Recently I was stopped in the street by man dressed in a suit who I assumed was about to ask for directions.  He asked me if I would mind answering a question for him, and I said that depending on the question I would of course be happy to oblige.  The question was this: Do you believe in God? It occurred to me that this was a little unusual, to stop someone in the street in the morning to ask them a question about their personal beliefs.  However, I told him that I do not believe in God.  He gave me a wry smile and told me that he had expected I would answer in the negative, since in the present day in Britain there are very few people, especially in the younger generation, who believe in God.  I didn’t have any statistical information about my person but I didn’t entirely agree with him.  Figures from the 2001 census show that 76.8% of people reported themselves as belonging to a particular religion, whilst 23.2% reported no religion or did not state their religion.  Of course it’s true that many people will write down a religion whilst not practising or engaging in any sort of religious activity.  Nevertheless I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if you consider yourself to belong to a religion, the chances are that you accept the existence of a higher power.  Obviously the census was taken almost 9 years ago, but it seems unlikely the figures would have swung dramatically the other way.  In any case this man seemed eager to continue the conversation.

He proceeded to ask me for my opinion on evolution; I said I consider it to be an accurate scientific theory.  He said he thought evolution was an interesting theory, and refused to rule it out, although he argued that if evolution was true it would surely have to have been instigated by God and tweaked a little throughout history so as to explain certain aspects of it.  I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I muttered something about having to leave, but he pressed me further.  He said that surely it is vitally important for us to discover whether or not there is, in fact, a God, which was again a little odd since I had by now ascertained that he must be a believer himself.  I pointed out that surely providing a definitive answer to that question is somewhat difficult.  He countered by saying that if I was on a tight rope would I prefer to be up there with or without a safety net, which was an anomalous metaphor that didn’t really add anything to the conversation.  If I was on a tight rope you can be sure that I’d have the best safety net money can buy, but if you’re asking me whether or not I’d prefer to have an eternal life after death or accept that once you die that’s it, I’d have to say that I’d prefer the latter, but that’s just me.  In any case I said I was in a hurry and would have to leave, at which point he delved into his bag and produced a book which he offered to me.

The book is called “Life: How did it get here? By evolution or creation?”  After leafing through a few pages it was evident that this book already had the answer: creation.  It begins in an almost rational (I use this term loosely) way. It sets out some of the theories of evolution and argues that evolution can’t explain things such as the complicated nature of the human brain; maintains that the fossil evidence does not demonstrate species evolving, but supports clearly different species created by God who never interbreed; uses analogies of houses having architects therefore the natural world must do; says that we have no way of explaining the emergence of life in the first place; claims that Genesis is scientifically sound; and so on.

It attempts to explain that the first humans had eternal life, but when they “pulled away from their creator’s direction, what happened to them is similar to what happens when you pull the plug out of an electric fan”. It finishes with the declaration that those who believe in God will be saved when Armageddon and the rapture occur, and the saved will live in paradise free from illness and in harmony with the animals (there is even a drawing of a girl hugging a tiger).  Admittedly the latter parts of the book aren’t really about evolution at all.

It’s clear that a lot of effort went into making and publishing this book however poorly conceived, badly researched, and ludicrous it is.  But it did make me think.  How can people read something like this, and believe it?  How is it that educated and intelligent people can’t and won’t accept something that is considered to be factually accurate?

Perhaps people don’t believe it because they don’t understand it?  Although there’s lots of things we believe to be true but don’t necessarily understand: you may not understand the physics behind why a plane stays in the air, but you surely wouldn’t just assume it was down to pixie dust.  Evolution and religion need to be disentangled from each other.  Teaching evolution does not mean you are teaching atheism.  It is sad that there are so many people clamouring to prevent evolution from being taught in schools, and in some extreme cases it is under threat of being taken out entirely.

The idea that if you teach evolutionary theory in a science class you should have to teach creationism as another viable theory is preposterous.  You wouldn’t say that the pixie dust theory should be taught as an alternative when teaching the physics of flight.  I am not against learning about religion in school, and think that if taught for the interest of learning about history and sociological aspects of a diverse population, then it is educational and perhaps useful in facilitating tolerance and understanding within society.  But if creationism is going to be taught at all it should be taught as part of understanding how our ancestors explained how they came to be in a religious studies class.  It does not belong in the science classroom.

Teaching the theory of evolution does not mean teachers are encouraging children not to believe in God, children are free (in school at least) to decide that one for themselves.  They are trying to teach scientific fact, something which will finally take up its rightful place in the classrooms of primary schools in the UK.

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It has been reported that a number of players including players from Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, and a host of other clubs have been visiting a Serbian healer by the name of Mariana Kovacevic.  Apparently her unique technique is to perform massage using a cream that has been infused with horse placenta, and a number of players are convinced that this is the secret to recovering quickly from injury.  Footballers aren’t known as the clevereople in the world, but you’d think that having spent the majority of their careers around professional medical staff, and considering injury is part and parcel of playing the sport they play, they would have some understanding of treatment on sports related injuries.  You wouldn’t think they could be taken in by a woman claiming special healing abilities, particularly when their doctors have told them it’s a load of rubbish.  Most reports have said that the actual methods used are a closely guarded secret, but all seem to agree that there is a placenta involved.  Most have said it’s a horse placenta, although The Sun went one further and claimed that a human placenta was being used.  Liverpool football club in particular have been very impressed with the treatment, having sent 4 players to Serbia recently who all mysteriously got better after having the placenta treatment in addition to their usual treatment with club physios.  Of course the only logical conclusion is that the horse placenta was the answer, nothing to do with the excellent medical care provided by club doctors.  Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez is very complimentary towards this alternative treatment saying “Many top players have been going for seven years, it has been successful and I believe it is safe”.  I suspect that the success he is describing is largely anecdotal, and the fact it is safe is frankly a relief as I’d be somewhat worried if someone administering a massage with some harmless fluid was unsafe.

Most reports haven’t tried to speculate as to how a treatment which involves rubbing placenta fluid on the skin can have a healing effect although the majority of newspapers have kindly pointed out facts about the placenta in the middle of their reports such as in the BBC “The placenta connects the foetus to the uterine wall in mammals. And fresh samples of the organ are rich in stem cells, which can develop into different types of tissue like muscle and bone.”  That’s good to know but it doesn’t explain how rubbing it into the skin could help.  Giles Smith of the Times writes “But what’s everybody’s problem with placenta anyway? It’s widely accepted that the placenta is a valuable source of stem cells and iron.”  Absolutely, and babies in the womb benefit greatly from this, but that still doesn’t explain how applying it to the skin helps footballers with damaged ankle ligaments.   The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that this placenta method speeds up recovery time.  It is amazing that people who have the best medicine available on offer are still prepared to put their faith in something that has not been proven.   Hopefully this lack of evidence won’t mean politicians start advocating its use within the NHS anytime soon.

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Do they fail to see the irony? This week The Daily Mail reported on a new book that dispels a number of health myths (the book is called “Don’t Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked”).  They open with: “Every day you hear or read things about your body and health that are simply not true.  In many cases they’ve been scientifically discredited, yet these medical myths endure.”  They point out classic myths such as the one that claims we only use 10 per cent of our brains (although if this were true it may help explain why The Daily Mail is still around…), or the misconception that the flu jab can cause the flu.

The Mail seems rather bemused at the level of belief in these medical myths: as if they are not quite sure why it would be that people would believe such nonsense.  Naturally, they would never be so foolish as to make any such claims that the flu jab causes the flu it is designed to prevent, although they did get pretty close just last month.

Whilst I am all for The Mail helping to dispel these sorts of things, and if they really are so clueless as to why people believe such myths, perhaps they should start by taking a good look through their own archives.  A good place to start would be here, although a book debunking all of the rubbish The Mail has given us could make “War and Peace” look like a light read.

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Naturally the article in The Sun doesn’t mention any other demographics or confounding variables; and why would they? After all, any good Sun journalist knows that correlation proves causation.  Of course, this finding was also reported in the well known broadsheet The Telegraph.  They don’t use the word boffins, or work any woeful puns into the headline, but they do report exactly the same figures, and use exactly the same quote from the lead author.  As an aside, both articles report at the end that the study also found that older women “enjoy a more fruitful sex life”.  This is a one liner; there is no detail about the scores relating to this particular finding and certainly no mention of whether or not age groups differed at all in their drinking habits.  The Telegraph (like The sun) even mention that the Female Sexual Function Index is used by doctors to assess women and sexual health, although the website for the instrument itself says “It was not designed for use as a diagnostic instrument and should not be used as a substitute for a complete sex history in clinical evaluation.”

These newspaper articles were published back in August.  The journal article in question is published in this month’s edition of the Journal of Sexual Medicine¹.  So how accurate were The Sun and the Telegraph? There were 3 groups in the study: group 1 was the daily, moderate red wine intake (one or two glasses); group 2 were teetotallers; and group 3 were those who reported occasional drinking of any sort of alcohol.  The researchers did find that group 1 had higher total FSFI scores than groups 2 or 3.  They found that group 1 had higher scores than groups 2 or 3 on desire and lubrication, but found no significant differences between groups on arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, or pain.  Despite the positive overall findings, the researchers advise caution when interpreting the results, pointing out the “small sample size, self reported data, and the lack of laboratory tests and any instrument to psychometrically address sexual distress”.

There is no intention here to belittle the research itself; rather the intention is to highlight the stunted and somewhat meaningless nature of reporting the findings, out of context, in the newspaper.  The authors of the journal article make no claim that adjusting your diet to include a higher alcohol content will improve sex life, and moreover, they advise caution in interpreting the findings whilst suggesting more research be done.  It is obvious why The Sun picked up on the article: it contained references to alcohol and sex, but they have pointlessly oversimplified a complex issue for the sake of filling column space that could potentially lead some people to believe that increasing their intake of alcohol could help their sex life.  This would surely be a little irresponsible considering the abuse of alcohol carries a number of recognised health risks.

But perhaps this is being too harsh on the Sun, maybe they were fed the story from elsewhere and had no idea that this was bad reporting.  The Daily Mail also picked up this story and published it.  Aside from the headline and opening sentence the articles are identical, word for word.  In fact, on closer inspection of the version in The Telegraph it is also a carbon copy of those in The Sun and The Daily Mail.  But this identical story doesn’t end there, just about any news outlet reporting the story had the same few paragraphs.  Maybe the newspapers are now collaborating to bring us poor scientific reporting, without having the original press release from the university it is difficult to say whether the multiple stories were taken directly from that.

1.  Mondaini, N., Cai, T., Gontero, P., Gavazzi, A., Lombardi, G., Boddi, V., Bartoletti, R (2009) Regular Moderate Intake of Red Wine Is Linked to a Better Women’s Sexual Health.  Journal of Sexual Medicine. 6:2772–2777.

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Apparently there is scientific evidence in animals and in humans demonstrating the effects of Lactium in stress.  According to the article Lactium has only been tested on 190 volunteers but one theory of how it works is that it “acts on receptors in the brain that help control anxiety and stress”. It is not mentioned which receptors or why this might be the case.  A search of pubmed quickly reveals, well, very little.  There are no articles about Lactium or casein in relation to use in combating stress in humans.  From searching through Google it looks like the 190 volunteers who have been tested came from 5 studies that are not easy to get hold of.  One such paper by Dr Marta Santuré tested Lactium against placebo.  It is not clear which journal this study is published in, or if it is published at all.  It measured the effects of stress in 63 women who were suffering from at least 1 symptom of stress, measured by an unnamed questionnaire that is not described.  Somewhat unsurprisingly it has favourable results showing that in 5 out of 8 areas of stress (remember that the participants had to have at least 1 symptom, and since no further participant information is given, it is unclear how many participants fell into each group) Lactium was significantly better than placebo.  The researcher even suggests that the insignificant results such as in locomotive symptoms could have been significant if they hadn’t been masked by the troublesome placebo effect.  Interestingly, despite giving a ringing endorsement for Lactium, showing positive results at a dosage of 150mg/day the LactiumUSA website where this research is linked from claims that Lactium has been proven effective in humans at 167mg/day.

So how did this little known effect of Lactium find its way to the Daily Mail?  It may just be coincidence, but at the bottom of the article is the answer to the question of where to find this remarkable product in the UK: Boots.  They are selling “Equilibrium” containing Lactium at a price of £9.99 for a 14 day supply.  The boots website has this to say about it “This product contains Lactium a unique ingredient which is proven to help with the stresses of every day life, helping you through a stressful day” and “This one a day supplement contains the patented ingredient Lactium.  All Boots vitamins and suppliers are checked to ensure they meet our high quality and safety standards”.  Presumably Boots had more luck tracking down the other 4 studies showing safety and efficacy data.

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