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Webwatch
January 2008
Not long ago, we received an email from a man in the USA claiming that there is a conspiracy to make treatments more and more expensive and hence that the drug companies and doctors now attack alternative therapies as they would reduce sales. The answer he received gave a more UK perspective, that here we have the National Health Service where people are treated free of charge, so for us at least, this conspiracy theory is seen to fall down completely. This can easily be confirmed when one considers the work of NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, www.nice.org.uk. This is a body dedicated to making treatments better and, for the politicians, cheaper. NICE is described as an "...independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health" but hits the news in the UK when specific drugs or treatments gain or fail to get approval on grounds of cost. A high profile example being Herceptin for breast cancer. See news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5058952.stm or put Herceptin in the search box on www.nice.org.uk. It seems from this side of the pond that more and more people in the US are seeing such conspiracies and it is hard to comment, not being involved in US health policy, but pro conspiracy sites such as www.quackpotwatch.org/ use language such as "It is a propaganda enterprise, one part crackpot, two parts evil." when referring to those who wish to expose quackery. The site author has an interesting photograph of himself with a large warship in the background, weapons of war being hard to associate with healthcare. It is easier to associate such weapons with ideas such as where he says "The 'Quackbuster Conspiracy' is in a desperate place now. They know they've lost the war, and are going to pay a terrible price for their actions. The fear is in their eyes..." on his site. Although the NHS is politically highly sensitive, not even the hardest opponents to the NHS use the ideas of war. Perhaps that is a US view that has little currency in the UK. Sites that do not support this conspiracy view have been mentioned here before such as www.quackwatch.org/. The best guide is to look for yourself, bearing in mind the motivation and language used by the authors.
On a more humorous note but still with serious intent, it seems there are those who will swear that certain events took place, even that cures are effective, in the face of unambiguous evidence that shows otherwise. A good example is when Patrick Moore, a famous astronomer, told people that gravity would be reduced during a period when Pluto passed behind Jupiter. He is a practical joker of world renown but some still reported that they had indeed experienced a floating sensation in the relevant period. See www.thefoolsday.com/bbc-hoaxes.html. Did they actually believe it happened or is there some mechanism at work that makes people believe against all possible evidence?
This class of behaviour has of course been studied. If someone believes that a given substance or treatment worked for them or a friend, they may well hold that view with some passion, but sadly that belief is of no use to the population as a whole. It may be that the treatment was not a factor in the recovery at all, it was simply undertaken before their recovery and they got better for some other reason. The famous psychologist B.F. Skinner researched just this kind of thing. As is described in some detail on psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/, he experimented with pigeons as well as humans, but the birds illustrate the point well. In numerous experiments, birds were rewarded with food if they chose one of several possible actions. Skinner found they could learn which action was required, but when he extended his experiments, found that if food was delivered instead at random, the birds would associate success with their action just before delivery, i.e. their action had no effect on food delivery. By extension, if someone takes a treatment then improves, they will believe firmly the treatment "worked". Such a belief will not be shaken by lack of any other evidence.
In times past, such beliefs, or simply assigning events to specious causes, could kill. In 1581, one Margaret Simons of Kent rebuked a young man for chasing a dog whilst he was armed with a knife. (This puts modern news into perspective!). The next day, the boy fell ill and she was accused of witchcraft, it being thought she had made him ill. Luckily the jury at her trial failed to establish her guilt, but others were not so lucky. See entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2835913.ece. Even well into the next century, the famous self-appointed Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, was at work whilst the English Civil war was raging across the land. There is more on www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/essex/. In all, probably 200 witches were disposed of until he ceased his grizzly work, all without one scrap of real evidence. Yet he was fuelled by "passionate belief in the righteousness of his actions". I think I will rely on evidence.
Happy surfing
Howard