Thoughts on a billboard

On a recent visit to New Plymouth I was rather taken aback to see a billboard outside a central city church posing the question: “Evolution? How come we still have apes?” It wasn’t so much surprise that someone could know so little about evolutionary theory that they would think this was a persuasive argument – versions of this are often to be seen in the less sophisticated creationist publications – it was more that they should feel the urge to display their ignorance on a busy street corner.

The question is easily answered: it’s a bit like asking someone why there are still Scots if their ancestors came from Scotland. Evolution proceeds through localised change in sub-populations, not wholesale transformations of species across their entire range – and none of the modern ape species are ancestral to us in any case. One could also ask why, if humans were created separately from all other animals, there are animals which are so much like us – in other words if creationism is true, why are there apes at all?

I was reminded of a trivia word game my daughter once played, in which the clue was “Darwin’s theory of evolution”, and the answer was “natural selection”. The person who failed to answer this asserted she couldn’t be expected to know such things, since she didn’t believe in evolution. The same principle seems to apply at the New Plymouth church – decide you don’t believe in something, then refuse to learn anything about it. This has got it backwards, of course; if you’re going to disbelieve something, the least you can do is find out what it is that you don’t believe in.

The same challenge is often thrown at skeptics by believers who are convinced that if only we read the literature on homeopathy, or chiropractic, or UFOs or whatever, we would see the truth of their claims. While it isn’t necessary to have detailed knowledge of every last wacky idea – if it defies basic laws of physics and chemistry it’s almost certainly bunk – the irony is that many skeptics are very well informed about such things, and disbelieve because of what they know rather than what they don’t know. In the end though, it isn’t knowledge or the lack of it that makes the difference between a believer and a sceptic (whether they be sceptical of evolution or homeopathy), it’s the habit of critical thought – or the lack of it.

The 10 Myths of 1080

Sodium monofluoroacetate (1080) is a proven tool in the New Zealand pest control arsenal, but significant opposition to its use continues, much of it irrational. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.

There is a brutal battle being waged every night in our forests. It’s our own little horror movie. NZ’s ‘mammal mafia’ of possums, stoats and rats has been accused of devouring more than 26.5 million birds in native forest annually. Landcare Research scientist Dr John Innes, quoted in the Waikato Times, said it was time opponents of 1080 “… got real about the facts. Most endemic forestbirds are disappearing because of predators – millions of forest birds are being killed by mammals every year.”

Myth One: Its all about 1080

No, its not. The real issues are around protection of our natural heritage, and while we do win many battles, it’s the war that still needs to be won. We know that where we do intervene we make a positive difference and we support a wide range of private initiatives, recognising we need all the help we can get.

Quite simply we have a toolkit approach to pest control and we used the best tool to fit the type of country and the type of pests we are trying to manage. 1080 is a crucial part of this toolkit. It is the only toxin registered for aerial control on the mainland, and it complements a range of other toxins and the widespread use of trapping.

Its main use is on difficult, challenging country where the costs of ground control, whether by toxins or trapping, are double or treble the cost of aerial 1080 use. For example in the case of the Cascade Valley in South Westland, trying to do pest control by ground methods would have cost an extra $1 million and we have the quotes to prove it. It can be applied over 25,000 ha in a single day and is highly effective, often achieving 99 percent kills.

But DOC is not addicted to 1080. DOC does around 550,000 ha annually of mammalian pest control and less than 30 percent is delivered by aerial 1080. In terms of stoat control, over 250,000 ha are controlled by ground trapping.

Myth Two: We need an independent inquiry

Why? We have already had two and both reconfirmed the need for 1080. Indeed the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) 2011 report went further than the Environmental Risk Management Agency’s (ERMA’s) 2007 review, and said we should be using more of it.

“My underlying concern is the decline in bird populations. In the future, the only place native birds will exist is on protected offshore islands and mainland sanctuaries. Without good pest control we will move to the functional extinctions of populations, where numbers are so low they are not viable,” said Dr Jan Wright, the current PCE.

Myth Three: We are poisoning paradise

Well if we are, we’re doing a terrible job of it. What does the science tell us?The latest studies on 1080 in soil measured degradation at 20, 10, and five degrees. Even at five degrees, 1080 disappeared in six to eight weeks (Dr Penny Fisher, Landcare Research). So the soil is not being poisoned and there are no lasting impacts from 1080 drops.

In a normal aerial 1080 drop there would be a pellet every 32 square metres and only 0.15 percent of each pellet is poison. A week after an operation it can be hard to find any 1080 pellets.

The pellets all biodegrade, and how long they remain depends on the rainfall and temperature. Importantly, 1080 does not bio-accumulate and does not persist in the soil. Studies show that no 1080 residues will remain and some of the most productive wildlife areas, for example the East Taupo forests such as Pureora and Tongariro, have had multiple 1080 drops.

The user agencies have also got much better at application. The dose rates have dropped over time from 20 kg to two kg (and some promising science research may allow us to drop it further( and the use of GPS systems specifically modified for NZ keep helicopter overflies to a minimum.

Myth Four: What about the water then?

The dispersal of 1080 in water after operations has been studied for nearly 20 years and there have been over 2400 tests. Over 96 percent of the tests showed no detection at all, and where there were slight traces, these soon dissolved and there have been no impacts on human health.

The most authoritative work on breakdown in water has been done by Alastair Suren of the National Institute for Water and Atmosphere (NIWA). His water trials show that after five hours half the 1080 was lost with the concentration down to 10 percent of original after 24 hours. The baits themselves remained intact for 48 hours and by 72 hours fragmentation was occurring.

Myth Five: It’s impacting on human health

1080 is a poison and must be managed accordingly. All risk is relative and nothing can be guaranteed as totally safe. What the department is saying is that the risks to health from 1080, for a population or an individual, are insignificant in a well managed operation done under strict protocols. Most New Zealanders will never come in contact with 1080. In terms of human health risks, the people who would be most at risk from using 1080 are those who process it into cereal baits and other formulations at the factory in Whanganui.

The workers’ health is being monitored closely. The department also runs a random testing system for aerial 1080 operations to ensure staff using the product are protected. There has only ever been one death from 1080 in NZ and that happened to a possum trapper in the 1960s. It is possible that he mistook the raspberry-based paste for something edible but it is not really known.

Myth Six: You can’t prove it works

Of course we can. There are a wealth of field and working reports done by staff showing the benefits of 1080 (see sidebar). The department currently has an active science research portfolio, focused on the impacts of 1080, partly as a response to recommendations made by ERMA.

These include a forest monitoring project to look at forest recovery in the wake of 1080, a study of the impact of 1080 on kea, and a three-site trial looking at the benefits and risks for a range of native birds, when using aerial 1080 for rat and stoat control. These will be formally published. The results so far from the latter trial are very encouraging and confirm what we have been saying.

• 14 kaka nests were monitored through the last 1080 drop in Whakapohai in South Westland, seven in the 1080 zone, seven in nearby areas that had not had 1080 for two or more years.

Four of seven nests fledged in the 1080 area, only three of seven fledged in the non-1080 – not much difference, but two nests in the non-1080 area were taken by possums and one by a stoat. No mammalian predators were identified killing nests in the 1080 zone though a kea got one of them.

• 36 riflemen were monitored through the last 1080 drop in Whakapohai. All survived. This is the first time riflemen have been monitored in 1080 drops.

• Comparing bird counts in two of the blocks that get 1080, and the other block that gets none, Kaka were heard nine times more often in the 1080 area, bellbirds six times more often. Kakariki and tomtits were heard significantly more often in the 1080 area, but the difference was not great.

Myth Seven: DOC ignores the native species by-kill

It certainly does not. We have always acknowledged that there may be a small by-kill but argue strongly that the benefits will comprehensively outweigh the losses – a claim which ERMA endorsed in its 2007 report on 1080. Eleven species of native bird have been intensively monitored, and several other bird species monitored using less precise techniques. None of these studies have identified population level mortality which threatens the viability of the species.

Kea are a concern. We know that in low predator environments kea will have 80-100 percent fledgling success, but in high predator environments this will be well below 40 percent.

We do lose birds, and the real question is whether individual losses can be made up for by fledgling successes.We recently lost seven kea in Okarito out of a total of 38 being monitored for the recent aerial 1080 operation which was aimed at protecting rowi, the country’s rarest kiwi, in their habitat.

The operation itself, over 30,000 ha, has been wonderfully successful in reducing rats by 99 percent and stoats just hovering above zero, so this should allow for a much greater fledging success not just for kea but for kiwi.In two previous 1080 operations where kea have been monitored we lost none at all.

Invertebrate populations have been monitored in nine aerial poisoning operations and none have shown significant population effects on any species studied, nor is there evidence to suggest poisoned invertebrates are a significant factor in secondary poisoning of other animals. Long-term monitoring of native land snails indicates substantial benefits to threatened populations in sites treated with aerial poisoning.

Myth Eight: It is not a humane poison

It can take the best part of a day for a possum to die from 1080. This is rated by most authorities as a ‘moderately humane’ toxin. The other element is to focus on what the bait is trying to achieve, which in the case of 1080 for conservation, is trying to protect our most vulnerable species. It is certainly more humane than the brodifacoum that goes into the common household Talon bait for rats, which can take four days to work.

Myth Nine: You don’t do any work on alternatives

Just two examples provide the comprehensive rebuttal to this claim. DOC, in conjunction with private firm Connovation has just produced a toxin specifically for stoats, known as PAPP. It’s the first stoat toxin ever produced and together we have invested over $1 million. It is humane, quick acting (30-45 minutes) and it works very well.

The government and the Green Party agreed to invest $4 million over three years into our self-resetting trap, which allows a trap to be reset 12 times. If successful and large-scale trials are going on, this should significantly improve the cost/efficiency of ground control. Overall the government has invested $3-4 million annually in new and improved methods of pest control.

Myth 10: We can do it all by fur trapping and promote an industry as well

The Department is committed to working with the possum fur harvesting industry so long as conservation objectives are not compromised. The reality is that there is often an inherent contradiction between trying to eliminate possums as the undoubted pests they are, and the needs of the possum trappers to have enough animals to make their industry economic. For the 1080 user agencies, the driver for the possum control operations is to slash numbers to as low a level as possible.

The current situation on public conservation land is that generally our possum contractors are able to recover fur if they so wish. Some do but most don’t because of the nature of our performance-based contracts and the need to do the job as promptly as possible.

Beyond this, there are literally millions of hectares of both public conservation land and private land, which are not subject to possum control management, and where possum fur trappers can go right now to get fur if they wish. They can get a permit from their local DOC office or get permission from the individual landowners and away they go. Fur price is the main driver of activity and the recent price lift to $135/kg has seen more trappers chasing the fur.

The Department is also working closely with the industry to extend its balloting system, which allows fur trappers not doing pest control the exclusive right to harvest possums off individual blocks of land for 4-8 months, thus giving them some business certainty.

In conclusion, if we didn’t have 1080 available for pest control we would have to invent it. But it is not a silver bullet and must be respected as the poison that it is. The real tragedy of 1080 is that its impact doesn’t last long enough.

1080 Success stories

• Kiwi populations in Tongariro Forest were boosted following a very successful aerial 1080 pest control operation in 2006.

• Mohua (yellowheads) were under threat from predators at the head of Lake Wakatipu. Ground operations controlled stoats, but 1080 aerial control in 2007 and 2009 was needed to control the threat from rats.

• An aerial 1080 pest control operation in Kahurangi National Park’s Anatoki River area in October 2009 significantly reduced predator numbers, curbing an expected explosion of rats and stoats.

• 1080 has been used once every four years to suppress possums in the Otira forest.

• A study during a rat plague in Fiordland in 2006 showed much reduced levels of rat predation on bats in areas treated with 1080.

For more details on these and other examples see TrakaBat’s channel on www.youtube.com

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.

Playing the numbers game

Some risks in life are distributed throughout a population, others are all-or-nothing. There’s a big difference. This article is based on a presentation to last year’s Skeptics Conference.

Many organisations, not excluding certain government agencies, rely heavily on public fear to influence public decisions and to provide their on-going funding. That provides strong motivation to generate fake fears even where there is no real public danger.

There are several methods in use:

  1. The distinction between evenly distributed risks versus all-or-nothing risk is obscured.
  2. Forecasts that should be written as fractions, are multiplied, unjustifiably, into a purported risk to individuals (“10 deaths per million”).
  3. An obscure statistical trick is used to treat the most extreme possibility as though it is the most likely.
  4. Numbers are reported with unjustifiable levels of precision to provide a reassuring air of scientific competency. A check of your foods cupboard will reveal boxes claiming, say, 798 mg of protein, where natural variations in ingredient composition can justify only “0.8 g”.

Kinds of risks

Imagine that a maniac injected a lethal dose of undetectable poison into one orange in a box of 1000 fruit. Would you willingly eat an orange from that box? Surely the risk of dying is more important than the minor pleasure of a juicy fruit.

On the other hand, assume that these 1000 fruits are converted into juice. Everyone who drinks a portion of juice will ingest one-thousandth of a lethal dose. Aside from the yuk-factor, would you drink this beverage? I would, since a dose of 0.001 of the lethal dose will not, in the absence of any other negative factors, harm me. A critical enzyme that is blocked by 0.1 percent will still provide 99.9 percent functionality. In fact, most enzyme systems are down-regulated (throttled back) by our natural feedback controls. We routinely consume significant but harmless amounts of natural poisons such as cyanide. Our bodies are rugged; we are not delicate mechanisms. We can function despite losing half our lungs, half our kidneys, most of our liver, and even parts of our brains. Most critical parts of metabolism are backed up by duplicate mechanisms. The key term here is ‘biological threshold’. To speak of a ‘low dose of poison’ is to mouth a meaningless collection of sounds: only high doses of poisons are poisonous. Evenly distributed risk versus all-or-nothing distribution

Returning to my example of the poisoned oranges, the risk factor is one in a thousand for an individual fruit and for a glass of juice. The difference between the two is that risk is lumped all-or-nothing in one case, and distributed uniformly in the other case. The maths may be the same but the practical conclusions are different.

Here is another example: the Bonus Bond Lottery. My $10 bond receives four percent interest a year, 40 cents annually, about three cents per month. Please don’t clutter my letter box with bank statements reporting another three cents! No Bonus Bond holder wants his or her earnings to be distributed uniformly. Obligingly, the bank turns all these tiny individual earnings into a single monthly prize of $300,000 going to just one lucky person. Three cents is trivial, but $300,000 is life-changing. No wonder people hold onto Bonus Bonds.

Injury from damaging chemicals or conditions is not random

The standard way to evaluate toxicity is to treat a number of animals with increasing amounts of chemical (or radiation, etc). The LD50 is the dosage where half the animals die (or develop cancer, etc.) Is the LD50 an example of all-or-nothing risk? In fact, it is a distributed risk applied over a heterogeneous population. All the animals given the LD50 dose were seriously ill but only half of them succumbed. Perhaps they had been fighting, or simply were genetically weaker. It’s hard to tell. Presumably the healthiest animals were most likely to survive.

Examine a lower dosage, where only 10 percent of the animals succumbed. The survivors didn’t go off to play golf! All were affected, but one in 10 was too weak to survive. If you imagine a bell-shaped curve where ‘health’ is on the x-axis, then a low dosage shifts all the animals to the left; those who started on the low-health side of the curve were likely to drop off the mortality cliff.

We can apply this logic to episodes of severe air pollution. We can predict, in advance, who is likely to die and who is likely to survive. There might be, say, 20 deaths per 100,000, but that does not mean an otherwise healthy man or woman has 20 chances in 100,000 of dying. It’s the people with pre-existing respiratory problems who are at risk, not everyone.

Groups that forecast a certain number of deaths per million, from a particular environmental contaminant, should be challenged to describe in advance the characteristics of the victims. Purported victims of tiny doses of chemicals will be abnormally inept at detoxification, perhaps because of liver disease. They are probably hypersensitive to many chemicals in addition to one particular man-made chemical. One may wonder how such people have survived to adulthood.

Turning 100 rats into millions of people

The rules for long-term testing of potential carcinogens are:

  1. 100 rodents per concentration (x 2 for both males and females).
  2. At least three dose levels.
  3. Highest dose levels such that animal growth is inhibited about five or 10 percent (ie, partly toxic doses).
  4. Lowest dose is one-tenth of highest. (Very narrow range).
  5. Attempt to minimise number of animals for both humanitarian and economic reasons (US$600,000 per study).

Successful experiments are those where, at high doses, death or cancer rates of 10 to 90 percent occur. For statistical and practical reasons, responses below 10 percent are difficult to measure. (A massive $3 million ‘mega-mouse’ effort failed to confirm a forecast of one percent cancer caused by low levels of a known carcinogen.) So estimates for risk at low doses can only be done by extrapolating high-dose results.

There are different ways to calculate hypothetical response to doses lower than tested. These are:

  • quadratic
  • linear
  • power
  • non-linear transition
  • threshold

Do we really care which extrapolation equation is used? Arguments between log-linear, probit, or threshold models are no better than discussions about whether the angels dancing on the head of a pin are doing the waltz or the two-step. It’s the unjustified extrapolation that’s at fault.

Remember, the number of rodents used is in the hundreds. Extrapolations give rise to predictions of, say, 0.001 cancers per 100 rats at a certain dosage. The meaning of this number is obscure. What is one-thousandth of a cancer?

Obedient computers, run by scientific spin doctors, multiply the numbers by 1000. So now the prediction is one cancer per 100,000 rats. Better yet, “10 cancers per million rats”, or perhaps “9.8 cancers per million”, to simulate spurious precision. We can now perform the brainless arithmetic of multiplying “10 per million” by the population of New Zealand, resulting in newspaper headlines of “40 cancer cases” per year. All this from fewer than one thousand rats!

Something is seriously wrong with this approach to toxicity testing. It predicts, with unjustifiable precision, death or cancer rates that are forever unverifiable. Moreover, high-dose tests can overwhelm natural defences, falsely suggesting damage from lower doses, damage that is never observed.

An alternative way to handle toxicological data is to see how long it takes for chronic doses to cause damage. An important paper by Raabe (1989) did this for both a chemical carcinogen and for radiation damage. His plots show, logically, that as the dosage was lowered, the animals survived longer. In fact, at low doses the animals died of old age!

Toxicologists using this approach could estimate “time-to-damage” with considerable reliability. (Converting rodent risk to human risk would remain problematical.) The results would be reported as, for example, “At this low dosage, our data predict onset of cancer in individuals with more than three centuries of exposure at the permitted level.” This kind of reassuring forecast would not, unfortunately, inspire larger budgets for the testing agency.

The ‘upper boundary scam’

The bell-shaped normal curve offers another way to fool the public. At the standard threshold of ’95 percent confidence level’, there is an upper limit point and a corresponding lower limit point. We expect the ‘real answer’ to lie between those points, but the most likely value is around the middle of the range. An honest report of our results should include both the mean (middle) value together with some indication of how broad our estimate is.

I have a homoeopathic weight-loss elixir to market. I have run simulated tests on 30 women using Resampling Statistics. (This is a low-budget business and I don’t want to waste my advertising budget on real experiments.) The mean result was, of course, zero change, but there was an upper-bound of 2 kg weight loss. (There was also a corresponding figure of minus 2 kg weight loss, ie, gain, but we won’t worry about that!).

Am I entitled to advertise ‘Lose up to 2 kg’? After all, 2 kg loss was a possibility, even though it’s right at the edge of statistical believability. My proposed advertisement is sharp practice, probably fraudulent. Surely no reputable organisation would distort their results this way!

Such considerations do not seem to bother US and NZ environmental agencies, which happily quote ‘upper bound’ forecasts. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote:

“We were quite certain any actual risk would not exceed that [upper bound] and would be a very conservative application and be quite protective. It does not necessarily have scientific basis, but rather a regulatory basis…. EPA considers the use of the upper 95 percentile as a conservative estimate.”

Problems

One problem with the upper bound estimate of risk is that the worse the underlying data, the more extreme the upper bound, and hence the greater the forecast risk! Some people might think this might motivate the EPA not to refine and expand its experimental database, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using the upper bound; it does indeed offer reasonable confidence that no damage will occur. But it is dishonest if the central prediction, the mean (average) is not also given. The difference between the mean and the upper-bound tells the public whether or not the estimates are too crude to believe. Unfortunately both numbers are rarely given. One EPA spokesman stated that “The upper bound and maximum dose estimate is usually within two orders of magnitude” (my italics).

That’s an error margin of 100-fold!

A revealing example of how this works was given by EPA in a now-defunct web page devoted to estimating risks from chlorine residues in swimming pool water. That page seems to have been withdrawn, but my own copy of it is at www.saferfoods.co.nz/EPA_drinking_water.html

This amazing document considered the health risk if drinking water were contaminated by swimming pool water. The upper-bound risk was 24 bladder cancer cases per year (for the entire American population). Precautions against this happening would cost $701 million (note the convincing precision here). This would save $45 million of medical and other losses. Many people would have considered that such poor payback would be sufficient reason to drop the proposal.

The “24 cases” of bladder cancer represented the upper-bound estimate. The most likely estimate was, however, 0.2 cases per year. This agrees with their admission of 100-fold discrepancy between upper-bound and most-likely. The most likely outcome of spending $700 million would be to avert one case of bladder cancer every five years! Is that what EPA considers “conservative” and “protective”? Incidentally, the US has more than 60 thousand new cases of bladder cancer every year. An effective anti-smoking campaign would halve that number. What the EPA described as a “conservative” approach turns out to be a proposal to waste millions of dollars for little or no benefit.

There is a further consequence of the EPA mathematics. Since low doses of toxins can sometimes improve health (‘hormesis’), EPA’s figures imply a lower-bound estimate that two dozen cases of bladder cancer could be prevented by drinking dilute swimming pool water.

When the American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA to eliminate ‘junk science’ from its administrative process, EPA eventually announced that “Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact … but merely statements of EPA policy.”

We might expect such behaviour from the EPA. After all, it has 18 thousand employees and a budget of more than US$6 billion. You don’t get that kind of money by telling the American public that they need not worry.

Meanwhile in NZ…

Surely our New Zealand government agencies won’t stoop to the dubious flim-flam of the EPA? Consider the NZ Ministry for the Environment report entitled in part, “Evaluation of the toxicity of dioxins … a health risk appraisal”.

www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/hazardous/dioxin-evaluation-feb01.pdf

“The current appraisal has estimated that the upper bound lifetime risk for background intake of dioxin-like compounds for the New Zealand population may exceed one additional cancer per 1000 individuals.

This cancer risk estimate is 100 times higher than the value of 1 in 100,000 often used in New Zealand to regulate carcinogenic exposure from environmental sources. Of course, if there were a threshold above current exposures the actual risks would be zero. Alternatively, they could lie in a range from zero to the estimate of 1 in 1000 or more.”

This confusing prose says, I think, that the likelihood of risk from dioxin-like compounds is much less than one per 1000. It might be zero, but the Ministry has not provided enough vitally important data. Should public policy be made on the basis of unlikely, unprovable, worst-case guestimates?

The upper boundary scam is, I believe, a despicable misapplication of ‘science’. It’s junk science. Should a government agency be allowed to misinterpret data in a way that would lead of a false-advertising claim if tried on by private merchandisers? I think not.

Our brains are not wired to handle low probabilities. We jump to conclusions on the basis of inadequate information. It’s in our genes. Cave men or women who waited around for more information were eaten by sabre-tooth tigers and didn’t pass their cautionary genes on to us. The cave woman who ran at the slightest unusual sound or smell passed her quick-to-act genes on to us. This is not a good recipe for evaluating subtle statistical issues.

In today’s world, there are many people and organisations ready to push their narrow point of view. We need to be as suspicious about groups claiming to ‘protect’ us or the Earth as we are about time-share salesmen and politicians.

Nothing Grand About Grander Water

“Energised Water” turns out to be much the same as the other kind

Grander water indeed, than the ordinary stuff from the tap; Europeans are paying more than the equivalent of $NZ20 per litre for it.

Punning aside, Johann Grander is a Tyrolean man who has “discovered/invented” a wonderful but secret way to “energise” water, by loading it with “Natural Information of the Highest Order”. A quantity of this water is sealed in the device which is inserted into the domestic supply line; although the two lots of water do not mix, the “Information” in the energised water passes over to the water flowing to the taps, so the fortunate householder, who has paid thousands for the privilege, has a never-ending supply of “Grander water”. The efficacy of the device does not change over periods of many years (this I can believe).

What do you get for all this outlay? Whatever water does for you, Grander water will do it better. Of course, your water tastes better, it improves the quality of your food, and is useful in treating a wide range of ailments from corns to cancer. You economise on laundry detergent, and your house plants will grow and bloom better.

Unlike many products of this kind, Grander water has been subjected to scientific tests; in fact, three tests. The first was carried out as a student research project; several bulk properties, such as electrical conductivity, pH, and many others, were the same whether the water came straight from the tap or had first passed through the “energiser”. Astonishingly though, the surface tension of energised water was markedly lower, an observation apparently inexplicable in scientific terms.

Enter Herr Heckel and Dr Heinig, a geoecologist and physicist respectively, of Berlin, to carry out the second test. Not content, as are many scientists, to treat Grander’s claims with disdain, they studied the student’s thesis carefully, and noticed that the Grander water in the test, but not the tap water, had been passed through a length of “Gardena” garden hose. The plastic of which these hoses are made contains “plasticisers”, which are well-known surface-active agents, ie, they lower the surface tension when leached into the water in the hose.

Eureka! Experiment showed that water passed through the hose had lower surface tension, water not passed through the hose had normal surface tension, irrespective of being “energised”. Conclusion: Grander water is indistinguishable from tap water, in any of the many tests carried out on it.

The third investigator, Dr Eder of the University of Vienna has done some double-blind tasting tests on his friends and acquaintances. This small-scale study showed half the test subjects could not distinguish Grander- from tap water, and the other half were equally divided in their preference. A great preponderance of subjects preferred the taste of cooled tap water to that of water at room temperature. This casts doubt on a test carried out elsewhere on “energised” spring water, which tasted better than “unenergised”. A careful check found the “energised” water was cooler.

Did these revelations cause a slump in sales of Grander water, and did Herr Grander return ignominiously to his Tyrolean home? Skeptics will, sadly, not need to be told the answer to those questions. On the contrary, Dr Eder faces a challenge in the Austrian courts for publishing his view that Grander’s claims are nonsense, and Herr Grander has been awarded the Austrian President’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

With acknowledgments to “Skeptiker”, Drs Heinig and Eder, and Herr Heckel.

Newsfront

Dying is Bad for Business

An Auckland law firm was going to court late last year (Dominion Post, November 1) to block the opening of a funeral parlour opposite it. Death (or dealing with it) offends against the ancient Chinese art of feng shui. Contact with death can lead to bad luck and negative energy could flow from the funeral parlour into the law firm. The firm was concerned it would lose its Asian clients if the parlour opened. The parlour, meantime, said it had been granted resource consent. Haven’t heard the outcome yet…

Ringing in new changes

And while on the subject of feng shui, here’s a tip for Telecom. Feng shui specialist Honey Lim says the company should relaunch its new logo in February to capture the powerful energy of a new age in the feng shui calendar. In the Dominion Post (November 26) Ms Lim says she approves of Telecom’s new logo, which is in harmony with feng shui. Telecom spent $140,000 on the logo, and will be happy to learn its green and blue squares underpinning the yellow rectangle have good karma. Ms Lim says the old one featuring three coloured spears stabbing the company name, which told her that, “despite the company’s own colourful and innovative efforts, their initiatives were hurting themselves more than spurring them forward.” She reckons they really should relaunch themselves in the New Year — an act which would generate “awesome feng shui”… . February 4 marks the beginning of ‘period 8’ in the feng shui calendar, a period of new energy. And in order to benefit from it, people or organisations need to undertake renewal or change after that date. Now there’s an idea…

ET – Wait a Tick

The mayor of a Brazilian town says he had cancelled a planned landing by aliens during an important soccer match last year (The Press, November 24). Elcio Berti said he cancelled the landing of the alien spaceship because he was worried they may abduct one of the Brazillian footballers. Berti, the mayor of Bocaiuva do Sul, claims to be in regular touch with aliens and is preparing a UFO landing pad for them in town.

“Con” Man Speaks Out

It was good to see Australian skeptic Richard Lead in the Dominion Post (September 22) following our conference last year. In a small article the “professional cynic” explained how he has tackled cons, from the Nigerian scam to property investment.

“I was living in Samoa in 1994 when I first saw the Nigerian scams. I used to attend a businessmen’s lunch and would pass the letters around and we would have a good laugh. I later found one of the guys had got taken for $90,000.”

This and similar scams, he said, work by the “Concorde fallacy” — the only chance you have of getting back the money you’ve already invested is to put in more. “They just keep sucking you in and the losses keep getting bigger and bigger. I used to say ‘how could people be so stupid?’. I don’t say that any more. I’ve seen it happen so often.”

He told the paper the hardest part of the job was dealing with people who had lost life savings, something he was not equipped to deal with. “Nothing in my accountant’s training prepared me for people with tears in their eyes because they’ve lost everything.”

The best way to avoid being taken in was to exercise common sense and carefully evaluate everything. “…if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

Not a Prayer of a Chance

The biggest scientific experiment on prayer has failed to find any evidence that it helps to heal the sick.

Doctors in the US said that heart patients who were prayed for by groups of stranger recovered from surgery at the same rate as those who were not (Dominion Post, October 17).

The three-year study led by cardiologists from Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina, involved 750 patients in nine hospitals and 12 prayer groups around the world.

The prayer groups included American Christian mothers, nuns, Sufi Muslims, Buddhist monks in Nepal and English doctors and students in Manchester. Prayers were emailed to Jerusalem and placed in the Wailing Wall.

Earlier, less extensive, research had suggested prayer could have a beneficial effect.

The news brought swift reactions. The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, said “Prayer is not a penny-in-the-slot machine. You can’t just put in a coin and get out a chocolate. This is like setting an exam for God to see if God will pass it or not.”

Red Tape for Health Pills

The Herald reports (December 8) that the $200 million-a-year health supplements business is up in arms over a Government plan to join with Australia to regulate the industry.

Under this plan, all dietary supplements and alternative remedies would be classified as pharmaceuticals and regulated through a new transtasman agency.

New Zealand has about 10,000 complementary and alternative health practitioners. Health Minister Annette King said the move was about quality, public safety and standards. “We require standards about the food we sell… we require standards for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. And one of the hard lessons I learned last year was that the public demanded standards and regulations for complementary healthcare.”

Opponents say New Zealand will lose control of decision-making to Australia, Kiwi dietary supplements firms will be hurt, and customers will have less choice.

Green MP Sue Kedgley and NZ First MP Pita Paraone are upset the Government is including alternative medicines and supplements before the health select committee report is out.

“Slimming Water” the Latest Fad

Forget about cutting out carbs on Atkins or replacing meals with a milkshake — the latest dieting phenomenon to hit the shelves is bottled water which claims to help people lose weight (Rotorua Daily Post, January 13).

Contrex is being marketed as Britain’s first “cosmetic water”, on the basis that it works as a slimming aid. Nestle, its maker, claims that the mineral water contains natural sources of calcium and magnesium which can eliminate toxins, fight fatigue and help people stay in shape. The calcium can also increase the body’s metabolism and improve weight loss, according to Nestle.

Health experts dismissed the idea of a “diet water” as ridiculous. Amanda Wynne of the British Dietetic Association said: “Drinking water will not make you slim, even if it is fortified with calcium and magnesium. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Despite this criticism, industry insiders are predicting that so-called “aquaceuticals” will be the boom dieting products of 2004. The fad started in Japan and hit America last year, with several brands planned for launch in Britain this year.

A spokeswoman for Nestle said, “It is selling like hot cakes. Contrex has been sold in France for years and women there call it the slimming water. You get the minerals you need without putting on weight.”

Other aquaceuticals to go on sale recently include Blue Water, which costs an incredible £11 a litre and claims to improve skin conditions and general wellbeing. It has been developed by an Austrian naturalist, Johann Grander, who says he “removed the negative memories from water and transferred beneficial energy patterns to it”.

Some fans say they feel better simply by sleeping next to a glass of Blue Water at night. Other products have celebrity endorsements, such as the Kabbalah Mountain Spring Water favoured by Madonna. It claims to have been transformed into a “living” water through modern technology and the wisdom of ancient texts used by the Cabbala, a Jewish mysticism.

Lakeland Willow has also been launched as an aquaceutical in the UK. According to its marketing blurb, it contains salicin, a natural painkilling substance found in willow bark.

Newsfront

Australians turn up the Heat on Pan

Breaking news as this issue goes to press (Waikato Times, April 30 and elsewhere) is the recall by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of 219 products manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals. This is the biggest recall of medical products in Australia’s history; the TGA has also withdrawn Pan’s licence for six months.

Pan is Australia’s largest contract manufacturer of herbal, vitamin and nutritional supplements, representing 70 per cent of the Australian complementary medicine market and exporting to dozens of countries. It also makes some over-the-counter medicines including paracetamol, codeine, antihistamines and pseudo-ephedrine.

TGA principal medical adviser John McEwen said other products manufactured by Pan but sold under different brand names would be added to the list as they were discovered. Dr McEwen said Pan lost its licence following evidence of substitution of ingredients, manipulation of test results and substandard manufacturing pro-cesses.

Consumers have been warned not to take any vitamins or herbal supplements and even to check the label of headache pills.

The TGA said it was considering laying criminal charges as it continued the investigation.

Equipment at Pan’s headquarters in Sydney was not cleaned between batches, potentially contaminating products.

The investigation was sparked by a travel sickness pill, Travacalm, which the TGA said had sent 19 people to hospital and caused 87 adverse reactions.

“Some people were very, very ill. They tried to jump out of planes, off ships and things like that because of the hallucinatory effect,” federal parliamentary health secretary Trish Worth said. “I’ve been reliably informed it was fortunate nobody died.”

She said Pan’s vitamin A and natural remedy teething gels could be very harmful to pregnant women and children.

The Complementary Health-care Council said the entire health industry would be hurt by a loss of public confidence. The council’s technical director, Ian Crosthwaite, said manufacturers were holding crisis meetings and seeking an urgent meeting with the TGA to stop any further recalls. But the TGA’s Dr McEwen, said: “There is a clear risk with these products of serious injury … the longer we leave these products in the market the risk grows.

Pan recorded a $A13.6 million ($NZ15.30 million) profit last financial year, however founder James Selim saw his personal wealth of $A210 million collapse by $A26 million as shares plunged after the recall.

The Australian Stock Exchange is demanding answers as to why Pan failed to call for a trading halt in its shares as soon as it learned its licence had been suspended.

Sections of the market had the news of the licence suspension for 30 minutes before trading was halted.

A report by ECM Research on Pan Pharmaceuticals in September last year said about 40 per cent of its sales were exported and New Zealand was the most important destination, followed by Asia and Europe. The New Zealand market accounted for about a third of its market revenue.

The report also said Pan was supplying SAM-e, a natural antidepressant, into Australia and New Zealand. SAM-e is listed in advertisements for product recall. Other Pan products sold in New Zealand include libido enhancer Horny Goat Weed.

Great Balls of Fire

Thai scientists are to launch a probe into a famous fireball phenomenon occurring in the Mekong River once a year in the country’s north, (Sydney Morning Herald, April 14). Every year on the first full moon of the 11th lunar month, which coincides with the end of Buddhist Lent, hundreds of red, pink and orange fireballs soar up into the sky from the Mekong, drawing crowds of spectators.

The event known as Naga’s Fireballs, which has been reported by locals for generations, has long mystified scientists. Now nine experts are to start collecting soil and water samples from the areas where the fireballs appear to originate, deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Saksit Tridech, told the Bangkok Post.

“We are quite sure the fireballs are a natural phenomena,” he reportedly said, adding that the team’s initial assumption was that the fireballs were caused by methane and nitrogen. Decomposition of accumulated plant and animal remains on the bottom of the Mekong could lead to the release of the gases, which rise to the surface of the water when the sun heats the water to a certain temperature, Saksit said.

Legend, however, says the flames come from a mythical Naga, or serpent, living in the Mekong river. “Society needs an explanation for this phenomenon,” said Saksit.

Claims by a television program last year that the fireballs were actually caused by tracer bullets fired by Laotian soldiers across the border caused uproar among locals, who called the suggestion insulting.

Abductees Stressed Out

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens suffer many of the same trauma symptoms as Vietnam veterans and World Trade Centre survivors, even though their memories are not real (Dominion Post, February 19).

A Harvard University team found that when recalling experiences they show many of the physical and psychological effects normally seen in post-traumatic stress disorder, including nightmares, anxiety, racing heartbeats and sweating palms.

The team suggests most abductees are not mentally ill and genuinely believe they have been kidnapped, but are experiencing false memories induced by sleep paralysis. This affects 30 per cent of the population at some stage in their lives, and occurs when a patient wakes during rapid eye movement sleep, when dreaming takes place and the entire body is paralysed with the exception of the eyes. It can often lead to frightening visions referred to as hypnopompic (upon awakening) hallucinations as elements of a dream impinge on wakefulness.

Sufferers usually report being unable to move while seeing shadowy figures around their beds, feeling electric currents coursing through their bodies, or levitating. The phenomenon probably explains the witch crazes of the 16th and 17th centuries, ghost sightings and other paranormal events, says Harvard psychology professor Richard McNally.

“Today, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it’s interpreted as abduction by space aliens.”

All 10 abductees in the study recounted reasonably consistent details of their experiences, but these were almost certainly culturally determined. “Their memories were of being subjected to sexual and medical probing on spaceships. I certainly think we can say the X-Files probably helped with all that.”

Extraterrestrial Culture Day

The good folk in Roswell, New Mexico, who would no doubt dismiss the above item, can now celebrate every second Tuesday in February as “Extraterrestrial Culture Day”, after a local lawmaker’s proposal won House approval (Dominion Post, 25 March). Some scoffed at the idea, but memorial sponsor Republican Dan Foley said life on other planets — if you believe in it — surely has its own set of cultural beliefs. He claims aliens have contributed to recognition of New Mexico, and he wants a copy sent into space as a token of peace.

Calling All Spoon-benders

Mind readers, telepaths and anyone who attracts ghosts have been invited to participate in a new course at Griffith University in Australia (Dominion Post, February 21). Senior lecturer Martin Bridgstock says the subject, Scepticism, Science and the Paranormal, will give students the opportunity to study areas of science made famous by television shows such as The X-Files and The Twilight Zone.

Dr Bridgstock said he decided on the subject because he was impressed by the large number of people he encountered who believed in the paranormal. Opinion polls showed a majority of the population believed in psychic healing, while substantial minorities believed in astrology, mind-reading, UFOs and ghosts.

He said he would welcome anyone who approached the university claiming paranormal powers. “I would get the class together and I would invite this person to say exactly what he or she thinks they can do. Then we would try to devise an experiment which would enable that person to show if in fact they could do it under tightly controlled conditions.”

Chinese Voyages Head into Realms of Fantasy

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE WORLD, by Gavin Menzies. Bantam, $54.95.

Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to Africa between 1405 and 1435 would place him among the world’s great explorers. Yet retired submarine captain Gavin Menzies is convinced Zheng He’s feats were even greater. He believes a massive Chinese fleet conducted four simultaneous circumnavigations of the world between 1421 and 1423, during which they discovered the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, even Antarctica. But while they were away, the Chinese emperor turned his back on the outside world and, when the ships returned, had all mention of them erased. Why the records of Zheng He’s other expeditions were kept, Menzies does not explain.

As Menzies tells it, he was set on his own personal voyage after viewing some early European maps. He claims these have details that could not have been known to Europeans at the time, and concludes only the Chinese could have mounted expeditions to map these areas. The Europeans then copied the Chinese charts. One is the Piri Reis map, which Erich von Däniken made so much of, with different conclusions. Another, the Jean Rotz map, shows land stretching to the south and east of Australia. Menzies argues this was solid ice stretching from Tasmania to the Auckland and Campbell Islands. What appear on the map to be rivers, Menzies interprets as harbours on these islands, which were, he claims, “at the normal limit of the pack ice that links them in midwinter.” Of course, they’re actually ice-free year round.

After mapping this region, Menzies says the Chinese sailed north to New Zealand, pausing in Fjordland (sic) to drop off some giant ground sloths (which have been extinct for 10,000 years), collected in South America. A teak ship was then wrecked on Ruapuke Beach, south of Raglan, “near the mouth of the Torei Palma River”. Further evidence cited includes a brass bell found in the area which bears a Tamil inscription (a Tamil ship must have joined the fleet for trading purposes, he says), some rocks with Tamil inscriptions on them, and a carved stone duck which resembles a Chinese votive offering. European cartographers then somehow got hold of the charts drawn by the expedition before the Chinese authorities destroyed them, and copied down the ice sheet to the south of Australia, but left out New Zealand, and, for that matter, most of China itself.

It doesn’t take much research (using the same sources that Menzies consulted) to establish that the Ruapuke wreck (which originally came to light in the 1870s) was actually made from totara, the bell was found in the central North Island, the rock inscriptions are Maori, and the duck’s provenance is dubious, but unlikely to be Chinese.

The whole book is like this. There is no logic whatever as he leaps from one piece of “incontrovertible” evidence to the next. The only mystery is how a reputable publisher could lavish such attention (the book is beautifully produced) on the kind of writing that is usually found in cheap pulp paperbacks. There’s talk of a TV series too.

A version of this review originally appeared in the Waikato Times

Jeanette Fitzsimons wins Skeptics 2002 Bent Spoon Award

This is the press release (slightly edited) which announced this year’s Bent Spoon Winner. Most of the reports used only a small proportion, and included a quote from Ms Fitzsimons saying that the Skeptics could “do whatever they like with their silly bent spoon”.

Supporting the concept of “etheralised Cosmic-Astral influences” as a means of ridding New Zealand of possums has won Jeanette Fitzsimons the 2002 Bent Spoon Award from the New Zealand Skeptics. The annual award spotlights the dangers of gullibility or a lack of critical thought.

“In an area as vital to New Zealand’s ecological preservation as pest control, it is imperative to ensure that publicly funded control techniques are demonstrably effective,” says Skeptics head Vicki Hyde. “That’s why it was so disappointing to see support from the Greens for biodynamic possum peppering as a valid approach to this problem. Our environment needs champions who can separate wishful thinking from reality – if we could wish possums out of this country, they’d be gone overnight!”

Hyde said she was even more disappointed to find out later that Fitzsimons knew of the scientific testing possum peppering had undergone ten years ago. The tests had clearly demonstrated that biodynamic claims of being able to provide a potent repellent were false.

In peppering, the bodies of unwanted organisms are burnt at a certain time in the lunar cycle. The ashy remains are then watered down to produce a spray said to repel, some claim sterilise, the pest concerned. The dilution is to the point where no actual substance remains other than water, which is where the “vital life-force” and “planetary influences” of biodynamics’ “spiritual science” are said to take over.

A decade ago, the Forest Research Institute was the first organisation in the world to test these claims scientifically and in “a reasonably rigorous fashion”, according to Hyde who studied them at the time. They involved the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association, a biodynamic farmer and a homeopathic company, and proponents predicted that the “possums would not go near the treated areas and they would probably be desperate to get out of the cages”. In fact, the possums showed no discernible reaction to the spray.

Hyde says that the Skeptics support the examination of such proposals in case there is some undiscovered, effective strategy that has not been identified, but says that “peppering has already been closely examined and found wanting.”

Hyde is concerned that ten years on, peppering is still being proposed as a means of pest control, in Auckland with regard to painted apple moth and with the Green support for its use against possums.

“We’d hate to see public time and money spent on this when it has the potential to delay or dilute real, demonstrably effective approaches to such crucial areas as pest control. We can’t afford to do that when we’ve got possums chomping through tonnes of native forest every night and killing endangered hatchlings.”

The Skeptics conference, which opened in Christchurch on Friday the 13th of September included a presentation on the biosecurity hazards associated with this form of alternative agriculture.

The conference also saw the presentation of the society’s Bravo Awards, honouring intelligent reporting and critical thinking.

“We were pleased to see Mark Chrysell of the Assignment team actually walk into the forests allegedly silenced by 1080-based pest control and listen to the sounds of our recovering birdlife. His ‘Hello Possums’ documentary was a well-balanced piece which allowed both sides of the 1080 debate a chance to make their points.”

The Skeptics have also applauded:

Lynley Hood, author of “A City Possessed”

“There is no question that sexual abuse of children occurs, but the Christchurch Civic Creche case has always raised big question marks for those familiar with the social context and the similar cases overseas which preceded it. Lynley’s work has served to help clarify what makes this case so different from the unquestioned abuse cases that are found all-too-often in our court pages.”

Noel O’Hare, Listener Health columnist
O’Hare has been a previous Bravo Award winner, and his work cited in this year’s award includes the columns Silent Spring Fever (January 19, 2002) and Get Your Snake Oil here (August 17, 2002)

“Health columnists can be very influential, so it is good to see that Noel continues to present a level-headed view in this important area.”

Diana Wichtel, New Zealand Herald
Wichtel was nominated for her hard-hitting article A Monstrous, Lethal Arrogance (June 15), which described the death of Caleb Moorhead as the result of a “severe intelligence deficiency” on the part of his parents. Moorhead was the child who died as a result of his parents’ extreme form of dietary restrictions followed as part of their religious beliefs.

“We were interested to see her comment ‘No beliefs, religious or other, should be tolerated if they deny any child adequate medical care’, and wish this statement had been made clearly through the media some years earlier with regard to the Liam Williams-Holloway case and others.”

Joe Bennett, Press columnist

“We all need a little humour in our lives, and Joe Bennett’s pieces have often taken a good-natured look at the foibles of Mankind’s beliefs in odd notions. He can be scathing and make you smile at the same time, which is an admirable characteristic.”

Biodynamic Background

In her response to the award, Ms Fitzsimons said that the tests by FRI had been poorly designed and proven nothing. She also claimed that she had not advocated peppering, although the original television item showed her saying that she thought it was worth testing (which suggested that she did not know that it had already been tested).

Here are copies of the emails exchanged at the time of the broadcast earlier this year.

Vicki Hyde to Jeanette Fitzsimons, 29 March 2002

Greetings,

I was startled by your comment on television last night re the lack of scientific testing of possum peppering and how this might be a good approach to possum control for New Zealand — I guess you are not aware that possum peppering has been tested independently and scientifically in the past and found not to work.

So in the interests of ensuring that you have some background in this area — a vital one for New Zealand’s ecology after all — I thought I’d drop you a line so that next time it comes up (as it does every couple of years), you might have a better understanding of the issue.
The Forest Research Institute back in 1991 tested this thoroughly when this approach was proposed for possum control on Rangitoto Island. If I recall correctly, they were given around $40,000 to undertake a full set of tests courtesy of the Animal Health Board.
The tests involved the assistance of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, but clearly demonstrated that the peppering solution was no more effective than using plain water. In my role as editor of the NZ Science Monthly at the time, I actually critiqued the FRI methodology, and they were honest and careful enough to repeat their tests more rigorously, with the same non-results, sadly.

I say sadly, because possums are one of the most dangerous threats to our native flora and fauna (humanity being the greatest, of course). It would have been wonderful to have had an effective, safe, cheap means of possum removal or sterilisation, but this was not the case with peppering.

I appreciate that there are many people who claim to have seen peppering work, but their “tests” usually end up being very informal ones, often anecdotal (a friend of a friend said it worked on his property). As far as I am aware, there hasn’t been anything in any peer-reviewed literature since Eason and Hickling did their work for FRI.

There are many people with vested interests in peppering, whether emotional (as is the case of many of the well-intentioned people using it) or commercial (as with companies supplying biodynamic solutions and services). And it sounds like an easy, no-risk fix, which is why I guess it appeals.

It is all too easy to find people who can make a claim, often sincerely, but that doesn’t make them right. After all, millions of people once believed that the Earth was flat! That’s why it is so important to do the tests in as independent and objective a fashion as possible and, ideally, independently repeating “successes” so that we don’t end up fooled by our own errors and illusions. This is the foundation of science, and it serves as a form of consumer protection for the many ideas that are mooted.

I was very pleased to see you mention the importance of doing this but, as noted, surprised that you weren’t aware of the fact that it has been done once already at least. Certainly one might wish for more testing to be absolutely, positively sure, but I’m sure you appreciate the difficulty of getting public funds to repeat results which show that something doesn’t work! And that’s quite apart from the issue of what sort of mechanism would permit the highly diluted ash of an animal scaring or sterilising another animal…

Because of my science connections, not least with heading the Skeptics, I served on Landcare Research’s Possum Bioethics Committee for eight years until it was disbanded. I served alongside representatives from Forest and Bird, the RNZSPCA, tangata whenua, Federated Farmers (and indeed argued strongly for the involvement of environmental groups with the committee).

We all agreed that we wanted to get rid of possums as quickly and effectively (and humanely) as we could. We all recognised that there are very few easy answers in life, particularly when dealing with the full ramifications of pest control in a complex ecological system. That said, we do hold out hopes for some of the approaches being developed, though I suspect that debate will continue as to the right way to go about this.

But the important thing we have to concentrate on is that the possum control approach we choose is one which works – not one we believe will help. Environmental funding in this country is, regrettably, woefully underfunded, so it is vital that we spend those funds on approaches which work and which can be demonstrated to work.

Possum peppering has been demonstrated NOT to work, not at all – about the only way you could deter possums with it is to have a vast amount of the peppering solution (ie water) in a firehose and spray individual possums until they fall off a cliff into the sea! (Not that I am suggesting that that is an effective – or humane – way of dealing with 70 million of the pests… 🙂

It is important that we look at the real merits of each case – and peppering doesn’t have any. 1080 has some merits, with obvious concerns which need addressing, but I think on the whole it is better than doing nothing. I fervently hope the new biologically-based approaches will be much better, though there will be issues to address regarding the involvement of genetic manipulation.

I do hope that you appreciate that any comments re peppering were certainly not off-the-cuff or knee-jerk ones made by those with no understanding of the situation or appreciation of the urgent need to protect our flora and fauna from the ravages of this, and other, introduced pests. As you’d know, it can be hard, in many cases, to get the full details across in the sound-bites which media afford us….

Best regards,
Vicki Hyde

Jeanette Fitzsimons to Vicki Hyde, 2 April 2002

Dear Vicki

Thank you for your message. I am, of course, well aware of the FRI trials. They treated it as a poison and placed it on plastic out of contact with the soil. I’m still puzzled as to why the BD Association went along with this.

When testing the efficacy of something where you don’t understand the mechanism you are working with it is easy to set up a trial that will have no effect. I don’t blame FRI for this – they had little to go on. Most chemical poisons would not work if applied in the wrong way or at the wrong time or in the wrong dilution.

However, it was not in any way a conclusive test. Also, the monitoring was very short term. The fact is a number of farmers are using the technique for weeds, insects and possums and finding some effect. Practising farmers don’t keep doing things that don’t work. The issue is rather just what mechanism are we working with here and how can it be best enhanced and can it be used on a large scale.

The $40,000 spent by FRI is tiny compared with nine years on GE carrots and still nothing to show for it.

What I would like to see is a trial where those who have worked with the method for a decade or more design the experiment and sceptical scientists monitor the results – but over a long enough time to show delayed effects. Not a lot to ask.

If we refused to use technologies where we don’t understand exactly what is going on we’d still be without electricity and anaesthetics – or so my physicist and chemist friends tell me.

Graham Hickling to Jeanette Fitzsimons, cc Vicki Hyde 15 April 2002

Dear Jeanette

I am one of the researchers who undertook the FRI “Possum peppering” trial in the early ’90s. Vicki Hyde and I have been discussing the media coverage of this topic and she has now passed on to me your recent email. I would like to respond briefly to several of the points you made to her.

1) I am, of course, well aware of the FRI trials. They treated it as a poison and placed it on plastic out of contact with the soil.

We were testing for repellent effects. Toxicity effects weren’t being claimed by the biodynamic growers – they believed the “pepper” would be an effective repellent.

There were three trials undertaken – the third of which ran for several weeks under field conditions. In the third trial the pepper was applied directly to the ground, with NO contact with plastic.

The other two trials did involve plastic. As you will be aware, the trials were designed in consultation with senior members of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association. They never expressed any concern with that aspect of the study when it was being designed. Nor was this issue ever mentioned by those who were advocating that Doc use the technique as an alternative to poison on Rangitoto Island. This highlights the difficulty of designing a trial that addresses all possible future criticisms of it.

[extra comment from Vicki: the painted apple moth biodynamic proponents wanted to put their preparation inside a PVC pipe so it could radiate its repelling energy field — lots of plastic there!]

2) The fact is a number of farmers are using the technique for weeds, insects and possums and finding some effect.

They certainly believe it has an effect. Unfortunately, I am not aware of anyone that has yet demonstrated the effect in a manner that would be robust to the same type of scepticism that you are directing at our trial. I would be as happy as anyone to see such a demonstration.

3) The $40,000 spent by FRI is tiny …what I would like to see is a trial where those who have worked with the method for a decade or more design the experiment and sceptical scientists monitor the results – but over a long enough time to show delayed effects. Not a lot to ask.

A longer term trial would certainly address some of the criticisms of our trial, but would inevitably be expensive. Our pilot trial was funded by the levies that cattle farmers pay when their cattle are sold (ie, Animal Health Board funding). If there had been ANY evidence of a peppering effect, our recommendation would have been to investigate further with longer, more extensive trials.

However, since we found NO sign of an effect we felt it inappropriate to recommend that the taxpayer or farming community pay for further expensive work. Rather, we felt a more appropriate course of action would be for the proponents of peppering to fund further trial work to demonstrate the effect(s) they claim for the method.

4) If we refused to use technologies where we don’t understand exactly what is going on we’d still be without electricity and anaesthetics – or so my physicist and chemist friends tell me.

This issue of “what’s the mechanism?” is very much a red herring. If the pepper repels possums – or sterilises them, or whatever – then that EFFECT should be readily measurable. (If the effect is only a subtle one then it won’t be of much practical use for pest control…).

If someone runs a valid trial that produces convincing evidence for a useful peppering effect then I can assure you that this will spur researchers on to try and figure out the underlying mechanism. (This is what happened with GE research…puzzling effects were evident from early trials, which prompted many subsequent research projects to gradually unravel and develop an understanding of the genetic mechanisms).

Unfortunately, researchers and funding agencies have NOT yet seen convincing evidence that a peppering effect exists. It is therefore unsurprising that they are not currently putting any further effort or funds into researching the mechanisms of how it might work.

If I can be of any assistance to you on this or related matters at a later date please contact me – pest management in New Zealand is a vexing issue that we must all struggle with and I certainly agree that wherever possible we must seek to reduce the application of toxins in the fight against possums.

Yours sincerely,
Graham Hickling
Senior lecturer in Wildlife Management, Lincoln University

Green Around the Gills

Within 12 minutes of the press release being sent out to the email alert list, Vicki Hyde had a response from a senior office-holder in the Green Party expressing concern about the award, but acknowledging that it was deserved! These are his comments on how he saw the debate from within the Green Party.

The subject of possum peppering came up on the Green Party internet “Green Views” list. I was critical of the speech made by leader Jeanette Fitzsimons to the Institute of Engineers suggesting that “alternative forms” of dealing with possums were available, including “possum peppering” which needed more testing to prove its effectiveness.

I stated that there had been testing of this “remedy” some time ago, but it had been found to be ineffective and had to be regarded as more a belief than a science. I was attacked by Meriel Watts (Soil and Health) who demanded that I produce the research results or tell her where she could find them. I was unable to, but later understand that Jeanette Fitzsimons knew what they were all about all along, and had been in contact with Vicki Hyde about them.

On at least two occasions I asked Jeanette (through the list) to respond to the criticisms about her speech and/or provide more information to ordinary members of the Green Party through the list. There was no response whatsoever from Jeanette Fitzsimons. Some members posted details of very critical newspaper editorials – one in the Auckland Herald which was critical about the “occult” view of people in the Green Party (as represented by their apparent belief in possum peppering). They made a comparison to Waikato water having magical Maori qualities and that it shouldn’t be piped to Auckland, in the same breath as the apparent green belief in possum peppering. Another editorial was in, I think, a New Plymouth paper.

Another member gave details about a website that paraded new age stuff, even astrology, and offered to take people’s possum skins, incinerate them, and post the ashes back to them for a fee of $350. Also the site revealed that the theory of possum peppering was devised by Rudolph Steiner in 1923 but that it had never entered the practical realm as a remedy in subsequent years, because people found that it didn’t work.

Some members became quite passionate about defending the practice and in the event, tempers flared and a couple of apologies were issued. Certainly, there was a large amount of polarisation on this issue.

My opinion was, having talked to a number of other people about it, that “belief” in this sort of occult practice was not confined to the Green Party but had adherents in equal proportion to sensible people in most of the political parties. Who can forget the United Future MP who said that Mother Mary protected Wellington churches from earthquake damage and deaths and that they didn’t need insuring?

I had a number of supporters in my stance against possum peppering on the Green Views list, but my main disappointment lay with Jeanette Fitzsimons herself, who found herself unable or unwilling to address the criticism of members over this matter. Also I was disappointed at the reaction of Meriel Watts whose refusal to debate the issue resulted in the inference of her support for possum peppering1, and cast some doubt at the veracity of the worthy things she stands for – including alternatives to pesticide and herbicide treatment, and her worthy support for organic farming (which does have a sound scientific basis), and her anti GE/GM stance.

I have to say that there are many Green Party members who are respected scientists in their own right and do not have any truck with new age stuff and possum peppering in particular.

1Meriel Watts was involved in the proposal to use peppering to eradicate the painted apple moth in Auckland, so her support of peppering does not need to be inferred…