‘Nanniebots’ to catch paedophiles

March 25th, 2004 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, nanniebots, new scientist | 3 Comments »

‘Nanniebots’ to catch paedophiles

Ben Goldacre
Thursday March 25, 2004
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· As I sit here, quietly shedding the weight off my fat arse in my Dr Norbert Wurgler caffeine-impregnated SlimFit tights, I find myself bitterly regretting the title of the column. Ok. So here’s one I’m not sure of. Artificial intelligence is being used to catch paedophiles in the form of “Nanniebots”. These are AI programs which hang out in internet chatrooms, allegedly spotting the signs of grooming. They have done “such a good job of passing themselves off as young people that they have proved indistinguishable from them,” according to New Scientist. That’s the Turing test – where a computer program is indistinguishable from a real person – almost passed then; and who’d have thought it, in a program written by a lone IT consultant from Wolverhampton with no AI background. So I call him.

· Here’s the problem. Reading New Scientist’s chat with Nanniebot at www.tinyurl.com/2y55h, the excellent www.ntk.net/ (Private Eye for geeks) points out that Nanniebot “seems to be able to make logical deductions, parse colloquial English, correctly choose the correct moment to scan a database of UK national holidays, comment on the relative qualities of the Robocop series, and divine the nature of pancakes and pancake day.” Jabberwock, the winner of last year’s Loebner prize for the Turing test, is rubbish in comparison: try talking to it at www.tinyurl.com/2osgo. But Jim Wightman, the Nanniebot inventor – whose site claims they’ve passed the Turing test – isn’t entering the Loebner prize this year: maybe next year … it’s too buggy. But it’s live on the internet already? Can I test it? Sure. But I want to see with my own eyes that there’s not a real human being connected somewhere tapping out the answers. Jim offers network monitoring software on my computer, to prove it’s connected to the one server. But what about that server? I want to see it working on it’s own without a human, too. Can I come round to Jim’s place? He chuckles … Jim doesn’t keep the conversation datasets on site in Wolverhampton. “I know it sounds a bit Mission Impossible but … ” He’s worried they might get stolen. They’re in a secure facility “with an iron lid under a mountain!” He has no copies. It’s 18 terabytes of data, to be fair. There are copies in the hosting facilities, one in London. I offer to go there. “There might be security issues with them letting us in … ” So here it is. I’m going if I can. I’d love to see it work. If there is an AI academic who wants to come, email me: it could be the biggest ever breakthrough in AI. Or it could be a lot of fun.

Antibodies need some pollen, sometimes

March 18th, 2004 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, oxygen, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, very basic science | 3 Comments »

Antibodies need some pollen, sometimes

Ben Goldacre
Thursday March 18, 2004
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· The hits just keep on coming. Our noble bad science spotter Carl Brancher sends important news of PO2 Contour Cream from Laboratoires Herzog: it’s a “patented stabilisation of oxygen within a cream” that “puts oxygen back into the skin, reoxygenates skin cells, encourages natural rejuvenation”. It sounds like bollocks; but it smells like peroxide. Especially since Laboratoires Herzog point out, in the small print, that you will want to keep the stuff off your eyebrows. Now, I’m not sure that this is going to put any useful oxygen in my skin, because I’ve got a perfectly adequate circulatory system to handle that; but more importantly, I’m not sure that peroxide is quite what I’m looking for on my face. For £25.

· You may remember Dr Ali, “Britain’s top integrated health expert” from the Sunday Express, who was recently suggesting that the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in your brain is circulated by the pulsation of your (er, rigid) skull. This week he’s telling us that “the body produces antibodies against bacteria and other living organisms that can multiply. But pollens and dust particles are inert (non-living), so the body tries to flush them out by sneezing, coughing, and producing mucous.” Guess those antibody tests where they inject you with pollen are a waste of time then.

· Anyone worried about Dr Ali’s poor understanding of medicine need not worry. Trained in Delhi and Moscow, and now based just off Harley Street in London, he has, his website informs us, “chosen not to apply for registration with the British General Medical Council as the treatment which he personally provides uses massage, diet, yoga and natural supplements and oils which do not need prescription”. Cynics might suggest that his decision not to apply for registration has got more to do with the fact that the General Medical Council regulations forbid the endorsement of lucrative commercial products. Like “Dr Ali’s special recipe Ayurvedic Joint Oil” (£8.50).

· Meanwhile, taking a chance on watching the national lottery draw on television, a reader, Rob Johnson, was delighted to see the programme quiz pose the following question in the science category: “What sign of the zodiac is represented by a fish?” As Mystic Meg might say, “Moron is rising in Aquarius …”

False advertising is not the remedy

March 11th, 2004 by Ben Goldacre in acupuncture, adverts, alternative medicine, bad science, homeopathy | 3 Comments »

False advertising is not the remedy

Ben Goldacre
Thursday March 11, 2004
The Guardian

Talk bad science

· I wouldn’t want you to feel powerless in the face of the new dark ages irrationality: there’s so much more to being a bad science activist than just feeling smug after winning an argument at a party, as Dr Danny O’Hare demonstrates this week.

“The Children’s Clinic in Brighton’s pernicious advertising managed to find its way into my (primary age) children’s book bags in the local school, thanks to over-zealous promotion by a satisfied, if deluded, customer. Anyway, I read the ad and they were claiming to cure asthma, a life-threatening, distressing condition for which real scientific medicine cannot even provide complete symptomatic relief, much less cure. The claim was obviously false.”

Needless to say, the clinic was planning on “using only complementary therapies such as acupuncture, homeopathy and osteopathy”. O’Hare complained, rather heroically, to the Advertising Standards Authority. After much bleating on the part of the Children’s Clinic, the ASA agreed that sentences like “after the remedy she was completely back to normal… no asthma” did rather imply that the clinic thought it could cure asthma, and noted that the advertiser had not sent evidence to support that claim. (I could give them plenty to refute it.) “The authority reminded the advertiser that testimonials did not constitute substantiation.” The plural of anecdote is not data. Complaint upheld, and knuckles rapped. The only mystery is why we’re not doing this all the time.

· So, much as I hate to suggest that we could bring a government department to its knees with overwork, if we could all report just one a week each… it only takes a minute to fill in an online complaints form at www.asa.org.uk, and they’re more hardline than you might think. “Medical and scientific claims about health and beauty products should be backed by trials conducted, where appropriate, on people.” Sanity at last.

And if you can convince your local trading standards department that they’ve broken the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, then they may have committed a criminal act. Just to make life easier for you, that’s www.tradingstandards.gov.uk. The prisons will be overflowing. I found the sentence “advertisements should not imply that the population in general is likely to be deficient in vitamins or minerals” especially heartwarming, although it’s a shame that the Press Complaints Commission doesn’t take the same line on flaky alternative health columnists in national newspapers who recommend their friends’ expensive supplement pills.

Waxing sceptical

March 4th, 2004 by Ben Goldacre in alternative medicine, bad science, penises | 14 Comments »

Waxing sceptical

Ben Goldacre
Thursday March 4, 2004
The Guardian

· Time for some more home science experiments. Robin Sidgwick sends in the catalogue for Ragdale Hall health hydro, which includes the fabulously theatrical “ear candling”: the idea is that a hollow tube of wax invented by Hopi indians is inserted into your ear and lit, in order to suck out any impurities. After the treatment, the candle is triumphantly opened, and shown to be full of orange goo. It’s excellent for “excess wax in the ears, sinusitis, or general blocked sinuses… A must for anyone who hates the syringe!” After an argument at a party about how sceptical I always am, I’ve got a Hopi ear candle right here. Time for a Johnny Ball moment. Get an ear candle. Wave it over an ashtray or some carpet fluff as I am now doing: nothing so far… A paper published in the medical journal Laryngoscope used rather expensive tympanometry and found that ear candles exert no suction. The researchers also found no reduction in the amount of wax after a programme of ear candling. Although, if you’re getting bored of all these negative findings, they did ask 122 colleagues, and collected 21 cases of serious injury from burning wax falling on to the ear drum. If you find, while having your ear candled, that you experience a sudden loss of hearing, and agony followed by bleeding: that’ll be the deafening sound of your own painful credulity.

· But numerous ear candle manufacturers, such as Biosun, are proud to tell you that their product conforms to EC directive 93/42 and bears the CE mark. Sounds good. EC directive 93/42 certification, routinely dragged out by pseudoscientists, for a Class I medical device (am I the most boring man you know?) is a matter of filling out a little form, where you say you think it’s probably safe. “The devices must be designed and manufactured in such a way that, when used under the conditions and for the purposes intended, they will not compromise the clinical condition or the safety of patients.” Quite.

· But I wouldn’t want you to think I’m uniformly sceptical. If you go to the website buttcandle.com you’ll find something that really does work, accompanied by numerous lovingly hand-tooled illustrations of hollow candles gently drawing toxins out through the rectums of happy customers. Oh yes. The only reported danger is of the pressures created by the buttcandle drawing haemorrhoids into the hollow channel of the candle, leading them to be tangled up in the hot wax. It’s got to be better than going deaf.