrates research from the fields of physics, quantum biology, mathematics and Western and Chinese medicine."

Their claim is that there is a "human electrodynamics body-field" that they've been able to map with their incredible technology. Just pay £45 and put your hand on something that looks like a mouse with tin-foil attached. The system will "read your body-field and compare it to the optimum human body-field, which is encoded in the software".

And if your "human body-field" isn't optimum? They sell "NES Infoceuticals" (small bottles of water) for £12.

"Nutri-Energetics has devised a unique method of imprinting a base of organic colloidal minerals with information representing different aspects of the optimum human body-field. When you take an Infoceutical as drops in water, the QED information acts as a magnetic signpost to the subatomic particles in your body-field; aligning these particles helps to restore optimum health."

Hmmmm.........

My letter to the Advertising Standards Authority (see below) prompted an investigation and the appropriate Adjudication. Success!


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10 November 2007

Advertising Standards Authority
Mid City Place
71 High Holborn
London
WC1V 6QT

Ref: A07-43223/ROC

Dear Mr. O’Connell,

I have enclosed the leaflet as requested in your last letter.

It’s extremely difficult knowing where to start with this complaint. The scientific content in the leaflet has simply been made up. Honing in on any specific claim is difficult because the leaflet is comprised almost in entirety of fabricated claims.

I have spent some time going through your web site and picking out the various points that NES’s leaflet would appear to breach.

2.1 All marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful.

The leaflet is dishonest in that it consists almost in entirety of pseudo-scientific claims that have simply been made up. Specifically, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a “quantum electrodynamics body-field”. This claim is untruthful; it is pseudoscience. Everything else in the leaflet stems from this claim (e.g their claimed ability to be able to measure this field and manipulate it with “Infoceuticals”).

3.1 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation.

Relevant evidence should be sent without delay if requested by the ASA or CAP. The adequacy of evidence will be judged on whether it supports both the detailed claims and the overall impression created by the marketing communication. The full name and geographical business address of marketers should be provided without delay if requested by the ASA or CAP.

As this is clearly pseudo-science rather than real science, there can be no credible documentary evidence to back up any of their claims. I have spent time looking for evidence on the Internet and all references to the “quantum electrodynamics body-field” seem to come only from NES or NES affiliated sites. This is clearly not a scientific theory.

The leaflet makes the following unsubstantiated claims:

· That they have managed to map a “quantum electrodynamics body-field”.

· That this body-field “acts as the master control system for the physical body”. (Note: Science has quite conclusively demonstrated that the master control system for the physical body is the brain.)

· That they have “devised a unique method of imprinting a base of organic colloidal minerals with information representing different aspects of the optimal human body-field.”

· That “When you take an Infoceutical as drops in water, the QED information acts as a magnetic signpost to the subatomic particles in your body-field”.

· That “aligning these particles helps to restore optimal health”.

· “The NES software is able to ‘read’ your body-field”.

6.1 Marketers should not exploit the credulity, lack of knowledge or inexperience of consumers.

The advertising material is specifically targeted to exploit consumers with a lack of scientific knowledge. By using scientific language such as “quantum electrodynamics”, “quantum biology”, “field” and “subatomic particles” they try to convince the inexperienced consumer that the product is based upon scientific investigation.

50.1 Medical and scientific claims made about beauty and health-related products should be backed by evidence, where appropriate consisting of trials conducted on people. Where relevant, the rules will also relate to claims for products for animals. Substantiation will be assessed by the ASA on the basis of the available scientific knowledge.

There appears to be no scientific basis for any of their claims. I can find no reference to clinical trials.

Again, the following claims are made:

· That they have managed to map a “quantum electrodynamics body-field”.

· That this body-field “acts as the master control system for the physical body”.

· That they have “devised a unique method of imprinting a base of organic colloidal minerals with information representing different aspects of the optimal human body-field.”

· That “When you take an Infoceutical as drops in water, the QED information acts as a magnetic signpost to the subatomic particles in your body-field”.

· That “aligning these particles helps to restore optimal health”.

· “The NES software is able to ‘read’ your body-field”.

I believe it is appalling that a company is trying to extort £45 for a “Consultation and scan” plus an additional £12 for “Infoceuticals” from ill people who are easily fooled. I do hope you take this complaint seriously.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,



Simon .

Proper labelling of Stem Cell treatments

Stem Cell research, we are told, is likely to lead to a revolution in medical care. And the possibility of science bringing such significant benefits to mankind, the Catholic church is naturally on a mission to put a stop to it.

Regardless of the outcome in the UK, the research will continue somewhere, and the treatments will be developed.

In all likelihood the Catholic church will continue protesting about the research and won't protest in the slightest about it's followers using the medication. They could do with a simple labelling system to help them remember. I've come across this petition for just that on the 10 Downing St web site here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/StemCellLabels/.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create a law that will require all treatments invented using knowledge gained from stem cell research to be labelled "unsuitable for Catholics".

Few petitions have such a low likelihood of succeeding, although that's not really the point of posting it. Why not sign up?