Over the last week or so the Daily Heil has published several stories about the LHC all using their typical non-hysterical, sensible style of reporting. We’ve had:

Are we all going to die next Wednesday?

Meet Evans the Atom, who will end the world on Wednesday

and rather more sensibly:

Scientists receive death threats over Big Bang experiment from critics who fear end of the world

Unsurprisingly, the comments section on each of these articles reads like the witterings of a deranged maniac interspersed with occasional lucid displays. Schizophrenic to say the least. Here I’ve going to work through some of those comments and counter them. A lot of them follow the same general trend (nothing like adding your opinion to a discussion when it’s already been said many times before) so I’ll use examples of each. A lot of the comment’s probably should invoke Poe’s Law. My comments are in red and I’ve bolded some of the more worryng parts.

The Worlds Biggest and Most Dangerous EVER EXPERIMENT which could mean the end of it all!

Why are these Scientists allowed to take such dangerous decisions and undertake such dangerous experiments without knowing the outcome before they proceed! Someone seems to have forgotten the point of an experiment. An experiment is used to test a hypothesis. In particle physics the current model hypothesises the existence of the Higgs Boson, this experiment is designed to determine if it exists. If we knew the outcome already we wouldn’t bother

What right do these Scientists have to take my life or anyone elses life for that matter. Why has there not been a Court Injunction taken out and served against these Mad Men. Some have tried and failed. They failed because the courts tend to go with the people who actually know what they’re talking about and can back it up with evidence rather than listening to the minority of cranks.

If it all goes wrong and it is the end of the World, who is going to take them to task over their massive micalculation? No one. If it does all go horribly wrong in the way you’re thinking you’ll be beyond the point of being able to care.

If I could, I would stop this experiment taking place any way I could, believing in my own mind that it is sometimes better that a few suffer than the masses! This will go ahead of course and it will not be stopped but it is not right, nor is it fair and Scientists have definitely overstepped the mark this time! This, to me, is a thinly masked death threat.

As the Article says, we all have to keep our fingers crossed and hope the Scientists have got it right! Stupid people!! Sorry Keith, you’re the stupid one.

- keith, winchester, uk, 4/9/2008 11:12

Would it not have been better to spend this amount of money on making the world a better place, why can’t these scientists put their energy and brains into helping people, instead into projects which do not really mean anything. Joan, if we all took that attitude we’d still be in caves.

- Joan Finegan, Montmorillon, France, 4/9/2008 12:41

Four years from now we will see a Quaser emanating through the earth? In 2012 This refers to a quote from Otto Rossler, one of the people trying to stop the LHC

The Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012, and so have other theories within this, linked to the Bible and they too forecast the end of the world or Armageddon in 2012. The bible is not a source of science, it is a source of contradictory stories.

Is this a coincidence? It does seem scary Yes it is a coincidence. As is the London Olympics being held in 2012. Maybe lighting the Olympic torch will actually create this quasar and destroy the Earth.

- Sarah Jones, Brighton, England, 7/9/2008 2:15

If it’s that certain the earth will callapse, why does it take so long to decide and who is deciding on behalf of all of us….the same people that decide on laws from the EU? I wondered how long it would take for an anti-Europe comment. Now where’s the one about immigrants setting up the LHC to lower house prices in Tunbridge Wells? Oh, and how many times do you need to be told that IT’S NOT GOING TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE!
Well here’s my vote now and it’s STOP THIS STUPIDITY NOW!-perhaps others will follow? Please do stop your stupidity, either that or shut the fuck up.

- s.francis, BROMSGROVE WORCS, 7/9/2008 8:07

You have got to be kidding me!
I all for science but why would people allow this to go ahead if this will end the world don’t they think about their family, friends and pets!
i wouldnt care about this going wrong and killing me but i care about how my friends family and pets would be affected! That’s right they’re doing it to kill your cat.
if scientists are watching this, plase find a better way to find out about the world rather than risking your lives! If annonymus is reading this learn about spelling, punctuation and grammar.

- annonymus, england, 7/9/2008 16:02

Interesting to see that Britain has contributed £34 million towards provision of energy for this monster machine! ( Thought we were supposed to be tightening our belts ! )  A lot of people seem to think that all money spent on research that doesn’t give them a new type of ipod next year is somehow a waste of money. Although this warrants a full post of its own people need to realise that the UK economy is heavily driven by intellectual property these days. Manufacturing has all but disappeared because it is cheaper to outsource to Asia. Science is rapidly heading the same way as labour is cheap and many routine experiments can be conducted with little knowledge of what is actually going on. Similarly, China etc. are investing huge sums of money in research facilities to produce high quality science because they know that it will boost their economy through increased IP.
Here we are told we must conserve energy, and we could be doing that all wrapped up in our extra cardigans and foot warmers,using our energy saving bulbs and candles, recycling our newspapers in the fireplace, eating less meat, walking to work, running up and down the stairs to keep warm and lose weight.
Good job I can see the funny side of this
Before we all disappear down a big black hole next wednesday, we could celebrate bonfire night early, say next Tuesday, party to end all parties, at least we could be warm, and instead of burning Guy Fawkes effigy he could be guest of honour.

- P.S., West Midlands, 8/9/2008 12:07

Dr Cox, who in the 1990s played keyboards in the chart-topping band D:Ream, will be in the CERN control room for the ’switch on’. He was indeed and in Dare before that

Well his excellent credentials are all in order, he played with D:Ream in the 1990’s, so what’s to worry about? Those of us objecting to this should now rest-assured we are in the best possible hands, It’s called being multi-talented. Maybe Brian May shouldn’t have been allowed in Queen because he could also understand astrophysics.

- A.Pamish, London, 8/9/2008 12:37

the same space..four things are wrong…there eagerness to throw the switch without thinking to much about the mechanical inspections..the amount of power it uses and where it is dilivered from?,,all of a sudden they have found anti matter and are firing it around on the second beam..and just by chance they are launching a very special sattalite 100 miles north of moscow the morning of the swith on, in stealth and disguise to monitor the effect this machine has on the gravitational and magnetic effects it has on this earth .if they do by chance find whatthere looking for we will be snuffed out in a nano second as the universe will cease to be…if they understood how god works they will realize that here is no begining or end to the universe.and no 2 universes can existin the same place…in a word itsall bad…as anything they do glean will not be for the good of man ,,not even god will be able to save us if we vanish without a trace .In a word its all bad and i,m petrified..

What?

- jeff, bournemouth, 8/9/2008 12:38

Update

Firstly, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, the universe has not been destroyed and so we’re still here. Secondly, just found this wonderful comment over on the Times website:

This is an over expensive man made, man controlled experiment. It was made by men, who controlled what happened and how it happened. This proves to me that in order to create anything, you need a creator.

Paul Peters, Merritt Island, USA

Logical fallacy. Just because we, by which I mean the human race, used our intelligence (I use the term loosely as there may be, either in another part of the universe or at some point in the future, an organism with a far greater intellect) does not mean that in order to create anything you require a creator. Unless of course you define a creator (or god) in the manner that Carl Sagan has previously:

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

Filed under: Bad reporting, Badscience, Barking, KKKly Mail by badchemist
6 Comments »

I’m hosting this video here just in case it disappears from youtube again. This is Dr Charlene Werner butchering physics beyond all recognition and tarnishing the names of Einstein and Hawking along the way. Unlike Werner I won’t be removing the video if the comments become less than complimentary.

I won’t bother giving a critique of the errors in this video, they are all glaringly obvious, I’ll allow you to have the fun of trying to spot them all.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Filed under: Badscience, Barking, homeopathy, video by badchemist
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According to this all us bloggers who decided to defend another’s freedom of speech are shills for the GMC. We are sponsored by them apparently, as were the journalists who wrote the articles referenced by Quackometer, and others, about Obi previously.

When I was told that the Enemies of Alternative Medicine had recruited 5000 (Five Thousand) Bloggers to write rubbish about me 24 hours a day , ( every single day of the year ) , I said OK . . . Let’s wait and see precisely what they will say . . . (Because in my view , it is a perfectly Good Military Tactic to sit back and watch them all come creeping out of the woodwork , so that I know precisely what their capabilities are).

…Now , after speedreading almost everything that they have written , and also carefully analyzing their strategies , I have reached the simple conclusion that their plan has massively backfired ; as all that their 5000 Blogposts have done is provide me with even more ammunition for my Multiple Lawsuits . . . both against the Hosting Company of the Defamatory Blog Itself and the General Medical Council.

Maybe Obi should go and read up about libel and defamation. If those earlier articles are defamatory as stated he’s had several years to take legal action; and should have won if they were. British libel law is renowned for putting the emphasis on the defendant to prove their innocence rather than the complainant to prove their guilt. All the Quackometer and other commentators have done is take those articles in good faith, backed up with information provided on Obi’s own websites. He appears to have provided himself with no ammunition at all, particularly against the GMC who seem completely unrelated other than be the target of one of his campaigns. Being struck off obviously makes you bitter.

I have absolutely no criminal record or criminal convictions whatsover . . . and anyone who implies otherwise should be firmly made to pay the supreme price for their actions. . . and that is why they are all so worried that my Legal Team is going after them all ; because they know that when we do eventually catch them , they will certainly not escape their due punishment.

When has anyone implied that Obi had any prior convictions? To reiterate, Quackometer wrote:

He was being investigated by the police for taking thousands of pounds of a 58 year old woman to in order to cure a long standing illness.

This does not imply that Obi has any criminal convictions.

All Obi appears to have done with this article is further defame those who have criticised him as well as the GMC. Luckily my fellow bloggers and I don’t tend to go in for legal suits and prefer to respond to criticisms rather than try and silence them. For the record I have never had any dealings with the GMC. I am not in the medical profession. I am a research scientist and PhD student in chemistry, but as a scientist I know the difference between quackery and medicine. And I think that anyone will agree that throwing allegations of of racism and corruption can hardly be described as ethical.

Filed under: Barking, Libel, Medicine and Health by badchemist
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The attempt by Joseph Chikelue Obi to silence the Quackometer really hasn’t helped him much. As a consequence their is a considerable number of mirrors of the original posts and LCN has uncovered some interesting looking info on his business dealings. Joseph Chikelue Obi seems to have experience with defamation suits having previously had one of his (seemingly endless list of) sites removed on such grounds before.

Currently a google search for Joseph Chikelue Obi yields several of the mirror sites or related articles on the front page of hits. According to another of his websites, the whois info gives his name and one address mentioned in the quackometer post, this does not worry the good doctor.

Alternative Medicine Strongman , Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi , has today survived one of the Most Lethal Bloggers Assaults in Modern History , with almost Five Thousand Defamatory Bloggers woefully failing to sink him despite their use of the very latest Internet Spamming Technology.

[Gratuitous use of italics his]

5000 bloggers? The most comprehensive lists of mirrors I’ve seen only have about 1/100th of that many. He’ll also be disappointed to know that the `Internet Spamming Technology’ of which he speaks is simply the same technology he uses to create his site: ordinary blogging software, email and people writing. [Edit: I've just reread that quote - "one of the Most Lethal Bloggers Assaults in Modern History" - even if you take blogging back to the early days of Usenet you're only in the 80s, still modern history. Were there `Bloggers Assaults' before the beginning of the internet? Did Rome fall because of a very small minority of people sticking bits of papyrus on public notice boards?]

Apparently, from the comfort of Belfast, he is quoted:

” Let them drink Bile if they so wish : In the Interim , my Multiple Legal Actions have already started , and will maverickly proceed as planned . . . Come what may “

I’ll look forward to receiving my letter from Tanya then, even though we still have no evidence she is a solicitor.

Yesterday Joseph Chikelue Obi also declared victory over the GMC. His petitions (here and here) have 272 and 64 signatories at the moment, the former has now closed as well. That really is a HUGE crushing blow to the GMC especially considering the 1,000,000+ road-pricing petition was pretty much ignored by the government. He also seems to have made a rather large logical fallacy in his analysis of these petitions.

Preliminary Comparative Analysis of the separate Downing Street Petitions above clearly suggests that 4 out of every 5 people would rather have the General Medical Council comprehensively abolished altogether , instead of trying to patch it up with one particular Investigation or another.

Assuming no duplicates in the two petitions 336 people have signed to date, approximately 4:1 abolishion:investigation. So 4 out of every 5 people would rather have the GMC abolished than investigated in a sample size of <350.

But the profound beauty of the matter is that because we selflessly devoted one full year of Ear-Deafening Mayhem to our cause , over 200,000 Doctors in the United Kingdom will soon be enjoying the Profound Regulatory Benefits of an Absolutely Fabulous year”.

If over 200,000 doctors are going to `benefit’ from the abolition of the GMC you would think a few more would have signed up, especially as they are the people being regulated by this supposedly unethical and institutionally racist body.

Filed under: Barking, Joseph Chikelue Obi, Libel by badchemist
2 Comments »

I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that all celebrity `nutritionists’ walk hand in hand with quackery. Whilst perusing my RSS feeds earlier I came across some useful detox advice in the Torygraph. To be honest the article isn’t that bad, just some helpful advice for when you need feel like detoxing. Although, as any medical professional worth their salt could tell you, detoxing isn’t necessary as long as you eat a healthy balanced diet (read “eat less, mainly vegetables, exercise more”). All this article does is make the middle classes feel better about themselves if they spend a few weeks eating healthily every 6 months or so.

What interested me more was the link to the authors website Farm Living. This is a company that want to charge you extortionate amounts of money to give you basic nutritional advice and some other psuedoscientific BS.

Combining nutritional therapy and lifestyle coaching with a more holistic approach, she [Linzi Boyd] includes practices such as Yoga, Chi Gong, Meditation, Positive affirmations, Chakra clearing, Vision boards, Emotion Freedom Technic (E.F.T.) and Emo trance

Some of these practices are not without merit, especially if you ignore the crap about `energy’ and what have you, but some I’d never even heard of so I thought a little investigation was in order.

Emotional Freedom Technique

Only one hit in PubMed for this one, under the pseudonym Emotional Acupuncture (Jebus!) unfortunately it’s in Nursing Standard which I have no access to but google leads us to the exciting emofree.com* that tells us it can help with pretty much everything.

For proof, here is a sampling of our actual cases. They are written for you by everyday citizens, physicians and therapists: Pain Management, Addictions, Weight loss, Allergies, Children’s Issues, Animals, Vision, Headaches, Panic/Anxiety, Asthma, Trauma, PTSD, Abuse, Depression, Dyslexia, Carpal Tunnel, Anger, ADD-ADHD, Fears/phobias, Eating disorders, OCD, Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Neuropathy, Fear of Flying, Claustrophobia, Agoraphobia, Anorexia/Bulimia, Sports and other Performance

Not what you’d call evidence, more a list of anecdotes. A quick read of the What is EFT? page tells me all I need to know.

The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.

There’s also mention of meridians and I really can’t be bothered with that, the final nail is hammered in when you see who the first testimonial comes from the legendary Deepak Chopra.

*Is it me or does emofree just sound like someone trying to get rid of kids wearing eyeliner and black.

Vision boards
This appears to be great for people with more money than sense. Visit their website and you too can learn from their truly awful video. For only $39 dollars you could own a piece of software that makes slideshows from pictures and add words to them as well. Apparently by watching this slideshow your life will improve beyond your wildest dreams. Seriously who buys this crap?

Emotrance

More energy healing, possibly crazier than EFT.

I really can’t take any more of this shit.

---

On a different note I would like to point out that although Linzi Boyd seems to want to help people, albeit for a princely sum, she obviously doesn’t care about those who have disabilities that require the use of screen readers etc. All of the text on her site is within image files with alt tags that are wholly inadequate and only give the name of the page. This really pisses me off – it is not hard write a compliant website and consider accessibility issues. Short alt tags are fine for images that don’t effect the overall meaning of the page, they are useless if all the information is contained within the image. Use the longdesc tag as well if need be. If everyone used compliant code the internets would be a better place, that also goes for people writing sites specifically for IE. Sorry, rant over.

Filed under: Barking, Energy Healing, Geek Stuff, Medicine and Health, Nutribollocks by badchemist
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I realise that I seem to be posting a lot tonight but boredom, beer and thesis avoidance has led to me following some interesting links. Thanks to the comments on DC’s latest post of homeopathy I’m come across this gem from Peter Chappell.

Those of you who read Bad Science will already have heard of this chap and his supposed ability to cure AIDS with iTunes. Not only can he do that but he cure H5N1 bird flu in humans with it too. You can download a free version of his resonance recordings from that site or you can download it here.*

Now to my, admittedly untrained, ear this just sounds a bit like rather mediocre jazz. Consequently I propose that if we take the Miles Davis back catalogue and use it to cure all ills. Although, as Peter Chappell is a homeopath, we may need to dilute it infinitesimally – Robbie Williams’ swing album should suffice.

Disclaimer

*According to the original download site:

In the event of Bird Flu (avian influenza – H5N1), we will endeavour to sustain pressure on our servers due to any increase in traffic however we are unable to guarantee uptime. Not only failure of the servers that support our site but electricity might fail, other unforseen factors may come in to play. For this reason, it is much wiser if you get supplied now.

Therefore I am mirroring the file here to reduce load on their servers in the event of a H5N1 break out. If the owners of the file wish for me to remove this file contact me at the email address here.

Filed under: Badscience, Barking, Medicine and Health, Resonance, Society of Homeopaths, homeopathy by badchemist
8 Comments »