Clairvoyants agree on missing man

Clairvoyants agree on missing man

By CORINNE AMBLER Police Reporter

Police will join friends of missing Wellington man Michael Kelly today in a search of an area where clairvoyants think he might be found.

Three clairvoyants independently said Mr Kelly was in the same area of greater Wellington, and friends had been searching there, close friend George Allan said.

Ms Allan said she had been dealing with a Wellington clairvoyant, one from Tauranga, and two women from the Spiritualist Church. A clairvoyant from Christchurch had also come to Wellington of her own accord, saying she had strong feelings about where Mr Kelly, 23, could be found.

At a meeting last night suggestions from the clairvoyants were considered and it was decided to check the nominated area today.

Ms Allan said the clairvoyants thought Mr Kelly had been robbed somewhere near Ecstasy Plus nightclub by two men. He had been dumped in bushes near Oriental Parade, where he lay for a few days before the men panicked and took him away.

Ms Allan was told a third man was possibly involved and one clairvoyant could give detailed descriptions of the three, who were rough-looking Maoris, aged about 26. She could describe their tattoos and would recognise them if she saw them.

The clairvoyants thought Mr Kelly was near farmland and saw trees, buildings and cattle grates. Ms Allan said the women felt the third man had not wanted to hurt Mr Kelly, but one of the men wanted him dead.

All three clairvoyants had independently given the same description of the men’s car and police were following that up. …
– From the Dominion, 12 November 1992.

Natural ebullience may have led to Kelly’s death

By MATTHEW GRAINGER

Michael Kelly, whose body was found at the bottom of a light shaft in a Wellington inner-city building yesterday, may have contributed to his death by his ebullient nature. His friends had told police that he had sometimes climbed buildings – and on one occasion a crane – after drinking.

Mr Kelly, 23, who started a police hunt when he went missing four weeks ago, was found at the foot of a three-storey shaft in the Moore Wilson building in Tory St by a worker who opened an internal window on to the shaft. He had last been seen on October 18 outside Ecstasy Plus nightclub on the corner of Tory St and Courtenay Place.

Detective Inspector Lloyd Jones said police were searching for clues to reconstruct the events that led to Mr Kelly’s fall. Mr Jones said Mr Kelly’s death was seeming “less like foul play, misadventure is more apparent.”…
– From the Dominion, 17 November 1992.

Both articles reprinted in NZ Skeptic 26.

Opening a Dore?

A learning difficulties programme that claims to re-train the cerebellum makes some impressive claims which don’t stand close scrutiny.

DORE is an organisation that claims to treat learning difficulties without drugs. Their programmes supposedly

“… tackle the root cause of learning difficulties by improving the efficiency of the cerebellum – the brain’s ‘skill development centre’ – and the part of the brain now understood to play a significant role in learning, coordination, emotional control and motor skills.”

Recently the company held a series of information sessions to coincide with the opening of a new Dore centre in Lower Hutt, to go with their existing centres in Auckland and Christchurch. I attended a session to see what it was all about.

As we entered the room, video testimonials were playing, showing parents and their children claiming dramatic results for a range of learning disabilities and conditions, such as Asperger’s syndrome. An information pack was handed out, which included newspaper clippings and another testimonial. It claimed that Dore gets to the “core of learning difficulties”, “actively improves ability to learn”, is drug-free, based on scientific principles, is personally tailored and is not a “quick fix” or “soft option”. A FAQ stated that people who successfully complete the programme did the exercises accurately and consistently and if improvements don’t occur this is mainly because people are not sticking to the routine.

A video introduced Wynford Dore, who stated his daughter had learning problems, for which he searched for a solution. Then a mother and her son related how the son had dyslexia and behavioural problems at school which the mother was only made aware of after a few years when a teacher spoke to her. The child was already on a three-year programme with SPELD when the family discovered Dore; they followed this programme for a year concurrently with SPELD. They claimed significant improvement about three months after starting Dore.

The presentation went on to claim that approximately 16 percent of the New Zealand population had learning difficulties, with only four percent diagnosed; these were said to affect one in six New Zealanders. It was difficult to locate comparative figures, but SPELD estimates that seven percent of children have a specific learning disability, which would equate to about 50,000 school children.

The Dore programme claimed to assist with dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, dyspraxia (motor skills) and Asperger’s syndrome, and is targeted at people aged seven and over. The presenter briefly went over the typical feelings of those struggling with learning difficulties, and described how they thought these conditions manifest – as a multitude of literacy, numeracy, memory, attention, coordination, social and emotional problems. This was all claimed to be due to an inefficient cerebellum. Dore, they said, addresses underlying causes rather than symptoms (where have I heard that before I wonder?).

The conditions treated all allegedly have a physiological basis and nothing to do with other factors. Figures were presented, said to be from the Otago University longitudinal study and purporting to show that dyslexics were significantly disadvantaged compared with peers (with the consequent implication that treatment would help prevent this disadvantage).

Dyslexic students were more likely to leave school with no qualifications, much less likely to have a Bachelors degree, and none achieved Masters/Doctorate levels. Average income was more than $10,000 less than their peers. However, there was no word on whether this lack of achievement could be generalised to all people suffering dyslexia, given the long time period of the study and the considerable changes in educational services over that time.

In a further video presentation a Dr Sara Chamberlain claimed the cerebellum governs the automatic performance of simple tasks, and that this facility can be enhanced through exercise. We then heard about Dore’s assessment process. Following an initial phone consultation, prospective clients fill out a questionnaire, and there are a variety of tests and a medical assessment. Posture and ocular-motor skills are tested, and then dyslexia is screened for, apparently using a standard tool. Other conditions such as ADD/ADHD are assessed using the DSM-IV manual; the whole initial appointment takes three to four hours. The programme, it appears, is not suitable for everyone. Clients then have 1.5-hour interviews at three-monthly intervals and on completion of the course.

It was claimed that many scientific papers link the cerebellum with learning, attention, etc; these can be found on their website. They say they have done research themselves and written papers, and will provide details on request. They mentioned ongoing studies into ADHD at Ohio State University and by another US office; the Ohio State University testing appears to be a pilot study, but I couldn’t find any references to the other. A testimonial was introduced from a Dr Edward Hallowell, presented as an expert in ADD and ADHD. When I checked on this later, he appears to be involved with the Dore programme and would hardly be an unbiased commenter.

We were presented with figures from self-evaluation claiming to show 86.5 percent of children and 88.5 percent of adults showed progress in literacy and numeracy after taking the Dore programme. For coordination the respective figures were 81 percent and 75.4 percent, and for social skills 78.1 percent and 72.6 percent. The exercise programme was claimed to be individualised, unlike other programmes like ‘Brain Gym’ that aren’t (for more information on Brain Gym see Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog(.

The regime

The exercises take 10 minutes twice daily, with a mandatory four-hour break between; they have 400 exercises and 16 levels that could be completed. These involve such things as using a wobble board, or an exercise ball, or throwing and catching mini bean bags. Again, the cerebellum was claimed to be receiving, processing and automating sensory information from somatosensory, visual and vestibular inputs. The cerebral cortex (the thinking part of the brain) is apparently supposed to integrate all of this but with the conditions Dore say they treat, it is claimed the cerebellum isn’t working with the cerebral cortex.

The idea that defects in the cerebellum cause learning difficulties would seem to be a classic case of correlation not necessarily equating with causation. As noted by Oxford University psychologist Dorothy Bishop in her 2007 paper “Curing dyslexia and ADHD by training motor co-ordination: Miracle or myth?”, cause and effect would seem to be not so simple as presented at the session.

“The notion that the cerebellum might be implicated in some children’s learning difficulties is not unreasonable: both post-mortem and imaging studies have reported cerebellar abnormalities. Furthermore, some studies have reported behavioural deficits involving balance and automatisation of motor skills in a subset of people with dyslexia, consistent with a cerebellar deficit hypothesis. However, it is premature to conclude that abnormal cerebellar development is the cause of dyslexia, rather than an associated feature. Many people with dyslexia do not show any evidence of motor or balance problems. Furthermore, the cerebellum is a plastic structure which can be modified by training, raising the possibility that cerebellar abnormalities might be a consequence of limited experience in hand-writing in those with poor literacy.”

The programme used to use a book, but is now web-based. Exercises are carried out and then “marked” according to their criteria. They stressed that compliance was key, along with parental support. Times for completion vary, but are usually 12-14 months, with a weaning process at the end of the programme where the exercises are gradually wound down. The course is expensive, costing almost $5,400 or a little less for a one-off payment. They did say that they gave three “sponsored” places per month, but didn’t describe what exactly this entailed, outside of mentioning that it was for low income families and that children with a medical diagnosis could apply for a disability allowance through WINZ which could be used to access their programme.

A few questions

During question time, they were asked how they could be sure the child in the video testimonial had improved because of Dore and not the other programme he was on. The answer was fudged: they said they didn’t diagnose but looked for “sensory processing problems” and it was those they treated, which then enabled the person to learn. In other words, if there was improvement, it was Dore, not any other intervention specifically targeted at helping the person learn to overcome their disability and learn to read.

Another questioner asked why it was so costly given that the programme is mostly self-directed. They equivocated, talking about staffing costs, the website, and having support available. They said that braces cost much more and that that is basically cosmetic, when their programme “benefited a person for life” so was worth the investment. Yet another question was about the doctors – why wouldn’t they use paediatricians and other suitably qualified professionals? They stated that for their purposes, the level of medical expertise was sufficient.

Dore has obviously learned from experience following actions taken by overseas advertising standards authorities, and no longer make claims of “100 percent cure” and “miracle cure” for the conditions they claim to treat. In fact they seemed to be reasonably realistic in introducing caveats such as “it doesn’t work for everyone”. Despite this, they still claim to be proven to help overcome learning difficulties even though the evidence base is weak to non-existent. Although they make many claims to be “scientific” and have an extensive list of papers on their website, when the UK Advertising Standards Authority considered a complaint against Dynevor, Dore’s parent company, they assessed the studies submitted in support as poor, lacking control groups, and not supporting the treatment claims made:

“The ASA noted Dynevor’s interpretation of the ad. We considered, however, in the absence of any qualifying text to the contrary, that consumers were likely to understand the claim “Need help with Dyslexia, ADHD, Dyspraxia or Asperger’s?” to mean that the DORE programme could help treat the named conditions. We also considered that we would need to see robust, scientific evidence to support the claim. We noted that the two studies provided by Dynevor assessed the effect of the exercise-based DORE programme on children with reading difficulties and children and adults with ADHD respectively…

“… As neither the first nor second study referred to Asperger’s syndrome and only two participants in the first study had dyspraxia, we considered that the evidence was inadequate to support claims to treat those conditions. With regards to dyslexia and ADHD, we did not consider that the studies were sufficiently robust to support the treatment claims for those conditions, and we therefore concluded that the claim was misleading…”

The average person would have trouble verifying claims about the role of the cerebellum and the ability of an exercise programme to improve function. If it really was that easy everyone would be using Dore’s exercises. Their claim that dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD/ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome have one cause, one cure, is insufficient. The conditions they claim to treat are disparate and cause and effect is not established. There was little discussion of how cerebellar function or dysfunction is assessed, or of the relevance of their testing of such things as eye tracking, and no discussion at all of how the exercises impact on the cerebellum or how outcomes are measured. Bishop says:

“The gaping hole in the rationale for the Dore Programme is a lack of evidence that training on motor-coordination can have any influence on higher-level skills mediated by the cerebellum. If training eye-hand co-ordination, motor skill and balance caused generalized cerebellar development, then one should find a low rate of dyslexia and ADHD in children who are good at skateboarding, gymnastics or juggling. Yet several of the celebrity endorsements of the Dore programme come from professional sportspeople.”

There is little real involvement from the company once the programme has commenced, with only a few appointments to follow up after the initial assessment. Many who join the programme don’t apparently have a formal diagnosis of the conditions Dore claims to treat, and they won’t get that from the company, as they state they don’t diagnose anything other than the alleged cerebellar problems.

It’s not surprising that some would see benefits though – the commitment and parental support required to do the programme would alone benefit some children. Then there is regression to the mean, the Hawthorne effect (subjects modify an aspect of their behaviour being experimentally measured simply in response to being studied) and natural improvements with growing maturity. On retesting later, there may appear to be improvements due to the client having done the test before and being aware of what is required. Many would concurrently use other services such as reading recovery, and Dore themselves recommend that if the child has spare time, that it is spent practising reading and writing. That extra practice reading could be extremely beneficial.

The high cost of the programme is concerning, especially when they acknowledge that not everyone will benefit. Despite this, they had parents travelling from the Wellington region to undertake assessments in Auckland – hence the opening of an office in the region. There may also be a financial risk to participants; Dore UK and Australia have both failed, leaving clients out of pocket. In New Zealand Dore was placed in liquidation in 2009 and the Companies Office states: “This Company currently has Liquidators, Receivers or Voluntary Administrators appointed” with the liquidators due to report again in May 2011.

NearZero Inc: A sadly prophetic company name

Many people lost a lot of money investing in non-existent data compression software because well:established principles of information theory were ignored. This article is based on a presentation to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.

In the late 1990s, Nelson man Philip Whitley claimed to have invented a new data compression technology worth billions of dollars. Over the next decade money was raised on a number of occasions to develop this technology, culminating in a company called NearZero Inc raising $5.3 million from shareholders. According to a well:established body of theory, Whitley’s claims were obviously false. Unsurprisingly, within a few months of NearZero’s formation, it was in liquidation, with its funds gone.

I thought the saga of NearZero could be of interest to skeptics as it involves claims that were clearly false according to well&#8211established theory, and those claims cost investors a lot of money.

But first, a quick introduction to how data is stored by computers, and how that data can be compressed. Computers store data digitally, using the digits 0 and 1 in a binary code. A piece of storage capable of storing a 0 or a 1 is known as a bit (short for binary digit). With 1 bit we can store two values: 0 and 1. While this might be enough to store a simple data value (such as whether someone is male or female), for most pieces of data we need to store a larger range of values. With each bit we add, the number of possible values doubles; by the time we get to 8 bits we have 256 different values. The byte (a group of 8 bits) has proved to be a very useful unit of storage; storage sizes are usually quoted in bytes.

Character data is usually stored 1 byte per character (in European languages). Lower case ‘a’ is represented as 01100001, for example. A picture is a grid of dots. Each dot is called a pixel, and usually 4 bytes are used to encode the colour of a pixel. Standards are needed so that everyone interprets bit patterns in the same way.

Data representation methods are often chosen based on how easy it is to process the data. Often, the same data can be stored more compactly at the cost of making it harder to process. The process of translating a piece of data into a more compact form (and back again) is known as data compression. Compressing data allows us to put more data onto a data storage device, and to send it more quickly across a communications link. The size ratio between the compressed version and the uncompressed version is known as the compression ratio.

In ‘lossless’ compression, the uncompressed data is always identical (bit for bit) to the original data we started with. A compression method designed to work with any type of data must be lossless.

In ‘lossy’ compression, we are willing to accept small differences between the original data and the uncompressed data. In some situations we do not want to risk data being changed by compression, and lossless methods must be used. With images and sound, small changes that are difficult for humans to detect are tolerable if they lead to big space savings. The JPG image format and mp3 video/audio format have lossy compression methods built in to them. Users can choose the tradeoff between quality and space.

A question of pattern

For it to be possible to compress data, there must be some pattern to the data for the compression method to exploit. Letter frequencies in English text are well known, and could be the basis for a text compression method. We can do better if we take context into account. The most frequent letter is ‘e’ (12.7 percent), but if we know the next letter is the first in a word then ‘t’ is the most likely (16.7 percent). If we know the previous letter was (q) then the next will almost certainly be (u). A compression method that takes context into account will do better than one that doesn’t, as the context-based one will be a better predictor of the next symbol.

Likewise images are not random collections of coloured dots (pixels). Rather, pictures typically include large areas that have much the same colour. Sequences of frames in a movie often differ little from each other, and this can be exploited by compression methods.

The effectiveness of a compression method depends on how predictable / random the data is, and how good the compression method is at exploiting whatever predictability exists. If data are random, then no compression is possible. In these cases compression methods can actually create a compressed file larger than the original, because the compression methods have some costs. A compressed file is much more random than the uncompressed version, because the compression method has removed patterns that were present in the original.

In many branches of computer science it is important to establish the best possible way in which something could be done, to serve as a benchmark for current methods. In information theory, Shannon’s entropy is a measure of the underlying information content of a piece of data. A 1000-character extract from a book has more information content than 1000 letter ‘x’ characters, even though both might be represented using 1000 characters. To quote Wikipedia: ” Shannon’ s entropy represents an absolute limit on the best possible lossless compression of any communication” . Modern compression algorithms are so good that ” The performance of existing data compression algorithms is often used as a rough estimate of the entropy of a block of data” . In other words, it is not possible to achieve large improvements over current compression techniques.

The claims

It is time to have a look at Philip Whitley’ s claims. He claimed that he could compress (losslessly) any file to under seven percent of its original size, but this is not credible. Compression potential varies widely depending on patterns in the original file. Many files are already compressed, so have little potential for further compression. Even for uncompressed files, seven percent is achievable only in exceptional cases (English text entropy means the best achievable for English text is around 15 percent).

If it was possible to compress any file to less than seven percent of its original size then it would be possible to compress any file down to 1 bit. The first compression takes you down to under seven percent of the original file. Given that Whitley claimed his technique worked on any file, we could then compress the compressed file, reducing it to less than 0.5 percent of the original size, and so on.

Initial tests of Whitley’s technology were done on one computer. This made it easy to cheat. The ‘compression’ program can easily save a copy of the original file somewhere on disk as well as producing the ‘compressed’ version. Then, when the compressed version is ‘expanded’, the hidden copy can be restored. Whitley remained in control of the equipment, ostensibly to prevent anybody from stealing his software.

Critical assessment

Philip Whitley’s company Astute Software paid Tim Bell (an associate professor of computer science at the University of Canterbury) for an opinion on the technology. Tim Bell has an international reputation in the field of data compression; Microsoft has used him as an expert witness, and he has co-authored two well-known compression textbooks. An irony of the NearZero case is that New Zealand has more expertise in this field than you might expect for a small country (the co-authors of the two text books are New Zealand-born or live in New Zealand).

Tim Bell’s views were blunt: “The claims they were making at the time defied what is mathematically possible, and were very similar to claims made by other companies around the world that had defrauded investors.” One of his criticisms was that the tests were not two-computer tests. In such a test the compression is performed on one computer and the compressed file is transferred to a second computer, where it is decompressed. A two-computer test prevents the hidden-file form of cheating. It is reasonably easy to monitor the network cable between two computers, to check that the original file is not sent in addition to the compressed file (though the tester must be alert for other possible communication paths, such as wireless networks).

A two-computer test was subsequently conducted, and described in a 14-page report by Titus Kahu of Logical Networks. At first glance the report looks impressive, but on closer reading flaws quickly emerge. The two computers used were Whitley’s. The major flaw was that Kahu was limited to testing a set of 24 files selected by Whitley. The obvious form of cheating this allows is that the set of files can be placed on the second computer before the tests. Then all that the first computer needs to do is to include in the ‘compressed’ data details of which file is required (a number between 1 and 24 would suffice). The receiving computer can then locate the required file in its hiding place.

Titus Kahu did check the receiving computer to see if files with the names of those used in the test were present, but you would expect that someone setting out to deceive would at the very least rename the files.

The report makes for interesting reading. The files were of a number of types, including text files, pictures in JPG and GIF formats, MP3 audio files, and tar files. A tar file is a way of collecting a number of files together into a single file (zip files in Windows serve the same purpose).

One would expect text files to compress well, but JPG, GIF and MP3 files to compress poorly (they are all compressed formats). How well a tar file will compress depends on the files that it contains.

A simple comparison

To get some data to compare with the results in the report, I ran some tests using gzip (a widely used lossless compression method) on some text, tar and JPG files. I managed to locate two of the tar files used in the Titus Kahu tests: Calgary.tar and Canterbury.tar. Gzip achieved savings of 67.24 percent and 73.80 percent (so Calgary.tar was compressed to about one third of its original size, and Canterbury.tar to about one quarter). I also located three text files that were later versions of text files used by Kahu: on these Gzip achieved savings of 63.08 percent, 62.05 percent, and 70.77 percent. I also compressed a JPG file using gzip, and achieved a saving of 2.34 percent.

There are no great surprises in my results. There was quite a variation in the compression achieved, even amongst files of the same data type (the three text files for example). Compressing a JPG file gave little extra compression (not enough to make it worth further compression with gzip).

By comparison, savings in the report were 93.52 percent for four files and 93.53 percent for the other 20. I suspect that the difference in the fourth significant figure is due to rounding the file size to the nearest byte. These results are not remotely believable. The compression achieved is too good to be true even for data that compresses well (such as text), let alone for data formats that are already compressed. The incredible consistency of the compression achieved is also not credible.

Downfall

Having looked at some background, it is time to look at the chain of events that culminated in NearZero Inc’s rise and fall. Philip Whitley’s early forays into business were not promising. In 1995 he was adjudged bankrupt (discharged in 1998). In 1997 he became a shareholder in Nelic Computing Ltd, which went into liquidation in 1999, owing unsecured creditors $70,000.

In 1999 Philip Whitley formed a software company (Astute Software) with a number of Nelson investors (who put in $292,000). Astute worked on a number of projects, and developed the data compression technology. In early 2001 the ‘one-computer’ tests were done, and Tim Bell’s opinion was sought. In mid 2001 the logical Networks ‘two-computer’ tests were done by Titus Kahu. In 2002, a Mr Cohen (an investor) asked for a (long-awaited) copy of the compression technology; he was told by Philip Whitley the only copies had been accidentally burnt when cleaning out his safe. Later in 2002 work stopped due to Whitley becoming ill.

In 2005 Whitley resumed work on the technology. Some of the original investors put in a further $125,000. On 10 July 2006, NearZero was incorporated in Nevada, with Philip Whitley as president, treasurer and sole director. Later in 2006 Titus Kahu became engineering director for Syntiro (a Philip Whitley company doing development work for NearZero) on the generous salary of $250,000 a year.

In February to April 2007 NearZero share purchase meetings were held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. A total of 490 investors invested $5.3 million. The investment opportunity brochure forecast that the near-term NearZero market capitalisation would be US$482 billion to $780 billion, and was expected to exceed one trillion US dollars. Note that the largest company in the world, Petrochina, is a US$405 billion company, and the largest US companies, including Exxon Mobil, Apple and Microsoft, are in the 200 to 300 billion bracket.

Things quickly went wrong. In May 2007, the Securities Commission started investigating the legality of the NearZero share offer (there is no registered prospectus, for example). Also in May, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) were appointed as interim liquidators for NearZero, and moved to sell houses and cars. In June, PWC said $218,000 went to Richmond City Football Club, $523,000 on vehicles, $852,000 on property, $683,000 to US-based company secretary Sherif Safwat, and $270,000 on household expenses. They found little evidence of money spent developing compression technology.

In June Whitley invited investors to contribute money to fund legal action to prevent liquidation. Also in June PWC found no evidence of any compression technology. Whitley claimed to have wiped it; PWC found no evidence of use of wiping software.

Then in July Whitley made some rather curious statements in an affidavit sworn in relation to the liquidation: “I will however say that it isn’t binary and therefore not subject to Shannon’s Law of algorithmic limitation.” If there was a real technology that was not based on binary it is hard to see it being of widespread use in computer and communication systems that store, transmit and process all data in binary. The affidavit continues: “Shannon’s Law is attached to this affidavit as Annexure “Y” and it can be seen that this is a 1948 paper”. Claude Shannon founded information theory, which is the basis of how digital computers represent data (according to one tribute, the digital revolution started with information theory). Shannon coined the term bit, and introduced the concept of information entropy referred to earlier. It is interesting that Shannon’s fundamental research results are dismissed as being in “a 1948 paper”.

He also stated: “In regard to the item 3/ I have never asserted that the technology is based on an algorithm”. In computer science, an algorithm is simply a description of how to do something in a series of steps. A common analogy is to say that a cooking recipe is an algorithm for preparing food. If Philip Whitley’s compression technology is not based on an algorithm then that implies it cannot be described as a sequence of steps, and therefore cannot actually be implemented!

In November, Associate Judge Christiansen ordered NearZero’s liquidation, and ruled that the compression technology had no value. Then in August 2008 Whitley faced the much more serious charge of making fraudulent claims about his technology.

In September 2008 all shareholders were given the option of keeping their shares or getting their money back. They proved to be remarkably loyal: $3.1m voted to stay in; $2.2m voted for reimbursement. I’m not sure whether there was any money to reimburse those who voted that way (probably not). In August 2009 Philip Whitley was convicted and fined for making allotments without having a registered prospectus.

The trial

In February 2010 the fraud trial began in Nelson. Whitley was charged with making a false statement as a promoter between July 2006 and May 2007. There were many sad stories in the Nelson Mail about wasted money and time (and resulting stress). Some of the information to emerge in the trial:

  • Philip Whitley hired a team of seven body guards headed by “Oz” (Oswald Van Leeuwen), who was on a salary of $300,000. This level of security was needed because of the (supposed) enormous value of the compression technology
  • According to Sherif Safwat, Philip Whitley believed a Chechnyan hit team had arrived in New Zealand on a Russian fishing boat.
  • Philip Whitley: “The [security guards] said that the Russians were trying to penetrate and we ended up with security guards living in my house, camped on the floor … I couldn’t go out of the house without having security … it just built up inside me to the point where I just lost it from a point of paranoia.”

In his summing up on May 27, the defence lawyer said:

  • “Whitley had a distorted view of reality which led him to believe his data compression technology was real.”
  • “… [we are] not challenging the evidence of … Prof Bell that Whitley’s claimed invention was mathematically impossible.”

In July Philip Whitley was found guilty on two counts of fraud (but maintains he still has his inventions).

On August 10, 2010, he was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.

The NearZero mess should not have happened. New Zealand has more researchers in this field than you would expect for a country of this size. One of the most prominent, Tim Bell, clearly stated in 2001 that the claims were false. However, investors still committed (and lost) millions of dollars over a number of years. Compression claims are easily tested (much more easily than medical claims, for example). Whitley refused to allow his technology to be independently tested using the excuse of protecting his intellectual property. Many people have been harmed, especially the investors. Moreover, this type of case is not good for the reputation of the IT industry, which struggles to attract investment.

I was asked at the conference how non-technical NearZero investors could have protected themselves. I had no answers at the time, but have given it some thought since. Some things they could have done:

  • Google the names of the company principals.
  • Check to see how the predicted market capitalisation compared to that of existing companies. Finding that the lowest estimate would make NearZero the biggest company in the world should have lead to some scepticism.
  • Google the terms ‘data compression’ and ‘scam’.

Much of the information in this article is based on the Nelson Mail’s extensive reporting of the issue, for which they are to be congratulated. Another good source of information was nearzero.bravehost.com, a website set up by and for NearZero’s shareholders in 2007 in response to the liquidation of NearZero. An article by Matt Philp on Philip Whitley and NearZero appeared in the October 2010 issue of North & South.

Magic for Mosquitoes

While we were in Fiji recently there was a dengue fever alert. This unpleasant virus is carried by mosquitoes and naturally we were careful to use insect repellent.

We stayed in a Suva hotel; in the swimming pool area there was a large sign stating that guests should not worry about infections carried by insects because the pool area was protected by a MAGNETIC MOSQUITO DEFFENDER.

I searched diligently but could find no evidence of magnets, either electrical or solid state. However we decided that an invisible MAGNETIC MOSQUITO DEFFENDER would probably work as well as one that could be seen.

Some years ago I wrote in this journal that it was safe to drink tap water in Fiji. This is no longer the case, particularly in Suva.

Hokum Locum

Skull manipulation takes a lot of ‘training’

Cranial osteopathy is based on the notion that the bones of the skull can be manipulated. Even doctors have been taken in by this nonsense. The following account is by a registered medical practitioner, Dr Putative (not his real name).

The craniosacral movement is a rhythmical expansion of the skull and meninges around the cerebrospinal fluid. “It is a very subtle small amplitude excursion which is palpable with careful trained hands.” (So there, all you Skeptics: if-like me-you can’t feel it, you lack training.)

“The bones of the skull open and close rather like a flower opening to the sun.”
“It must be emphasised the movement is very subtle and can only be felt after considerable practice.”

The article goes on to claim that cranial osteopathy can successfully treat colic, a blocked nose, Bell’s palsy, and facial asymmetry in infants. I wish it could cure terminal gullibility! When doctors involve themselves with such nonsense, it always reminds me of HL Mencken’s criticism of an American gynecologist who believed in the literal truth of the story about Jonah in the belly of the whale. I can’t remember the exact words but it goes something like this: “How is it possible for the human brain to be divided into two halves? One capable of brilliant thought and the other complete balderdash!”

This quote could also apply to Dr John E Mack. (In 2004 he died after being hit by a car.) He collected a group of fantasy-prone individuals whom he gradually came to believe had been abducted by aliens. Harvard was furious; some of his colleagues started a movement, Knife the Mack, but Mack became very wealthy from his book about these patients. He basically argued that because psychiatry can’t explain such matters the accounts must be true. Wrong. It is well known that certain fantasy-prone individuals experience vivid dreams (hypnagogic) at certain stages of sleep.

Iridology

This absurd nonsense has now become part of mainstream pharmacy. Commercial pressures and PHARMAC, the government drug buying agency, have squeezed profits and many pharmacies stock a wide range of unproven and ridiculous pro-ducts. One local pharmacy has a range of such items which is larger than the OTC section.

Another local pharmacy advertised it was going to have an in-store iridologist for the day. The iridologist was described as having a Bachelor Degree in Health Science. (BHSc) It is little wonder that universities continue to oppose the granting of such degrees by various polytechnic institutions.

Chinese Frauds and Dangerous Products

The Chinese are already recognised as an international threat in regard to traffic in endangered species (eg tigers and bears) as well as promoting ‘traditional products’ which are adulterated with Western drugs such as steroids and Viagra.

A Chinese-made toothpaste (Excel) was withdrawn from sale in New Zealand when it was found to contain diethylene glycol, normally found as antifreeze in the radiator of your vehicle. Hmmm, could be useful when brushing your teeth in Antarctica.

It appears that Chinese doctors can be as venal and corrupt as their herbal industry. Reporters posing as patients produced urine samples which were actually green tea. The diagnosis made was urinary infection and the prescribed treatment cost $40. One reporter re-submitted the same sample and received the same diagnosis. At least the quacks were consistent. These frauds are to be expected in a poor country where doctors are underpaid.

Some NZ Doctors perpetrate similar frauds by using ‘black box’ devices and other unproven treatments. These frauds are not to be expected in a country where doctors are both well paid and well educated!

Dominion Post 24 March
BMJ 9 June 2007 Volume 334 p1183

The Culture of Complaint

In his book, From Paralysis to Fatigue, Edward Shorter predicted that the next era of medicine would revolve around psychosomatic medicine. This also encompasses a culture of complaint which sees a whining populace avoiding responsibility for their own actions by finding someone else to blame for their misfortune.

There is a new vaccine (Gardasil) against human papilloma virus (HPV). HPV is the main risk factor for cervical cancer in women. Following vaccination at a school, about 25 girls presented to the sick bay with headache, nausea and dizziness. The media had a field day while more sensible people correctly diagnosed ‘mass sociogenic illness’ which is a polite way of saying ‘mass hysteria’. There is an excellent account online at www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070528-Schoolgirls-have-mass-sociogenic-illness-but-Neil-Mitchell-needs-the-smelling-salts.html

There is a huge and fascinating published literature on mass hysteria. A constant feature is the rejection of this label by people involved in the incident. People do not like to accept that they have been victims of their own panic. It’s much better to believe in a mysterious vapour or poison. My favorite mass hysteria story concerned a kitchen which was evacuated due to a bad smell causing symptomatic illness. It was traced to a rotten onion in a cupboard!

In the case of the Gardasil story, the media beat-up wiped $A1 billion off the market value of the drug company.

Marlborough Express 26 April

Physiotherapy

Some time ago I roamed the internet looking for evidence supporting the efficacy of physiotherapy. I was interested in its scientific basis. I looked in vain. There are a few trials which showed certain practices were either useless or even dangerous.

I recently received a report from a specialist which included the following gem:

“I do not think that there is any specific medical contraindication to his undergoing whatever rigorous physiotherapy programme is planned for him, although by the same token I am not all that enthusiastic about physiotherapy in these situations: my opinion is that physiotherapy simply helps to pass the time and I cannot really understand what good it is meant to be doing. However…that..opinion does not sit comfortably with the ACC’s and patient’s enthusiasm for having their bodies tweaked and pummeled at great expense in the name of ‘rehabilitation’.”

The phrase “great expense” is important. There are so many treatment providers with their snouts in the ACC trough that treatment costs have become excessive. These treatment providers have developed a beneficiary mentality and whenever ACC attempts to control or restrict treatment practices there are indignant protests.

ACC reforms mean that patients can go to a treatment provider and register a claim and have treatment. If they need time off work this can only be provided by a doctor. The ‘gate keeper’ function of the doctor has been lost. I heard of two recent examples of how people can be harmed by this practice.

An osteopath gave a maximal number of treatments to a patient who was eventually diagnosed as having a complete rupture of the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulder. Osteopathic treatment is completely useless for this injury. In fact there is no published evidence showing that it works for any injury.

In the other case a 15-year-old child was treated by a physiotherapist for some time for a sore leg and was eventually diagnosed with bone cancer.