Appropriately intolerant reporting of quack allergy testing
Last week, the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, caused a bit of a stir when he called for scientists to be more intolerant towards pseudoscience.
Surely intolerance is a bad thing, right? Well, the point Beddington was making was that pseudoscience can be dangerous, and it's not OK to simply accept it as a valid system of alternative beliefs. Pseudoscientific treatments can indeed be dangerous. I read a particularly harrowing account recently of extreme distress and suffering caused by an inappropriate belief in homeopathy. Warning: when I said "particularly harrowing", I meant it, so do not click on this link if you are easily upset. So I think there is a good case to be made to be intolerant towards dangerous quackery.
However, while some have welcomed Beddington's thoughts, others have been more cautious about them. For example, Alice Bell has argued that intolerance is seldom a good thing, and that more efforts to carefully educate people about the issues involved would be more productive. It's hardly surprising that a call for intolerance would prove to be controversial.
Now, I don't know if this is exactly what Beddington meant, but I saw what I thought was a truly excellent example of appropriate intolerance in action on BBC Breakfast this morning. The story was not intolerant in any kind of unpleasant way, but simply presented the story in a fair and balanced manner.
The story in question was about food allergies, and the problems of ineffective alternative allergy testing methods on sale to the public. In case you missed BBC Breakfast this morning, the story is also covered on the BBC website, taking a similar tone, and being an equally good example of excellent journalism.
The facts of this case are simple. Diagnosing food allergies has to be done by scientifically validated methods if the results are to be trustworthy. Some people peddle so-called "alternative" allergy testing methods, no doubt based on "homeopathic quantum crystal resonance" or some other such bollocks. They are, as we were told by the BBC, skilfully marketed, but scientifically worthless.
I was delighted to see that the BBC did not give air time to the charlatans who peddle such dangerous quackery in some sort of misguided attempt to offer "balance". It seems to me that the BBC is learning from past mistakes. There has often been a great temptation among journalists in the past to attempt to offer balance in scientific stories by presenting "both sides of the argument". Presenting both sides of the argument is, of course, entirely appropriate when reporting political stories, when which side of the argument you believe is often determined by personal values and preferences, and there is no "right answer". However, in science, there often is a right answer, and giving both sides of the story equal say when one side is clearly right and the other side is clearly wrong is not the right way to produce a balanced news story. I thought the way the BBC presented the story was a truly excellent example of quality journalism.
Was it intolerant to ignore the people who sell bogus allergy testing cures? Maybe, but as far as I'm concerned, it was exactly the sort of intolerance that we should be aiming for.
Well said, Adam.
I'm sure this call for intolerance will be denounced by many - many that have something to lose from peddling their quackery to the unsuspecting public, that is. But we need to see it for what it is: a call not to allow people to be mislead over health claims. Being misled is particularly important when we're talking about people's health: there are many quacks out there advocating their nonsense for serious life-threatening medical conditions over treatments that have evidence behind them. While some of these quacks are no doubt well-meaning, that does not mean we should tolerate them selling their bogus therapies to the unsuspecting or vulnerable.
The BBC report was good. But people still have difficulty expressing how confident science can be that a test or treatment does not work as claimed.
The article reported Dr Fox as saying "The websites are very well put together, the stories behind them are plausible, but we were unable to find any evidence to support them".
I think it would have been more accurate to say something along these lines: "there is good evidence (from the basic sciences) that 'alternative allergy tests' are unlikely to work, and there is no evidence (from clinical trials) that they do work".
The trouble with simply saying "there is no evidence" is that this will be read by believers to mean "there will be evidence when studies are done".
The patent office does not need to assess a patent application for a perpetual motion machine, because we have pretty good evidence from physics that no perpetual motion machine will work. Similarly, basic physiology tells us that allergy is a very complex condition, and that simple measurements of electrical currents or hair composition can give little or no useful information about particular allergies. Research into tests and treatments should build on current knowledge, not waste time and resources investigating clearly dead-end ideas.
That's a good point Michael, but did you see the item when it was on the TV? I thought the tone of the piece left a lot less room for the sort of ambiguity that you rightly point out was in the website article.