Ben Goldacre on Placebos

I thought this was a very interesting short talk from Dr Ben Goldacre on the placebo effect.



The thing that surprised me the most was when he described how even animals feel the benefit from the placebo effect. I'd love to see the proof of that because it sounds absolutely bonkers.

I particularly like the way that he describes how placebos work but, because it's unethical to lie to patients we should not use them - but we should use the fact that they work in order to make pre-existing, proven treatments even more effective.

(h/t Neil)

Haiti: children kidnappers

Before I begin: If you didn't donate to Haiti and regret it it's not too late. You can still check out my earlier post for suggestions on who to send your cash to.

Ever since it was revealed that religious groups were sending people to take 'orphans' out of Haiti to give them a 'better life' I've had a heavy feeling in my stomach on top of the heavy feeling created by seeing the suffering the people of Haiti have had to endure over the last period.

I'm more than happy for religious groups to mobilise people to help out and do good deeds. There's a question about how useful that can be, but without being on the ground it's difficult to know how (in)effective that help is and I'm not willing to criticise the aid effort.

However, when it comes to people trafficking it's another matter frankly.

There's a number of reasons why, even before we get to the specifics of this case, stealing children is wrong. First of all most orphans have living relatives. Taking kids out of the country means creating a permanent separation. There is no reason why you should be allowed to own children and indoctrinate them into your sect whilst denying them a reconciliation with their blood.

Second of all, during a disaster there is a fog where people lose people. It may be that people you thought were dead weren't, and it certainly is the case that kids that are lost because they have been taken away will be untraceable to their surviving relatives. Using the word orphan about a child creates the impression they have no one, but it's not necessarily true and the missionaries certainly do not know whether it's true - it's an assumption.

Third, waltzing into someone else's country and taking their children because you've decided they will have a better life isn't ok just because you're American. There is no entitlement that goes with US citizenship that says you have the right to circumvent the authorities in any country you go to.

The specifics

When you get to the details of the case it is even more worrying though. The missionaries might say they are "completely innocent" and they were legitimately taking 33 kids out of the country to a new life in their Idaho Baptist inspired utopia where they would also be eligible for adoption.

However, it transpires that many of the kids have at least one living relative, they were told that the kids were simply going to be schooled and would be able to return, not if they've been adopted they wouldn't. It is also clear that the group had no authorisation from the Haitian authorities, and don't even appear to think they needed any.

That's even though they were told before the attempt that they could not take the kids across the border. The Wall Street Journal reports that;

"the Dominican Republic's consul general in Port-au-Prince, said in an interview that he met with the group's leader, Laura Silsby, on Friday at the consulate in the Haitian capital and told her she lacked the documents to transport children."

She told Mr. Castillo she had applied to Dominican authorities for a permit to cross the border, he said. But Mr. Castillo checked and found no such application. "I told her I could authenticate Haitian documents but she had no Haitian documents of any sort,"

I'm afraid I've no sympathy for these people languishing in a Haiti jail. I'm not a hang them and flog them sort of person but I was very pleased to hear that they would be charged and face trial. It simply cannot be right for organisations to use their wealth and the weight of their government to determine the fate of children just because they live in a poorer nation.

ps good piece from Mike Gonzalez at the Guardian on Haitian reconstruction.

What would an ethical foreign policy look like?

Robin Cook did us a favour when he came up with the phrase 'ethical foreign policy', even if he wasn't always able to live up to that exacting standard when foreign secretary.

It seemed to sum up for many of us what we wanted to see when it came to international relations. A step away from prioritising business interests and our relationships with more powerful nations and moving towards doing the right thing because it's right rather than the pragmatic thing that we're able to put a progressive spin to.

But, it seems to me, that there is no easy path to take when trying to decide what's a truly ethical foreign policy. It's worth grappling with some of the contradictions and problems in order to help clarify what it is we really want.

For example, we could take a completely non-interventionist position, as some nations do. That would mean we could keep our hands clean but at the cost of never acting to improve the world.

Would that policy extend to aid and trade relationships? Having worked in international development I know there are plenty of grey areas where you need to weigh up exactly whether the 'help' you are giving is really helpful, and where it is, to whom?

I take it as a given that military strikes and occupations of other people's countries would take no part in that policy, and arms sales would go too. However, should that be treated as a principle? The ability of the weak to be able to militarily defend themselves against the strong is not an irrelevance in many parts of the world, a genuinely pacifist foreign policy would certainly claim the moral high ground, which is quite a good spot to be able to see all the horror and murder going on in the rest of the globe.

Then again if we simply say that it's the way previous governments have used force and have been complicit in violence that has been the problem and we'd know better, wouldn't we be laying a trap for ourselves? Risking the slippery slope into liberal interventionism and before you know it we're propping up dictatorships to prevent civil wars or arming semi-democracies in the hope that they might see there way to cleaning up their act.

We can back pro-democracy movements, the fight for independent trade unions, women's liberation and a host of other life and death causes - and as a movement the left must be internationalist in its outlook. Does that mean we think the government should be shipping anti-aircraft missiles to the Kurds or printing presses to Zimbabwe's MDC?

The answer can be yes, but if it is we should carefully think about what the implications of such acts would be. Personally I don't have any bullets that I can spare to pop in a jiffy bag and send to a freedom fighter, even if I wanted to, but there are differences between our solidarity and demands as a political current in the UK and precisely what we'd see the government do if we had more influence with it.

Having said all that I don't want to imply everything is a grey area and, even if I accept sometimes bad things need to be done to produce a good result, I can't ignore that the means are things in themselves as well as the ends. The responsibility to choose ethical methods to achieve ethical outcomes is a heavy one.

There are no subtleties or up sides to nuclear explosions that can make owning weapons of genocide acceptable. Arming oppressive regimes to repress their own people in the name of our 'war on drugs' or 'war on terror' is not right no matter how you squint at it.

Lines exist, but even when they are blurred it doesn't mean not taking a position on what we want to see happen, only recognising the complexities on how we lend a helping hand - if at all.

Parallel ethics

I went to my first 'Westminster Skeptics' meeting tonight which was on science activism and new media. Really excellent, speakers and audience with lots of food for thought. One thing in particular, that the Holford Watch blogger (name?) said, as an aside really got me thinking.

He described bloggers as having "novel ethical norms". Now if you were being cruel you might say yes, locked away in the darkness, hunched over a tiny screen it's no wonder many bloggers develop such unbelievably stunted manners. But let's not be cruel, let's be nice.

I think it's an interesting point because there are clear differences in what is seen as ethical and unethical online and where the borders are in meat space.

If you compare the way a newspaper article and a blog piece use links for example it is expected of a blogger to link to their sources, in a similar way to academics if less formal, whilst there's no expectation for journalists to link to source material so the reader can judge for themselves whether the journo is getting things right.

More importantly the only context where I would have a discussion with anonymous people is on a blog (not this one, I don't allow anonymous comments, although people still use pseudonyms, which is fine). I certainly wouldn't put up with the rudeness of some online commentators in a face to face meeting - although it's usually pretty civilised round here as I don't allow that sort of thing to grow.

However, it's still true that the net frees some people up to their inner bore who's lurking beneath the surface and they think nothing of exhibiting behavior that, if they saw it in their day to day life, they would be horrified at.

So why is this? Well, I think it comes down to basic material factors rather than any new exciting 'social media philosophy' or some such.

Linking is easy. Anonymity is possible online, it is not face to face. More than that it is easily done, which is why anonymous hate mail in real life is rare (but sadly does exist) and online is a way of life for some. Even being unpleasant to people is encouraged because it is so much easier to come across people you despise.

I've never been to a Tory meeting in my life even though, theoretically, it affords me the opportunity to start screaming "Remember the Belgrano!" and tipping water over the branch secretary. However, if I was so inclined, I could open a new tab in firefox, bring up a Tory blog and verbally piss in it, all without leaving my chair, risking physical attack, or any awkward questions from the old bill.

The fact that the majority of people who read political blogs do not do these things is a credit to the human race, but the fact it's made easy by the technology increases the likelihood no end. Of course, cunningly, the web has corralled most of these commentators into a few vile, bear-pits of blogs where everyone else knows not to go - but they do escape sometimes.

Anyway, norms. What happens in society when we transgress norms?

There are formal sanctions: We might be put in jail. We might be physically attacked. We might lose our job. We might be thrown out of the pub. Your boy/girlfriend might dump you. Online the equivalents are so much weaker, although we are still subject to the law, even if people forget it sometimes.

There are also informal sanctions: people might tell us we're a wanker. They might stop talking to us. They may raise their eyebrows and stop inviting us over for scrabble. Seeing as online these behaviors are generally directed towards targets that they don't even see as people where's the loss in any of those?

There are certainly parts of online ethics that are to be celebrated. The constant linking and referencing of other people's work for example, the culture of sharing of videos and recommending interesting 'stuff', the ultra-social side where you keep in touch with people you rarely get to see in real life. All made possible through the technology, but the darker side needs to be recognised too.

It's not just that people do things online they'd never do elsewhere, it's the fact that it's generally accepted that makes it a 'norm', related to the ethics of wider society but somehow parallel to it, with it's own rules and nuances.

Vegetarianism

OK, I'm going to take the plunge. As a preliminary scouting mission from Friday I'm going to be vegetarian for a week. Wish me luck because I might have trouble remembering if I'm out and about. I'm leaving it to Friday as that allows me to use up various bits and bobs, thereby not wasting food. I hope that's acceptable.

I tend to eat too much meat anyway so I've been thinking about this for a while. I used to be vegetarian (for about two years) when I was a student but one drunken night I had fish and chips on the way home and the spell was broken.

Anyway there are lots of reasons not to eat meat. Health, climate change even ethics if you want to go all hippy on me but I do tend to be a bit useless at this lifestyle business (and I sympathise with everyone in a similar position so don't tend to be part of the finger wagging brigade). That's no reason not to try is it?

I will tweet regular updates for those particularly interested but never fear, I wont clog the blog up with stories about bland cheese sandwiches or a particularly succulent lettuce leaf, not even in digest form.

The time's right for ethical politics

People forget politicians were not well respected before the expenses scandal. Much of the present rage isn't simply over a few liberties between friends but about a class of people that have been seen for years as privileged, out of touch and who have a casual disregard for the will of the people. The public don't see this as a one off but as the culmination of years of arrogance.

It probably feels like some horrendous tidal wave, or other natural disaster, to those MPs who are feeling the brunt of it but anyone who's been talking politics on the doorstep over the last couple of weeks will know that the public mood did not just appear over night and does not just involve expenses.

Most MPs are hard working, honest folk who vote for war and privatisation. Most people go into politics because they're passionate; about ideas, about making the world a better place, about hearing the sound of their own voice. It's certainly not a sure fire way to make a million and I doubt there are many politicians who've pursued politics for financial gain, that's just a side benefit.

But let's not pop those sainthoods in the post just yet.

Careerists

Whilst most activists are not in it for the cash (in fact activism costs money) let's not forget that politics, like the trade union movement, is polluted with careerists. Those who started out thinking that as they have to have a job it may at least be one that makes them feel like they're doing something worthwhile. Not evil in itself but this layer begins to develop very different interests to the rest of the movement they represent.

They begin to see the 'ordinary' supporter as something separate from themselves, something lower down the ladder. It becomes harder and harder to unpick their personal interests and those of the cause they work for until one day they stop even trying. Any political drift away from the party is brushed under the carpet in order not to jeopardise their position.

You can guarantee that Green Party members aren't careerists. Not because they are made of pure and holy stuff but because there are precious few jobs to be had, so anyone wanting to make a career out of politics gravitates to those places where there are more opportunities to make a living. That said Green politics is about ethics so you'd hope that the tendency to stuff your pockets the moment you're near the till isn't quite as strong.

The established parties, just like trade unions, have developed a deeply conservative infrastructure which serves a purpose but also forms habits that are undemocratic. They get used to making decisions behind closed doors for other people. They get used to seeing themselves as more important, more able to make those decisions until even the idea of accountability becomes offensive to them.

Of course the expenses system should be reformed, and it isn't that hard to work out how either. You won't be getting the same stories about MSPs or London Assembly members because they use a logical system where the opportunities for abuse are not so available. However, the core to the problem, the reason why people were so quick to anger, is that there is a lack of democracy and the fairest expenses system in the world won't address that. Democracy has to extend beyond the occasional tick in a box for someone to misrepresent us.

Democratic reform

For a start people need to feel represented. Their voices need to be heard. First past the post doesn't deliver this and that's why there's wide support for proportional representation, where minority views with support get heard. It also means the monolithic blocks get broken up and a more grown up politics ensues where people from different perspectives have to talk to one another and work together to get things done.

Whether the questions are war, privatisation, immigration or the climate the public are better placed to push for the politics they want under a proportional system and these ideas have a far better chance of influencing the outcome. Time servers are too comfortable to bother listening to the people and democratic reform can help keep them on track.

A two party system might have felt democratic during the post-war consensus but it's pretty clear that many right wingers don't feel represented by the Tories and that the Labour Party is no longer a place where everyone in the 'broad church' gets a go in the pulpit. We need more parties now because there are more political viewpoints that have a substantial following and are unrepresented by the main parties.

A movement for democratic change

We need a movement for democratic change that goes beyond addressing the kind of representative democracy we use. We need to promote ways to democratise society as a whole, not just how we elect those in the corridors of power. We should rethink what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.

Whether it's our workplaces, our communities or our political parties I think we should imprint the idea of democracy throughout society like words through a stick of rock. Is it really any wonder that in a country where the main parties have become less and less internally democratic that they have become more and more out of touch with the people at large?

We should have a say in every aspect of our lives no matter how much wealth we have, no matter how well placed in the bureaucracy we are. We can't rely on representatives to do this for us, no matter how charismatic they are on YouTube. A society where every citizen has a voice doesn't need brilliant leaders but it does rely on participation.

Those of us who argue for a more democratic society ought to be careful because the implications of this argument is that we all have a collective responsibility for the way society functions. If you want someone else to sort everything out for you go live in a dictatorship, if we want democracy we have to build it for ourselves - and that means work.

Our furry friends

Personally I'm a cat person. Cats have a dignity that's completely alien to, for example, a dog whose whole sense of self seems to revolve around its pack leader. Cats are great, but dogs? They're bloody animals!

Anyway, having spent a chunk of the weekend re-proofing the proofed Green Euro-Manifesto (ooohhhhh!) I have to confess I read the section on animals peeping through my fingers as I hid behind the sofa. It's not my natural territory and I've always kept the arguments for animal rights at arms length, a current of thought that many of my fellow Greens are dead keen on.

Now, thankfully, it didn't offend my tender mainstream eyes. The section is even called Animal Protection rather than the ethically tangled Animal Rights so I didn't even have to worry about the deeper philosophical implications of the way we'd framed the issues.

Although I generally agreed with the policies outlined I suspect I'm probably approaching the issue in a different way than many Green Party members. For example, I'm opposed to fox hunting essentially on the basis that the ban annoys the rich rather than particular concern for The Fantastic Mr Fox who, after all, is a carnivore himself.

With these issues in my mind I noticed this story about the teenage Bull fighter, Jairo Miguel Sanchez (pictured), in Spain. He was gored and almost killed when he was 14 and is now back in the ring at 16. This has caused a bit of controversy in Spain (health and safety gone mad again) provoking this response;

"Bullfighting, like tennis, is best learned as a child," Jorge de Haro, president of the Mexican Association of Fighting-Bull Raisers once told reporters. "Bullfighting must be unconscious and a child isn't conscious of the danger or risk. The younger, the better."

I don't recall tennis involving the deliberate killing of a fine beast for the voyeuristic gratification of a large crowd - but perhaps that's something we should introduce. It may well improve the British showing at Wimbledon if there was more of an element of risk involved.

I asked my friend, who's from Brazil and quite green and progressive, whether Bull fighting was popular in Brazil. Her response was interesting in that she said that it's popular in the north (where she comes from) and, I think with a little pride, she said it was more dangerous than in Spain. "It's nice to watch, but not so nice to take part in. Lots of people are killed."

I can't say even I think that sounds "nice to watch", but maybe that's hypocritical on my part as I'm rather overfond of my bacon sarnies. So she may well be being more consistent than I am. I'm not anti-animal it's just I'm unashamedly anthropocentric and so tend to see animals in terms of our needs. So I don't like the idea of bull fighting - but this is probably based on the idea that it doesn't sound very nice rather than grounded in a firm ethical position.

I suppose I have a question rather than any answers; how central is the concept of animal rights / welfare to green thinking? It's certainly a key element in the ethics of many green activists, and was the route that they got involved in the first place, but is it an essential component or simply one branch of many in the green spectrum?

Morals and the secular habitus

I'm just thinking aloud here; At school our class never had the same religious education teacher for more than one year in a row. I don't think it is was (just) us but they did rather go in with all guns blazing.

One RE teacher decided to have some sort of open discussion and was aghast when one of the lads piped up, perfectly appropriately as I remember it, that he was an atheist. The horror on his face was a real sight to see. He then spluttered the immortal line "But if you don't believe in God then you can't *possibly* have any morals." From that moment he was doomed with us and, I'm sure, convinced many that all this God stuff was clearly bullshit.

After all, we knew we had morals and that they weren't dependent on religious doctrine. He wasn't just an idiot, he was an aggressive idiot - and frankly we could be a lot more aggressive than him so he made both a tactical and a theological mistake that day. Thankfully not all of the religiously inclined are such misanthropic balderdashians.

But whilst I'm sure 99% of us agree that you can have morals without God why is it that so often when, with our tacit acceptance, the media want the moral or ethical viewpoint they turn to some archdeacon or other brushing cracker crumbs out of his beard and preparing to give the parish line on this, that and a bit of the other. The idea that there is a special class of people for whom moral questions are their exclusive preserve seems quite perverse.

I suspect that it is not simply a reflection of the lazy minds of editors that created this situation where the left, in particular, seems frozen out of these discussions. I'm sure one contributing factor has been that the left has not taken this topic seriously - or actively avoided exploring knotty ethical issues in favour of appearing purely scientific in their polemics.

There may be a number of reasons why left has kept discussion of moral questions to a minimum. It rejects the moral hierarchy of the Church and doesn't seek to replace it. That through the emphasis on atheism and materialism it has bent its own arguments out of shape - for example I've heard leftists denying that morals exist, or that socialism has no ethical basis - which is palpably false. I also wonder whether the impact of the Leninist model with its hard nosed attitude towards ends and means may also be a factor - particularly with what I call "Stalinist creep" where good neighbourhood socialists defended the anti-working class policies of the so-called socialist regimes.

Whilst some may see wrangling over moral issues as unscientific weakness I think it's important to recognise that the left is on the left precisely because of a moral standpoint. When we see war, oppression, starvation and intolerance we rail against it rather than looking for ways to make money out of it. We are not coolly objective but scathing in our attacks on injustice. We think it's wrong.

When we hear John McCain describe his wife as a "cunt" it does not become a footnote in our latest thesis, we want to punch his lights out. And we certainly don't consider voting for him because Hillary didn't win the nomination, that'd be just plain weird.

As I argued a while back "becoming a green or a socialist or an anarchist is a value judgement. A subjective decision that, for example, to discriminate on the basis of skin colour, or religious denomination, does not just cause the victims hurt and has a knock on effect in our ability to unite together but is out and out wrong, and has to stop - it's a bad thing regardless of rationalisations."

That in fact, far from being irrelevant "morals can get you killed, make you famous, blow up bridges and enslave millions in dead end jobs of impoverishment and hurt. What could be more real than that?"

I'd say it's important that leftists of every stripe take seriously not just ethical issues, but ethical discussions even though those discussions can be difficult. That doesn't have to be on whether it's OK to harvest the organs of hospital porters although that would be a start.

I'm not saying that every lefty rejects the idea of an ethical framework for their politics - particularly when you take the proper, broader view of who the left are. However, I do think that collectively we have rather abandoned this field to those who claim to be in communication with a higher power. Sometimes those people can be quite leftwing themselves - but what I'm talking about is trying to develop and popularise a (not the) set of ethical and moral mores that are distinctly leftist, and informed by a secular form of politics.

For me that doesn't mean wasting time dissing the religiously inclined and creating entrenched debates with no purpose. It does mean a more self aware and deliberative set of politics. Whilst the ends may, or may not, justify the means, the means themselves determine where your political journey takes you, even if it's to a place you'd rather not go.