We all know that so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) is currently a popular option for treating all sorts of human diseases. Therefore, it can hardly come as a surprise that a similar situation applies to animals. Consumers who are fond of SCAM are also likely to take their pets to SCAM practitioners when they feel that they are ill.
But SCAM for animals can be a rather tricky issue. Animals cannot consent to the treatments they are given. This can render the use of SCAM for animals ethically problematic: Where does the treatment end and the animal abuse begin? Which SCAM works for animals and which doesn’t? Which are safe and which harmful?
A recent systematic review assessed the evidence for the clinical efficacy of 24 SCAMs used in cats, dogs, and horses. The authors performed literature searches on Web of Science Core Collection, CABI, and PubMed. Relevant articles were assessed for scientific quality, and information was extracted on study characteristics, species, type of treatment, indication, and treatment effects.
Of 982 unique publications screened, 42 were eligible for inclusion, representing 9 different SCAMs:
aromatherapy,
gold therapy,
homeopathy,
leeches (hirudotherapy),
mesotherapy,
mud therapy,
neural therapy,
sound (music) therapy,
vibration therapy.
For 15 other predefined SCAMs, no study was identified. The risk of bias was assessed as high in seventeen studies, moderate to high in ten, moderate in ten, low to moderate in four, and low in just one single study. In those studies where the risk of bias was low to moderate, there was considerable heterogeneity in reported treatment effects.
The authors concluded that
the present systematic review has revealed significant gaps in scientific knowledge regarding the effects of a number of “miscellaneous” SCAM methods used in cats, dogs, and horses. For the majority of the therapies, no relevant scientific articles were retrieved. For nine therapies, some research documentation was available. However, due to small sample sizes, a lack of control groups, and other methodological limitations, few articles with a low risk of bias were identified. Where beneficial results were reported, they were not replicated in other independent studies. Many of the articles were in the lower levels of the evidence pyramid, emphasising the need for more high-quality research using precise methodologies to evaluate the potential therapeutic effects of these therapies. Of the publications that met the inclusion criteria, the majority did not have any scientific documentation of sufficient quality to draw any conclusion regarding their effect. Several of our observations may be translated into lessons on how to improve the scientific support for SCAM therapies. Crucial efforts include (a) a focus on the evaluation of therapies with an explanatory model for a mechanism of action accepted by the scientific community at large, (b) the use of appropriate control animals and treatments, preferably in randomized controlled trials, (c) high-quality observational studies with emphasis on control for confounding factors, (d) sufficient statistical power; to achieve this, large-scale multicenter trials may be needed, (e) blinded evaluations, and (f) replication studies of therapies that have shown promising results in single studies.
Of particular interest was, I think, what the authors revealed in relation to homeopathy. The included studies, with moderate risk of bias, such as homeopathic hypotensive treatment in dogs with early, stage two heart failure and the study on cats with hyperthyroidism, showed no differences between treated and non-treated animals. An RCT with osteoarthritic dogs showed a difference in three of the six variables (veterinary-assessed mobility, two force plate variables, an owner-assessed chronic pain index, and pain and movement visually analogous scales).
Such findings are disappointing and should make SCAM-loving pet owners think again. Crucially, they are supported by another systematic review of 18 RCTs of homeopathy, representing 4 species (including two dog studies) and 11 different indications.
The authors excluded generalized conclusions about the effect of certain homeopathic remedies or the effect of individualised homeopathy on a given medical condition in animals. A meta-analysis of 9 trials with a high risk of bias, and two studies with a lower risk of bias, concluded that there is very limited evidence that clinical intervention in animals using homeopathic remedies can be distinguished from similar placebo interventions.
In essence, these data confirm what I have been pointing out repeatedly, for instanceon my blog: SCAM for animals has one important feature in common with SCAM for humans – it is not evidence-based.
To anyone who campaigns against the influence of scientific disinformation – or frankly anyone who looks up a politically topical scientific field on social media – the emphasising of doubt and uncertainty by those who wish to undermine ‘mainstream’ science will be well recognised. It’s a very successful technique, and one that plays a central role in the Tobacco Industry method, which has been used by espousers of scientific disinformation for decades.
Emphasising doubt in science is a difficult thing to counter, since technically there is always doubt. It’s the nature of the scientific reasoning that ideas cannot be proved but rather supported or confirmed.
A common technique that is used to combat such rhetoric is to emphasise the mainstream thought within the scientific literature, either referencing widely accepted science or asking established scientists to refute the disinformation. However, this is more often than not spun into an idea of ‘debate in science’ – it’s happened to me! Again, this is frustrating because it’s widely known that there is debate in science and so it’s difficult to convey that this description isn’t an accurate description of the state of the science.
One of the major obstacles in these cases is being able to convey that the ‘debate’ here is not one between equally valid descriptions of the science – one take on the state of the science is a far more accurate description of the other. This is where the work of Consensus comes into play.
Consensus is a company based in the US which has the aim of democratising scientific knowledge. The company have developed a programme which is able to analyse a set of millions of scientific papers and generate a consensus response to a question posed to it. Thus it is able to identify the scientific consensus on a topic which is emergent from the scientific literature.
This idea of emergence is important, I believe, philosophically. A point which is often raised to dismiss the idea of a scientific consensus, normally around climate science, is that the very idea of consensus is unscientific. This often stems from the idea that uncertainty is inherent in science, or a Popperian idea that scientists should be constantly questioning the status quo.
However, this is a misunderstanding of what we’re talking about when we discuss a consensus in science. Any consensus we’re interested in here is about the convergence of the relevant literature around a certain position. This is what the programme Consensus has developed can provide.
It’s important to note at this stage that it’s early days for Consensus, with the programme only launching in early 2022. It cannot generate a consensus position on all questions yet, and sometimes the results generated when asking a question aren’t entirely representative of the scientific literature, but the programme is being continuously updated to improve the results generated.
Similarly, we can take a topic which climate change denialists love to bring up: polar bears. The GWPF have run a series of papers arguing the polar bear numbers aren’t declining. If one asks Consensus “are polar bear numbers declining” one gets a response that, whilst not disagreeing with the GWPF’s stance as strongly as with regards to coral reefs, nonetheless shows that the scientific literature broadly holds that polar bear numbers are likely declining.
Again, I’m not claiming we should take these two results as a highly accurate description of the scientific literature at this stage. This test is simply designed to demonstrate the utility of such a programme in tackling scientific disinformation.
The examples above might seem like small fish to fry, but such disinformation has real-world effects. The GWPF, for example, regularly supply testimonies to UK Parliamentary committees, and so have a direct effect of climate legislation. It’s widely noted that politicians often don’t have the time or expertise to evaluate the accuracy of scientific advice given to them, often with such decisions relying on the credentials of the individual. With a disinformation network containing many scientists (often commenting on areas outside of their expertise, something that can be difficult for politicians to realise in a time-pressured environment) it’s understandable why anti-science promoters are often able to wrongly paint the situation as a debate amongst scientists, where the science unsettled.
A matured version of the programme from Consensus would go a long way in resolving this difficulty. Mainstream scientists could quickly demonstrate that their position is more reflective of the scientific literature to policy makers, making it far more difficult to construe this debate narrative and delay action.
There are still limitations to this, however. Firstly, climate science is a reasonably mature field with a consensus on topics going back decades. If we look back to the Covid-19 pandemic, research on some topics was very novel. Some initial ideas that seemed widely accepted changed, mainly due to how quickly the research was being done. The difference between these state of affairs needs to be recognised and qualified.
Secondly, it seems somewhat inevitable that the focus of doubt will shift away from the science and towards the algorithms being used. Promoters of scientific disinformation are likely to point to algorithmic bias if the programme is used to dismiss their position. Therefore, openness about how the programme works will be necessary if it’s going to be used to help inform policy makers. It also seems clear that this means that such a programme could never replace scientists advising policy makers. There will always be a place of scientists around the table, it’s just that a programme like Consensus would be a very useful tool for them.
I want to end this piece with a disclaimer. I don’t want this to appear as if I’m arguing that AI generated scientific consensuses will be the end of scientific disinformation. That’s far too optimistic. The networks that generate disinformation will evolve and will likely always exist. However, this work does provide some hope for those who wish to see such networks’ influence diminished, and our political system’s ability to respond to new scientific research improved.
The Twitter bio of the late anthropologist David Graeber long included a request not to call him “the anarchist anthropologist.” His reasoning for this was simple “I see anarchism as something you do not an identity.”
I think skeptics can learn a lot from this simple line. After all, much like anarchism, skepticism is also something you do, and “skeptic” an identity many claim. But is our use of the term really right? Does engaging in skeptical thinking or activism really entitle us to call ourselves skeptics? And perhaps more importantly, should it?
Definitions of “skeptic” abound. The American magazine Skeptical Inquirer posits that “skeptics are those who have devoted much of their careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism.” This definition seems fair, but tends to preclude those in the skeptical community who might actively take part in skeptical thinking and activism, but dedicate the majority of their careers to other areas. It’s certainly along the right lines, though.
While searching for other definitions, I realised that skeptics have a tendency to define themselves in the negative – in opposition to something else, such as poor reasoning, conspiracism, religion, or denialism. Most definitions are also at pains to stress that skepticism isn’t about engaging in some radical process of doubt, but a systemic approach towards certain knowledge and belief claims.
Many skeptics also harbour a well-intentioned desire not to cede the term to those ‘skeptical’ of climate change, or to conspiracists writ large. I think this position is fair, and that the label of “denialist” (as opposed to “skeptic”) is a better fit for those caught up in prolonged bouts of illogical or poorly evidenced thinking. Nonetheless, I think the battle for the term skeptic is one long lost. How often have you said, “Oh I’m a skeptic, but not one of those skeptics”?
In the 2010s, Youtube was teeming with channels debunking and mocking the claims of (largely) the American religious right. Their hosts – such as Carl Benjamin, now best known as a scandal-ridden failed UKIP candidate – claimed the mantle of “skeptic” and initially focused their ire on the religious. Soon, though, their focus shifted towards criticising “feminazis” or the “excesses” of the left, laying the groundwork for the rise of the anti-woke movement.
Most in the skeptic community rightly viewed the latter parts of this content as deeply unskeptical, and yet it served as an introduction to “skepticism” for many – particularly the generation coming of age in the era of Youtube. So why had these Youtubers so readily chosen the label skeptic? I think the biologist PZ Myers put it best when he said that it was because it offered them “a shortcut to the claim of critical thinking that didn’t require actually, you know, thinking.”
So how can we avoid the duelling risks of defining the term so specifically or vaguely that it becomes meaningless, and either excludes too many or includes too few? One approach is just not to use the term at all. The journalist and cohost of the Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast Carrie Poppy is someone often referred to as a skeptic. However she has publicly stated she dislikes the term and does not identify with it. “It’s either cynical or self congratulatory. I don’t know why anyone likes it!” she explained in one 2020 tweet adding, “it should reflect a (for-now) position someone has come to about one thing, not some fundamental idea about their personality/thinking.” While I initially struggled with this view, it is one I have latterly come to adopt myself.
When questioned on the topic of his disavowal of the term ‘anarchist’ by the New Internationalist magazine Graber (remember him from the start?) had the following to say:
“I’m not saying it’s totally meaningless to say you’re an anarchist if it’s not in any way reflected in your practice; you can look forward to a world without states and capitalism in the abstract, believe it would be better and possible, but not do anything about it. But it doesn’t really mean much. On the other hand, it’s possible to act like an anarchist – to behave in ways that would work without bureaucratic structures of coercion to enforce them – without calling yourself an anarchist, or anything else. In fact most of us act like anarchists – even communists – a lot of the time. To be an anarchist, for me, is to do that self-consciously, as a way of gradually bringing a world entirely based on those principles into being.”
Similar, to Graeber’s position I do not think it’s entirely meaningless to say you’re a skeptic – it can be a useful shorthand and community identifier. And is there not an irony in the fact that I am writing this article for a magazine called The Skeptic? If we just treat skepticism as something we do, not something one can be, do we run the risk of weakening the skeptical movement? I think it is fair to say we might.
The term skeptic clearly serves a useful purpose in community building and resource location. These benefits must not be dismissed, indeed realising that others share my outlook on issues of pseudoscience, conspiracism, and approach towards evaluating knowledge claims has been very important in my own life and intellectual development.
As such, my argument is not one for abandoning the term completely but more a reminder that we must never let a label excuse us from the hard work of living up to it. We should view our identification with skepticism not as something to be smug about but as an exhortation to constantly question our beliefs and assumptions – including those we make of ourselves.
The labels we give ourselves should motivate us to better ourselves and the societies we find ourselves in, rather than act as empty signifiers that help us sleep better at night. If we are to call ourselves skeptics, or feminists, or anti-racists, or supporters of trans people we cannot stop there. We actually need to be skeptical, to engage in feminism, to tackle racism wherever we find it, and to work to ensure transgender people can feel safe and supported to live and thrive in our society.
So, by all means, call yourself a skeptic if you wish, but don’t for one second allow it to get in the way of actually being skeptical.
Imagine the headlines if a massive and rigorous multi-lab replication attempt produced results that supported the hypothesis that people really can sense future events by means as yet unknown to conventional science – in other words, that precognition is real. One might expect such a study to receive massive amounts of media coverage, given the coverage that Professor Daryl Bem’s (2011) series of studies, published in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, received.
The findings from Bem’s series were seen by some as providing the strongest evidence to date that precognition is real and were reported by science journalists all around the world. Bem even discussed his results on the US national TV show, The Colbert Report.
Now imagine the headlines if that massive and rigorous multi-lab replication attempt produced results that failed to support the existence of precognition – if, in fact, it produced very strong evidence that the effect reported in the original study was not real.
As it happens, there is no need to imagine the headlines in this case because the results are in from the Transparent Psi Project which aimed at replicating the effect reported in Bem’s Experiment 1. This study was carried out Zoltan Kekecs of Lund University and a large international team of collaborators (there are no less that 30 co-authors on their paper recently published in Royal Society Open Science). The results pretty conclusively demonstrate that the technique used in the original experiment is not capable of demonstrating precognition, if indeed precognition really exists. Strangely, I have yet to see any reports in the media of this negative finding.
The plain word summary presented in the paper is worth quoting in full:
This project aimed to demonstrate the use of research methods designed to improve the reliability of scientific findings in psychological science. Using this rigorous methodology, we could not replicate the positive findings of Bem’s 2011 Experiment 1. This finding does not confirm, nor contradict the existence of ESP in general, and this was not the point of our study. Instead, the results tell us that (1) the original experiment was likely affected by methodological flaws or it was a chance finding, and (2) the paradigm used in the original study is probably not useful for detecting ESP effects if they exist. The methodological innovations implemented in this study enable the readers to trust and verify our results which is an important step forward in achieving trustworthy science.
This study was a truly impressive piece of work, setting a new standard for rigour and transparency, incorporating many measures to rule out any bias or questionable research practices. It was co-designed by a panel of 29 experts, 15 of whom were supporters of the paranormal interpretation of the original results, including Daryl Bem himself, and 14 of whom were sceptical. I was one of the sceptical members of that panel. Members were invited to assess the study protocol and, after two rounds of review and refinement, reached consensus that the protocol was of high quality and immune to virtually all questionable research practices.
Experiment 1 of Bem’s series was chosen as the target for a replication attempt because a recent meta-analysis by Bem and colleagues suggested that it was this experiment of the nine originally reported by Bem that had produced the largest effect size across 14 studies (involving a total of 863 participants).
This experiment involved getting participants on each trial to select one of two curtains displayed on a computer screen. Once the selection had been made, the computer randomly allocated one of the screen locations to be the one that would be reinforced by the presentation of an erotic image.
The hypothesis being tested was that participants would choose the to-be-rewarded location more often than would be predicted by chance alone (that is, about 50% of the time). Bem claimed that his participants chose the to-be-rewarded location on 53% of trials, a small but highly statistically significant departure from what would be expected by chance. As stated, a subsequent meta-analysis apparently supported his findings, making Experiment 1 the obvious choice for a large-scale replication attempt.
This replication attempt involved ten laboratories from nine different countries. A total of 2,115 participants contributed valid data to the study resulting in a total of 37,836 trials. This sample is more than 20 times larger than Bem’s original study and more than twice as large as all 14 studies combined using this methodology included in the subsequent meta-analysis. Zekecs and his many colleagues reported a success rate of 49.89%, very close to what would be expected by chance. In their words (p. 21),
Observing this percentage of successful guesses is 72 times more likely if the guesses are successful at random than if they have a better than chance success rate.
The steps taken to ensure that this study would be immune from criticism in terms of methodology or analysis go well beyond any other experiment that I know of. As already stated, the methodology used was approved by a panel of experts including both proponents of the paranormal and sceptics. Clear and explicit criteria of what would count as a successful or an unsuccessful replication were stated in advance. The agreed study protocol was preregistered. Several methods were put in place to ensure that no one could tamper with the data in any way including (but not limited to):
Direct data deposition: as data were collected they were immediately directed to a trusted third-party repository (GitHub);
Born-open data: data were made public as they were being collected;
Real-time research report: automatized reports were continuously updated as data flowed in.
The analysis plan allowed for very strong conclusions to be drawn either supporting or refuting the paranormal interpretation of Bem’s original study. As already stated, the authors concluded, “the original experiment was likely affected by methodological flaws or it was a chance finding”. It is rare in the social sciences that a conclusion can be drawn with such confidence.
Was it worth such a massive investment of time, effort and resources to refute a claim that many mainstream scientists would not have accepted in the first place? I would say it was. For one thing, the study was not simply aimed at replicating Bem’s Experiment 1 but also demonstrating the feasibility of applying the wide range of methodological tools used. It would clearly not be worth such effort in studies investigating non-controversial findings, but these same tools can be applied to investigate controversial topics in many areas of science not just parapsychology.
For those with an interest in parapsychology, the wider implications of these results are profound indeed. The original findings by Bem were reported far and wide as providing strong support for the reality of precognition. The effect was then apparently strongly supported by a subsequent meta-analysis based on the results from 14 studies. Even so, this massive and rigorous multi-lab replication attempt demonstrates as conclusively as humanly possible that the original effect is not real. So where are the headlines from the world’s science media?
Ear cropping is the act of amputating a dog’s pinnae, and training any remaining pinna to stand erect. Historically, the practice originated as a way to reduce pinna injury during dog fighting and hunting.
Ear cropping is illegal in England and Wales, under Section 5 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and Northern Irish and Scottish equivalents ban the practice unless medically indicated. Furthermore, ear cropping of dogs is a prohibited surgical operation in all European states that have ratified the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals (Council of Europe 1987). Despite this new figures released in February 2022, show a 621% increase in the number of reports of ear cropping raised with the RSPCA in the last six years.
Why do people continue to support this surgical mutilation of dogs? The answer is not a simple one, but in large part it comes down to aesthetics and status. Those who are pro cropping – especially in the US where some have very strong opinions on this – do continue to claim there are health benefits, including that ear cropping can prevent ear infections, and avoid sustaining injuries from other animals or dogs.
Ear infections
It has been suggested that dogs with cropped ears are less likely to suffer from infections of the ear canal. Although the development of some serious infections has been linked to the presence of a heavy hanging ear, there is no evidence that cropping prevents or successfully reduces these infections.
Indeed, if this were the case then it wouldn’t be dogs like Dobermans, Cane Corso and the new emerging ‘bully’ dogs that would be cropped. The top five worst affected breeds in one study on ear infections include the Basset Hound, Chinese Shar Pei, Labradoodle, Beagle and Golden Retriever. Poodle and spaniel types of dogs overall were at greater risk of ear infection. Dogs with long and hanging ear flaps had a much higher risk of ear infection compared with dogs with pointy ears. This evidence is in stark contrast to the typical dogs who get their ears cropped – researchers have identified a strong statistical association with a dog’s breed, with guarding breeds such as the American Bulldog, Dobermann, Italian Mastiff (Cane Corso), Bulldog and Mastiff all significantly over-represented.
Injury
It has also been suggested that cropping avoids later ear injury, or improves hearing, though no evidence is available to substantiate these claims either. There is certainly a trend for those involved in dog fighting – which is again illegal – to use cropped-eared dogs.
Many advocates for ear cropping and tail docking argue that the pain of the procedure has a very small impact on the individual. However, the results of one study shows that by doing these procedures the perception, and arguably treatment, of these individuals is affected for their entire life. That of course impacts people’s perceptions of dogs, but it also affects dog-on-dog interactions, too.
The ability to express normal behaviour is one of the 5 freedoms of animal welfare. In close-range social interactions, dogs obtain and deliver information about their inner state through their facial expression, modifying gaze, ears, and mouth position. Previously, facial expressions were considered involuntary displays of an individual’s emotional state. However, recent research has discovered that dogs produce facial expressions as an active attempt to communicate with others. While this has not been thoroughly studied yet, it is not beyond reason that the modification of dog’s ears by cropping may impact their ability to communicate with other dogs, thus resulting in poorer emotional and social welfare.
Ignorance is bliss
Despite huge educational drives on this topic, one study found that 42% of participants were unable to correctly explain the reason why tail docked and ear cropped dogs had short ears and tails. Similarly, when measuring their awareness, the study found that the majority of participants believed short tails and erect ears were a consequence of genetics, rather than a surgical procedure the owner or breeder had performed.
New data
Using electronic health data from SAVSNET’s network of more than 500 UK veterinary practices, researchers identified a total of 132 dogs that had cropped ears between 2015 and 2022, with rates peaking in 2021. This is not an accurate representation of the current numbers in the UK, but allows insight into the demographic of these particular dogs.
In 84% of cases there was evidence of importation, most commonly from countries where cropping is also illegal including Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Spain, Poland and Ireland.
A minority of dogs appeared to be cropped illegally in the UK. As the demand grows, it has come to light that unscrupulous breeders are carrying out this procedure, using crude instruments or DIY ear cropping kits bought online, likely without any anaesthesia or pain relief.
What can you do?
It is important that education continues, and it is everyone’s responsibility to engage. Animal welfare advocates and veterinary professionals have long been campaigning, but we will only see tangible results when the public stop encouraging the market for these dogs. Do not buy them, do not import them, do not endorse them on social media, call out celebrity endorsement, and call out companies who use them in marketing.
The BVA urge the public to remain vigilant when buying dogs and report any concerns about dogs with cropped ears to the RSPCA (England and Wales), SSPCA (Scotland), or the Local Council Animal Welfare Officer (Northern Ireland). If you have concerns about a breeder selling cropped eared dogs, report them to Trading Standards.
There are only rare occasions when ear cropping is medically necessary – indeed, in over ten years working in veterinary practices I have only seen the removal of ears being medically necessary in a small number of feline patients with Squamous cell carcinomas due to ultraviolet sun exposure, typically in white cats.
A lot of conspiracy theorists either appeared or became very much more visible in the early days of the pandemic, including Hugo Talks, a prolific video content creator whose long-standing post-rock YouTube channel transformed in summer 2020 into a news commentary channel.
The videos started out as typical newspaper comments-section complaints about lockdown rules, and turned very quickly into videos decrying “MSM [mainstream media] propaganda” and worrying about the New World Order.
Hugo makes a lot of videos – sometimes more than one per day – so he has inevitably covered a very wide range of topics, from COVID-19 vaccines and the British Royal Family, to UFOs and insects-as-meat products for kids. There’s quite a lot of “won’t somebody think of the children”, and an increasing amount of religious aspects, as Hugo seems to have become an active Christian during the course of his “research” and videos.
Although Hugo started on YouTube, where he has 143k subscribers, he is increasingly posting videos exclusively to his website over concerns about them being taken down on YouTube, and he also has substantial followings on other social media sites, including Telegram, alternative video host Odysee and far-right- and conspiracy-theorist-friendly video host BitChute.
This also has the knock-on effect of making it harder to write an article covering every one of Hugo’s frequent, varied and interlinked theories, as the YouTube auto-generated transcript function is, obviously, not present on his own website-hosted videos.
A typical video – like this recent one on smart devices – will take a real news story or issue, in this case the monitoring and privacy concerns that internet-connected devices pose, and run with it –positing a shadowy alternative explanation for the news story. In this particular video, as in many others, he claims that the “fakestream media” like the Daily Mail are part of planned propaganda intended to control and mislead the public. Hugo’s claim is that it isn’t Chinese spying we should worry about, but that of our own government, as these devices are a way for the UK (and the US) government to control their own population. He also throws in some doubt on the claim that Russian criminals were behind the technical problems recently experienced by Royal Mail.
The evidence he presents for his alternative explanation does not rise above the level of insinuation, but mere insinuation can be effective to a casual audience, as there are genuine concerns here: we do know that Amazon does have recordings of chats you had around the house; UK energy companies do find it easier to switch you to prepayment if you are on a smart meter; newspapers do often publish press releases uncritically; and western intelligence agencies do have a far-from-unblemished record.
None of this, however, is evidence that the Royal Mail cyber-attacked themselves, or that a meta-government is orchestrating the promotion of pointless smart devices as part of some nefarious plot. It’s the 2023 equivalent of some bloke down the pub telling you he reckons there’s something fishy going on, except instead of a table of very tolerant friends, he has an audience that can be as large as the population of Preston.
Even with such a large audience, it may not be so bad if a few thousand people are convinced not to buy an internet-connected egg counter, but other videos delve into more unpleasant territory, from speculation about media coverage of the disappearance of dog-walker Nicola Bulley, to a claim that climate change science is “gobbledygook” and part of a secret plan to form the basis of a one-world religion.
Which leads us to the people who Hugo seems to think run the world: Satanists – seriously – and the World Economic Forum.
In one recent video on the World Economic Forum, Hugo describes the United Nations as “Luciferian” (over images of Baphomet!) and says that world leaders’ enthusiasm at forums like the World Economic Forum for a “New World Order” and a “new international rules based order” are intended as a replacement for the old rules, which they want to throw away. What old rules is Hugo referring to?
The moral and ethical blueprint that we have all lived under is the Ten Commandments. It is God’s moral law and our rules stem from that.
Obviously not everything that is often considered immoral is also illegal (and vice-versa), but accepting that law and morality do obviously intersect, what are we to make of Hugo’s claims?
It isn’t clear whether Hugo believes that the law stemming from the Ten Commandments is true of, for example, China, which is one of the five permanent security council members of the UN, and home to almost 20% of the entire world population. China, a country where just 3% of people follow an Abrahamic faith, is unlikely to have the Ten Commandments as the basis of most people’s moral code.
However, and surprisingly (for your non-legally-trained author at least), like most countries in the world, China does in fact use a European/Roman Empire-inspired legal code, with additional influences including both the Confucian-influenced Great Qing Legal Code and a socialist legal system. Obviously neither Confucian nor socialist ethics and laws are dependent on the Ten Commandments.
So, while it is obvious that the Ten Commandments are not the basis for the morals, ethics and laws we have all lived under – to repeat, there are really rather a lot of Buddhists, Hindus and non-Abrahamic groups in the world – if we are to be as fair as possible to Hugo, we should at least consider the civil law and common law influence on the majority of legal systems of the world. How far have these systems been influenced by Christianity, and more specifically the Ten Commandments?
Countless books and articles have been written on the influence and origins of law, including opinions that argue for and against the influence of Christianity, Mosaic Law and the Ten Commandments, but it seems uncontroversial to say that modern civil law is based on Roman Law. This was codified by Christian emperors like Justinian and Theodosius, but these codes also incorporated plenty of pre-Christian Roman law, and also later developments in European civil law such as the Napoleonic Code, which explicitly sought to remove any vestiges of religion or superstition from the law.
English common law – based on customs and precedents – came together after the Norman conquest, and gradually overturned the existing Anglo-Saxon law, which was itself influenced by, but not wholly based upon Christian teachings, having arisen at a time when – of course – plenty of Anglo-Saxons were pagans.
Indeed, the general direction of religious influence on law moves from a clearer separation of church and secular matters in mediaeval times and earlier, to greater religious influence in the early modern era. In Sweden, for example, the Ten Commandments was actually incorporated into criminal law in 1608, but that was pretty much the high watermark. Even in Reformation England, where witchcraft and sodomy were criminalised in the 1500s, such a wholesale incorporation of Mosaic Law was rejected as going too far. A lot happened in the next 400 years, but we all know that the influence of religion on law then waned significantly as we get closer to the present day.
If we focus more specifically on the Ten Commandments, it is hard to see exactly which of these Hugo thinks are about to be overturned by this satanic conspiracy. Let’s consider the Church of England’s version of the list:
I am the Lord your God: you shall have no other gods but me.
That ship has long-since sailed; virtually all countries theoretically permit freedom of religion by law, although there are of course a number of states which have a pretty unpleasant record regarding religious freedom.
You shall not make for yourself any idol.
I’m sure there have been rules banning idolatry in the past, but modern culture, for better or worse, has no problem at all with idolatry.
You shall not dishonour the name of the Lord your God.
Sadly, this is still an issue with many countries maintaining laws against blasphemy, some of which involve the execution of the offender. I’m curious as to whether Hugo wants this to be once more illegal in England and Wales (it still technically remains on the books in Scotland and Northern Ireland).
While there have been several resolutions where member countries at the UN sought to create what was effectively an international blasphemy law, the UN Human Rights Committee more recently adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and says that countries with blasphemy laws are in breach of their obligations. Hugo therefore gets a full point here, as the UN is trying to stop this being illegal, albeit a pretty hefty caveat I’ll come to later.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Again, there’s no need for a satanic plot as this commandment is already a goner – if we take Sunday opening of shops as a loose proxy indicator, most countries either never had laws about this, or have repealed them.
Honour your father and mother.
Sure, generally speaking this is good, with some obvious exceptions; some people do have really awful parents. I’m unclear on exactly how this relates to the law, in Hugo’s theory. The UN is in favour of the rights of the child, which some people do see as threatening to parents, so perhaps we can give Hugo half a point here (only half though, as the UN is not specifically against honouring your parents!).
You shall not commit murder.
Murder was, unsurprisingly, illegal in codes prior to the Ten Commandments, such as that of Ur-Nammu, more than 4,000 years ago. Even if every current believer was to abandon Christianity tomorrow, my money’s on murder remaining a bit of a taboo.
You shall not commit adultery.
This was also illegal prior to Moses. Thankfully, such laws, which were historically used to primarily target women, are not in place in a majority of countries. The UN is publicly against laws banning adultery, but as this law did not arise because of the Ten Commandments, Hugo gets another zero here.
You shall not steal.
Laws against theft are found as early as Hammurabi, thereby predating Moses by perhaps 400 years. Much like murder it seems hard to imagine this prohibition changing.
You shall not be a false witness.
Also illegal under the Code of Hammurabi, and while we no longer execute perjurers, this is a law that’s quite obviously staying.
You shall not covet anything which belongs to your neighbour.
This isn’t a crime, as we can’t see into people’s minds. Even believers point out that coveting is a sin, not a crime to be punished by earthly judges.
From a possible ten, Hugo gets a point and a half.
Beyond the list, and I’m aware that I’m far from the first to point this, out: many laws and morals which we all consider of extremely high importance in 2023, from slavery to sexual assault, are nowhere to be found in the Ten Commandments.
I said I’d come back to that full point I gave Hugo, as the UN is arguably seeking to remove the prohibition on dishonouring the name of God. Blasphemy is a law that exists in many jurisdictions, and it does seem somewhat attributable to the Ten Commandments. As mentioned earlier, in the same video, Hugo says:
They want a one-world religion so they can get away with things that would not be allowed under the Ten Commandments.
The UNHRC call for an end to blasphemy laws is specifically demanding that people have the freedom to worship and believe as their conscience dictates: the precise opposite of a one-world religion.
Hugo does talk, a lot, to a fairly sizeable audience, but little of what he says makes much sense under the lightest scrutiny.
I grew up in a little village in the north east of England, built around a colliery. My granda on my mum’s side, Jack, had nine children, and as a result, he worked three jobs: down the village coal mine, a ten minute walk from his house, until it closed in the 1960s; at the betting shop, a five minute walk from his house; and at the local working men’s club, also five minutes from his house. He would cook the weekly Sunday roast each week, with vegetables bought from the greengrocers on the high street, five minutes from his front door, and meat from the butchers another minute or so away.
In the village, at the time, there was a corner shop for essentials, a library, a post office, a shoe shop, and a DIY shop (co-owned by my other granda). There was a primary school in the village, though none of my aunties and uncles went to it – it was a protestant school and they were Catholic, so they took the school bus to the next town along for primary school, and a nearby town for secondary school. For most day to day life, Jack had little need to travel outside the village – it had pretty much all the stuff he needed.
Now, obviously what I am describing to you there is a hellscape that would give George Orwell nightmares, where people had zero freedom and were forced to essentially live in self-imposed open-air prisons. Or so you’d be led to believe if you’ve followed any of the panic and protest around the concept of a 15 Minute City.
What is a 15 Minute City?
According to the people working on the concept, by ensuring local neighbourhoods contain all of the basic things you might need for day to day life – such as schools, shops, medical centres, restaurants, bars and libraries – you can design cities for people rather than for cars, meaning people will have less need to get in their emission-generating vehicles to go get the things they need.
The world isn’t built that way right now – it was, once, but without anyone making specific decisions to change that, and without any of us having a say in the matter, distances between amenities have grown. My hometown lost its local shops when big supermarkets set up five or six miles outside of town, and now residents require transport to get food. The nearest shops are in a nearby town, and so are the takeaways and restaurants. If you don’t drive, you’re reliant on the bus service – and even that has been significantly scaled back, with less frequent services and limited routes.
This is the story across the country, from villages to cities, with residents increasingly made to travel distances to access amenities, which is why you’d be forgiven for thinking people would be open to restructuring their local environment to make things more accessible, supporting local businesses and community centres along the way. But if you think that, it’s because you fail to see the bigger picture – the shadowy hand of the new world order. As one viral meme from RedPillConspiracySubstack.com explains:
Climate change lockdowns disguised as 15 minute cities under the UN agenda 2030.
Your Government is pushing ahead with plans to bring 15-minute cities to a location near you. They are a brainchild of the UNs Agenda 2030, and are in effect Climate Change lockdowns. And once combined with a digital ID, a carbon credit score and a programmable central bank digital currency bracket (CBDC) token, you’ve got the perfect recipe for creating a digital open air prison.
It’s a theme that’s picked up by Stand in the Park, the group who spread Covid misinformation during the pandemic by standing in the park and yelling at people (and by turning up to my Glasgow Skeptics in the Pub talk, and yelling at me). They posted a leaflet to their Telegram, which has since bounced around the online conspiracism ecosystem:
Growing paranoia
I’ve been watching paranoia about 15 minute cities grow for months now, tracking it in the various Telegram groups I’ve been following since the start of the pandemic and the White Rose days. The first mention of the idea I came across was on Halloween 2022, with a now-deleted user account posting a Youtube video to the Telegram group “Liverpools Peoples Resistance”:
The video was titled “The new Feudal Age; how the 15 Minute City will mean the return of the Middle Ages to Britain”, from a channel called History Debunked, which has 184,000 subscribers. In it, writer and historian Simon Webb claims that, under the guise of climate protection, cities will be split into zones, with people given a designated zone and discouraged – or even prevented – from leaving it. He incorrectly explains that this is already happening in lots of cities, where you can’t go to certain places unless you’re Muslim or black. He also claims 15 minute cities are deliberately designed to limit our perception and movement, so that we have animosity to anyone outside of our immediate neighbourhood, as people would have had in medieval times.
For context, and for a sense of irony, other videos from the channel claim coverage of the Translatlantic slave trade is a “propagandist racket” designed to give people of African origin preferential status in society, that increasing diversity at universities is a “terrible idea”, and that the attack on migrants in Knowsley was deserved, amid a near-constant stream of anti-migrant, anti-lgbtq+ and anti-diversity rhetoric. Clearly, animosity for those outside of the in-group comes relatively easy to Simon.
In his 15 minute cities video, Simon explains that plans are already underway to turn Oxford into the UK’s first 15 minute city:
A piece from the local newspaper in Oxford explains how the how the whole thing will work. You will not be allowed to leave your road zone by car, or to drive across the boundaries from one zone to another, and if you do so you’ll be fined £70. Residents will be issued with permits which will allow them to leave their zone and visit another part of the city, but only twice a week. After you’ve used up your permit you’ll be fined every time you drive out of your zone. The aim of this is also to ensure that people don’t get jobs outside their zone, their bit of the 15-minute city. Anybody trying to drive every day from one part of Oxford to another to work will be fined £70 for each journey.
This obviously sounds genuinely terrible – to be fined £70 every time you leave your zone of the city would be an enormous infringement on civil liberties. But is that what’s being proposed? Luckily, true to his word, Simon linked to the news story that proved his point. It was in the Oxford Mail, on the 27th October 2022, titled “Anger after travel chief announces traffic filters are ‘going to happen, definitely’ ahead of decision”. In it, the paper quotes Councillor Duncan Enright, of Oxfordshire County Council:
Mr Enright explained in the Sunday Times that the heart of the traffic filters policy was to turn Oxford into “a 15-minute city” with local services within a small walking radius…
People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
The alternative is to drive out on to the ring road and then back in to the destination.
Already, the 15 minute city panic is unravelling. It isn’t that people are banned from driving outside of their zone, it’s that they are discouraged from taking the route through the city centre too often – but they’re free to drive around the outside of the city instead.
It’s also crucial here to understand that Oxford is a really small city, of 17 square miles. It is also a medieval city, so it has less than ideal road networks – but for many residents that’s less of a problem, because it is famously a city where cycling is extremely common.
What effect will these new restrictions have? If we look to a map of Oxford, within the ring-road that circulates it, and pick a place very north of the city centre, and plot a route to a location about as far away as possible within the ring road – say, Summertown to Templars Square – we can see that a 4.5 mile route would take 22 minutes to cycle. To do the same journey via car would take 25 minutes… unless you took the ring road, which is three miles longer, but takes just 19 minutes.
And while not everyone can cycle, the Oxford Mail makes clear that the scheme comes with exemptions:
Buses, coaches, taxis, delivery vans, HGVs, motorbikes and bikes are exempt and there are exceptions for blue badge holders and people with caring responsibilities.
People may argue that driving the extra three miles around the ring road undoes the environmental benefits of the scheme, but that’s only if they continue to take car journeys that they might take by foot, bike or public transport, and it’s also not factoring in that part of the emissions issue with driving through the centre of town is in the constant stopping and starting and idling at lights and in traffic – which would be less of an issue on the ring road.
But to be clear, it’s absolutely valid to disagree with or dispute the environmental benefits of the scheme, or its logistical impact on commuting – that’s how policy discussions work, and I’m no expert on the relative merits of varying transport routes across Oxford city centre. But what we can definitely agree on is that it is not going to turn the people of Oxford into an insular tribe that resents and looks down on outsiders. That’s the job of the university.
Still, in his Youtube video, Simon Webb does at least make one true prediction: that 15 minute cities are an idea people would hear a lot more of over the coming months and years.
The 15 minute bandwagon
Around the same time it was surfacing on Telegram, the conservative magazine Spiked began to cover Oxford’s plan, reporting in “The madness of the ‘15-minute city’” that
Under the new proposals, if any of Oxford’s 150,000 residents drives outside of their designated district more than 100 days a year, he or she could be fined £70. Do not leave your allotted zone, at least most of the time – that is the policy.
Whether the author knew at the time that this was not remotely true, or was too incompetent and partisan to bother checking, is anyone’s guess. The article was written by James Woudhuysen, “a visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University”, though it’s also worth mentioning he’s a GBNews broadcaster (more on them later), and actively campaigns against measures to tackle climate change.
When the accusations are put to Enright, he points out that no, he isn’t splitting Oxford into six zones, and that nobody is, and that that was never the plan. “But you said it in the Oxford Mail!” he’s told. “Well, you can’t believe everything you read in the media” he replies.
From November, things really started to ramp up. One video shared to Telegram by Wide Awake Media shows people walking down the street, while facial recognition pops up their name, age and gender, and matches them to a database, tracking how many people are using each street, and breaking them up into demographics.
Is this possible? I’d say it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, and it is something I think it’s fair to be concerned about. But for this to be a legitimate fear specifically about 15 minute cities, you have to believe that this kind of facial tracking system exists, works in real time, but can’t be scaled up to even a county-wide level, let alone a country-wide level. The only bit that needs to scale here is the size of the database it’s referring to – as soon as those cameras have access to a bigger dataset, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve walked 15 minutes or 15 hours to get somewhere.
Familiar names got on board with the 15 minute city panic. David Avocado Wolfe started sharing videos to his prolific Telegram channel, as did anti-5G activist Mark Steele and Covid conspiracist Kate Shemirani and the British Nursing Alliance. The Light Paper began promoting ‘yellow card protests’ that warned about the dangers of the 15 minute city agenda. Katie Hopkins (remember her?) started making videos where she pretended not to understand the function of a ring road. GBNews and TalkTV ran segments calling the plan an illiberal attempt to restrict our movement. In essence, the existing network and infrastructure of Covid deniers and antivaxxers kicked right into gear, shifted their focus, and began to aggressively promote this new fear – whether they truly believed in it, or were merely willing to pretend to be outraged in the pursuit of attention and followers.
On December 31st 2022, Jordan Peterson took time away from his celebratory New Year’s steak to tweet:
The idea that neighborhoods should be walkable is lovely. The idea that idiot tyrannical bureaucrats can decide by fiat where you’re “allowed” to drive is perhaps the worst imaginable perversion of that idea–and, make no mistake, it’s part of a well-documented plan.
The idea that neighborhoods should be walkable is lovely. The idea that idiot tyrannical bureaucrats can decide by fiat where you're "allowed" to drive is perhaps the worst imaginable perversion of that idea–and, make no mistake, it's part of a well-documented plan. https://t.co/QRrjVF615q
In doing so, he retweeted a retired scientist who shared a map of Oxford city centre, a map of Canterbury city centre, and the message: “It’s already happening…. #GreatReset#JailSchwab”
A quick look at this chap Peterson plucked from obscurity and shared to 7.6m people shows a feed filled with Covid conspiracy theories, climate change denialism, and GBNews videos where Neil Oliver warns about the oncoming inevitability of rationing. How Peterson came to find and share a message from someone so thoroughly down the conspiracy theory rabbithole speaks volumes about the Canadian culture warrior’s news diet.
Beyond the digital
As we’ve seen so often with conspiracy theories in the pandemic and post-pandemic world, these paranoias rarely stay limited to the online world. In Colchester, at a council meeting, people turned up to hold up yellow pieces of paper with slogans about resisting restrictions. Do those ring a bell?
One protester interrupted the council meeting to talk about his “god given right to travel freely… it’s in the constitution”. “We haven’t said you can’t travel anywhere”, he’s told. “Not yet, but we know it’s coming”.
“Answer me this”, the protester continues, “Who does this committee work for? Does it work for us, or for a private corporation?” Which, for those who aren’t steeped in pseudolegal rhetoric, is clearly a reference to Sovereign Citizen / Freemen on the Land beliefs.
The Ultra Low Emission Zone is an area in London, England where people are fined extortionate sums of money for driving cars that don’t meet arbitrary “minimum emissions standards”. Basically, it’s a stepping stone towards ’15 minute cities’, being used to desensitise the sheep to the idea of “climate-based” restrictions on their freedom of movement.
What is that, if it’s not setting fire to your local 5G mast? It’s clear we’re seeing the pandemic protest playbook being recycled for the new Big Bad.
Will the Leader of the House please set aside time in this House for a debate on the international socialist concept of so-called 15–minutecities and 20-minute neighbourhoods? Ultra low emission zones in their present form do untold economic damage to any city. The second step, after such zones, will take away personal freedoms as well. Sheffield is already on this journey, and I do not want Doncaster, which also has a Labour-run socialist council, to do the same.
A week later, there was a rally which saw thousands of people headed to Oxford, presumably by car, to explain how they’re pretty sure the locals didn’t want these traffic calming measures. Antivaxxer and climate change denier Piers Corbyn was there. Failed Mayoral candidate Lawrence Fox was also there, saying he objects to being told where he can and can’t go (which is understandable, as I imagine most people who meet Lawrence Fox tell him where to go).
The crowd carried placards with scary slogans, like “Smart cities really means open prisons”, and “Global fascists want us terrified”, and “Zero Carbon means Zero life”. There were multiple placards bearing the words “Wanted: Duncan Enright. An enemy of democracy”. Which is a little unfair on Duncan Enright, Deputy Leader of the West Oxfordshire District Council, and man who has been on camera saying no, this isn’t what you’re saying it is, and it’s not happening anyway.
One video of the rally, produced by Childrens Health Defense, run by antivaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr, was titled “12 year old girl DESTROYS concept of 15 minute cities”, and was shared to Telegram with the message “OXFORD PROTEST Got their own Greta”. In it, a young girl screamed “How dare you?!” at Klaus Schwab, chair of the WEF, in her best Great Thunberg voice, while the crowd roared with laughter.
The rogue’s gallery
It is worth reflecting for a moment on the many names who have come up in relation to the 15 minute cities panic: The People’s Resistance, Stand in the Park, David Avocado Wolfe, Kate Shemirani, Mark Steele, The Light Paper, Lawrence Fox, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Katie Hopkins, GBNews, Spiked Online, Piers Corbyn, the lady who shouted at NHS workers during a Covid shift. To those we can add others who are just as on board, like David Icke, Jim Corr, Matt Le Tissier, Right Said Fred, and more. These are the same names we’ve covered for years for their Covid and vaccine conspiracism.
The fact that there are so many antivaxxers and Covid conspiracy theorists involved in this whole movement shouldn’t be a big surprise: for the last three years, those communities have come together with a sense of taking direct real action against the perceived bad guys, forming networks and support structures along the way. They burn down infrastucture they deem to be evil, they mob council meetings, they doorstop people to grill them on their conspiracy theory talking points, they rally in city centres, and they film and upload everything to Telegram, where they are constantly posting.
They did that with Covid in mind, but of late they’ve been forced to shift focus, because people aren’t dying in their hundreds of thousands from the virus or from 5G, the predicted totalitarian ‘forever lockdowns’ simply didn’t happen, and the freedoms that were restricted during social distancing are back. The bad guys didn’t take more, they didn’t step into outright fascism… that time. So, where do they turn next? They need to find the next thing that will get the band back together and keep the conspiracism rolling.
With their biggest fears around Covid and its effect on society fading back or proving overblown, rather than seeing people go back to their previous lives, we’re seeing the antivaxx and conspiracy theorist communities staying together and maintaining those strong communal bonds. Which is ironic, because supporting and strengthening communities is precisely one of the aims of 15 minute cities in the first place.
When do you think the first double-blind, randomised control testing of a medical treatment was?
Jenner’s cowpox/smallpox vaccinations in 1798? Nope, they were only on a very small sample size, ie one rather trusting lad.
Maybe John Snow’s survey on Cholera at the Broad St Pump in 1854? Again, not a randomised control in sight.
Strangely, given skeptics’ focus on homeopathy over the years, it was what became known as the Nuremberg Salt Trials of 1835, which set out to test the efficacy of homeopathic treatments. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well for the homeopaths.
Homeopathy was invented (rather than discovered) as a treatment by Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, and given the paucity of medical knowledge at the time, it became increasingly popular – especially in Germany, and especially with physicians looking for treatments that wouldn’t actually kill or poison their wealthy patients.
Two Nuremberg doctors – Karl Preu and Johann Jacob Reuter – gained a reputation with prominent citizens of the town by using the latest technique of ‘not actually giving them any active ingredient at all and charging lots of money for the privilege’. Friedrich Wilhelm von Hoven, the head of the local hospital, was rather annoyed by the fact these ‘doctors’ were raking in the cash without doing any real doctoring, and so wrote a treatise denouncing both them and homeopathy.
He suggested that homeopathic drugs were not real medicines at all and alleged homeopathic cures were either due to dietetic regimens and the healing powers of nature, or showed the power of belief. He called for an objective, comparative assessment by impartial experts. If, as he expected, homeopathic treatment proved ineffective, the government would need to take drastic measures to protect the lives of deceived patients.”
By 1835, Preu was dead, but Reuter, being a little miffed at this challenge to his reputation and income, pointed out that homeopathy had been used to cure children, animals and even ‘lunatics’, challenging von Hoven to try it for himself.
The Nuremberg Salt trial, as published in the Allegmeine Zeitung, 4th February, 1835
A group of prominent citizens, likely physicians in von Hoven’s circle, decided to take Reuter’s challenge and to put homeopathy to the test. The editor of the daily Allgemeine Zeitung von und für Bayern, George Löhner, agreed to compile and publish the results.
After a public announcement, 120 citizens of Nuremberg met in a pub to begin the experiment. 100 numbered vials were shuffled and split into two groups. One had distilled snowmelt added, the other ordinary salt in a C-30 homeopathic preparation exactly as Reuter had specified: a grain of salt dissolved into 100 drops of distilled snow water and the resulting solution further diluted 29 times at a ratio of 1 to 100.
A lot of care was taken to stop cross-contamination. Brand new scales were used, and the pharmacists had taken two days off, as well as bathing, before preparing the solution. A sealed list of which vials did and did not have the homeopathic solution was kept, and a separate blinded group distributed the vials to 54 randomised participants (47 at the meeting and 7 afterwards). A second list of which number vial each had received was kept and sealed.
After three weeks, at a second meeting the participants were asked to report on anything unusual they had experienced after they ingested the contents. 50 responses were retrieved. Only eight of the 50 reported any reaction. Of that eight, five had had a dilution of salt, three had not. The vast majority reported no reaction at all.
The organisers concluded that this was strong evidence that the claimed successes of homeopathic treatments were a result of “the fruit of imagination, self-deception and preconceived opinion—if not fraud” (according to Stolberg).
Clearly as a modern scientific trial, the results are questionable at best – it seems most of the participants were not exactly advocates of homeopathy, so if they had wanted to vilify the practice, they could have done so by reporting no reaction to consuming the contents of the vial – but its value lies not in the result it claimed to demonstrate, but in the protocols and procedures it set out. The organisers did all that they could to try and eliminate the tendency of unknown errors to creep into any study and of unexpected bias to skew even the best laid plans of experimenters everywhere.
The trial design (protocol) was carefully set out and the details of the study were made public in advance
The number of participants was relatively large and the differences between the two groups would have been significant if Reuter had been right
Assignment to one group or the other was apparently perfectly randomized
A control group receiving only placebo was used
The trial was double blind: neither the participants nor those who organized the trial, distributed the vials and documented the effects had any idea whether a vial contained the homeopathic high dilution or merely water
A rough comparative statistics of the results was compiled
Irregularities were carefully recorded, such as the failure of four participants to report back, and the fact that several vials were distributed only after the first tavern meeting
The report writers wanted other experimenters to repeat similar tests, using different solutions and to ensure the results – and protocols used – were published afterwards.
As for homeopathy? Well, the practitioners immediately realised their mistake and as a treatment it was abandoned, never to be heard of again…
