Thanks for the great post. Keep ‘em coming. Love the Quackcasts too.

1) I say excellent because it parallels one or more of my lectures in my “Scientific View” course on “altmed” and talks for physician hospital staffs.
.

at Stanford and for physician staffs. And both I assume were constructed independently – at least I did not know you, Mark.

2) Echinacea: I wrote an editorial type summary a few years back on echinacea ( Sampson W. Studying herbal remedies, N Engl J Med. 2005 Jul 28;353(4):337-9) pointing out the lack of evidence based on at least three clinical trials to that point,
But also, based on historical absence of any credible information leading to the claim in the first place – supposedly a Native American/First nation traditional cold/respiratory illness cure. I could find no confirmation of that in 16 standard herbal texts including two standards on Native American medicine.
The claim, it seems, originated twice – once in a late 19th – early 20th century naturopath, and secondly when introduced in Europe later 20th century by a Swiss naturopath from where it was reimported to the US some 30 years ago.
What is also surprising has been absence of acceptance of the editorial’s contents by other sources such as naturalmedicines comprehensive data base, and other more “official” sites. It shouldn’t have surprised given what we know about them and after what Mark has in the post.

3) Other standard references on human thinking/memory defects; two by Loftus: Memory and Eyewitness Testimony, another on heuristics – Judgment under Uncertainty by Kahneman, Slovic, Tversky. Lots of others on Knowledge like “How We Know What Isnt So” by Tom Gilovich. and Anomalistic Psychology by Zusne and Jones. Also Perseverence of belief articles by Lee at Stanford. All contain original experiments…ingenious designs and surprising results.

Compliments again on this useful post.

Yes! Plus the ubiquitouos propaganda within mainstream media and at health clubs and yoga studios, and the general aging of the population, all contribute to sustain, normalize and validate AM in a person’s mind.

“I solved one of those big mathematical problems that’s supposed to be impossible, but I don’t want to tell you the details until I get published because I’m afraid someone will steal my idea.” (This really set off the crank detector.)

ME: “So you trisected the angle?” (Stab in the dark but ….)

HIM: “HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?!”

“It’s one of the famous impossible ones, and lots of people think they’ve solved it. It really is impossible, though.”

“NO, it isn’t. I solved it.”

“Let me guess: you marked the straight edge.”

“Sure, of course I did.”

“The conditions of the problem forbid marking the straight edge. It isn’t a ruler. That’s a common flawed solution.”

“WELL THAT’S STUPID!”

Not being a true crank, Dave was sane enough to acknowledge that if the problem was defined to forbid marking the straight edge, he hadn’t solved it. I believe that he thought I was psychic for a while because of my lucky guess, instead of a big Martin Gardner fan.

2) I think the other reason why alternative medicine is so alluring is because sometimes it does work, though not for the reasons stipulated. And then, when one works, curiosity naturally leads one to investigate whether others do, too. Let’s say you’ve been feeling really tired and grumpy lately, even though you’ve been getting plenty of sleep. Your doctor finds nothing wrong with you. You decide to try a “detox” diet (involving lots of fruit, vegetables, no refined carbs or fat, or some variation thereof, with the main theme being “less than 1000 cal/day”). And lo and behold–you’re bouncing off the walls by day 5 (I’ve actually done this inadvertently, during a weeklong session of grant-writing, and I was indeed hyper as a kite at the end of it). You attribute this sensation to the “purging of toxins in your body by a clean diet” (I did have the good sense to realize that it was because not eating enough for so many days had f*cked up my brain chemistry), and then surmise that if dietary detoxification was so beneficial, coffee enemas might be better…etc etc.

You probably did not mean this exclusively, but implying that AM use is entirely to faulty reasoning and crankery comes across as unnecessarily demeaning to a public that is inevitably less privileged than us in scientific and medical knowledge.

I would have proposed a different three factors as the main ones sustaining AM :

1. Unmet medical needs. AM would scarcely exist if conventional medicine had simple, cheap, entirely safe and entirely effective answers for everything .
2. The power of the personal testimonial at the individual level
3. Compulsive behavior in the use of medical treatments. Doing nothing about problems is alien to us.

“It might not be true but I am distressed enough to give it a try and Auntie Jane said it helped her” is a far more common reason for the individual USE of AM than true belief or crankery.

Agreed, a great many will leap to the defense of AM when it is attacked by skeptics, but I am sure that this can be a reaction to the implication (evident here) that AM use is a sure sign of stupidity. Who would not react to that? In my opinion very little AM use is based upon conscious scientific judgments and most involves no strong prior investment of belief — it is simply something to try out when faced with unresolved medical problems. I think any other understanding of CAM can lead to deeply counterproductive attitudes.

The importance of the minority of nutcases and cranks lies in their ability to keep sections of the public off-balance — not quite sure what to believe. I read somewhere that doctors want to keep people sick and dying (etc). The extremists have an undue influence upon our perceptions of AM, too, because we end up in so many confrontations with them.

Add the merest smidgeon of “not being quite sure what to believe” to the factors listed above and you are getting closer to the true explanation for a vigorous market in “alternative” medical products and services. It is a dream environment for frank fraud to flourish, not merely the traditional quack. What is astonishing is that so many of the public maintain their allegiance to “proper” medicine.

Yes!

As it stands, people are free to use SCAM instead of evidence based medicine (in Canada, the US and Europe). They’re also free to simply refuse any kind of treatment (as long as they’re not a danger to public safety).

http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=13177

389 page discussion on whether or not 0.999… equals 1 (anyone unsure, just try subtracting them, and see what you get, it’s almost trivial to prove that they are equal)

No, adults can already do that. The “health freedom” movement seeks to hold quacks harmless when they … cause harm.

This is a great post, Mark.

I am enthralled by the idea of math cranks! I mean, we always think of math as being the purest, most logical field. It’s true that the reality-denial of alternative medicine practitioners is just as strong, but… there’s just something about the DENIAL OF PI that I just… really find striking. o.O

Wow.

I’m going to be thinking about that all day.

Must go work problem sets to clear my head.

What force.

The various iterations of the health freedom act merely allow people to choose what they do to their bodies.

Simmilarly the pi bill wouldn’t have actually forced anybody to use the cockamany thorem in their calculations. You can continue to use whatever value of pi you want. Legistlatures are always passing dumb bills like bills declaring Feb 19th to be eyeball Appreciation Day or the Spotted Skunk as the state mammal. It prevents them from doing really dumb things like outlawing marijuana or passing economic stimulus bills that wreck the economy.

Oh, and no discussion of mathematical crankery is complete without:
THE TIMECUBE!!!! Warning may induce epileptic fits in susceptible people. If you have a sense of style or artistic taste, you may feel nauseaus. Do not stare directly at the blinking fonts. Those of you who do not recognize the majesty of the timecube are educated stupid. You have been warned!

Echinacea’s value is to comfort people who believe in it. The official, current evidence-based medicine proclamation is that it does not prevent colds at all, but might–yeah, might…

“…modestly reduce symptom severity and duration, possibly by about 10% to 30%…Not all research is positive. Some studies show no benefit for treating the common cold in adults. A study in children aged 2-11 years also suggests that taking an Echinacea purpurea juice extract 7.5-10 mL/day for up to 10 days also does not significantly decrease cold symptoms.”

(From the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database:

http://www.naturaldatabase.com )

In summary, echinacea doesn’t work.

If we could improve our educational system to teach critical thinking skills, might we at least achieve in the general population some sort of herd immunity to pseudoscience? Fleischman & Pons received a forceful Bronx cheer from physicists, can we create a society that is similarly self-correcting?

Another parallel between mathematical cranks and proponents of alternative medicine is that they both seek to impose their beliefs upon the rest of us by enacting laws–not of the scientific type, but of the legislative type. This is especially true if they come from Indiana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

http://www.thenhf.com/government_affairs_12.htm

It makes me wonder. Given the ubiquity of cranks of all kinds, of sins of memory, of logical fallacies, is being a crank in fact the norm? Tote up all the proponents of alternative medicine, astrology, UFO’s, Big foot, Atlantis, and that elephant in the room, and you are left with a paltry number of those who even try to think critically. Are the few who ascribe to a rational assessment of the natural world the deluded, the true cranks?

Fortunately, you’re overlooking the consequences of crank magnetism.

That was an excellent post. I have a question if you could indulge me?

It’s off topic but you mentioned echinacea does not prevent the
common cold.
Does it have any value at all?
Alternatively could you point me to some laypersons resource on it’s efficacy or lack thereof?

Thanks,

Caoimh