Last Saturday, Dr Krissy Wilson joined me, to discuss Power Balance bracelets, UFO sightings over Sydney and fish raining from the sky in the isolated aboriginal community of Lajamanu, NT.

You can listen to the audio here.

On Wednesday March 3rd, 2010, the Shorty Awards were announced in New York City. I was unable to attend, even though I would have been delighted (I heart NYC) so instead I settled in front of my computer at work to watch the live stream from 11 am. The categories were announced in alphabetical order, so it wasn’t long before we reached the health category.

The Shortys are affectionately known as the ‘Twitter Oscars’ which is accurate in the sense that none of the nominees know if they have won before the ceremony. Further, The Shortys are not won purely on votes alone. A panel of judges makes the final decision following an initial round of nominations to select six finalists, then a secondary voting round.

As I watched the awards being handed down, it became apparent that those who had won the voting round were not automatically winning the final round. Some finalists had come from 3rd or 4th to take out the trophy. I was decidedly nervous. So it was with great relief that I heard my name announced as the winner of the health category.

Some very perceptive readers (I’m looking at you AndyD!) observed that I remained very quiet during the entire Shortys process. I did not blog it, I only occasionally asked for votes and I rarely tweeted about it except to say ‘thanks’ when I had won a round. There was a reason I made the decision to do this and some of you might have worked out why.

It was because specific alt. medders behaved so badly throughout this process that all I had to do was sit back and watch them self destruct. It was much better for me to say nothing, quietly screen capture their abuse and ad hominem attacks and wait for it all to crumble around them. Which it eventually did, not in the least on Wednesday, as you are about to see.

As Steve Novella advised me when the ’she’s a fatty post’ appeared on Mercola’s site (see below), it was apparent that they had forgotten their roots in unicorns, sunbeams and fairy dust and reverted to their apparent true colours of personal insults and crazy antics. And Mercola and Adams did it in spectacular style. All I had to do was sit back and wait whilst other people documented the carnage.

Let’s recap a little shall we?

It all started when Mike Adams from Natural News was coming first and Dr Mercola second. At this stage I was somewhere down near 16th place, when I alerted my twitter followers to the competition. My mate and all round awesome smart guy Jason Brown decided he would have none of that and instigated a campaign to get me to the top position. Amongst other things he alerted PZ Myers of the hugely successful Pharyngula blog, who is known for his ability “to Pharyngulate”. PZ kindly blogged about the competition and this was when things began to get interesting.

Firstly, my position was elevated to the top five and increasing when Mike Adams got wind that a big pharma drug pusher was threatening his top spot. In fact, at this time I wasn’t even winning, but this didn’t matter to Mike, so he wrote a long post on his website asking his followers to vote for him (which is completely within the guidelines for The Shortys BTW).

Well it seems they did, but we started to notice some abnormalities with their votes. Many people including Tim Farley, Jason Brown and @Weezmgk did a quick audit and found that many of the votes for Adams were coming from newly created accounts, which were clearly set up explicitly to vote for Mike in health (and also for me in quackery). Weezmgk also did an audit on 160 votes when Adams had a total of 530 and found 104 were invalid. That’s 65%. That’s a lot.

Tweeting votes from new accounts was explicitly against the rules, which stated that only twitter accounts which were established and active prior to the competition start date on January 1, 2010 were eligible to place votes.

Next thing we knew, Mike Adams was completely disqualified.

And this was when it started to get interesting. Mike threw an epic tantrum, he threw his toys out of the pram, he hand flapped, he foot stamped, he wrote a frothing rant about how the competition was rigged, he threatened to sue the judging panel, and he wrote to the organisers;

“If you allow this to continue, the integrity of the entire Shorty Awards will be destroyed. I had hoped this would be a fair, honest competition that highlights the usefulness of short-form content, but thanks to the rogue voters who are supporting Dr. Rachael Dunlop, the Shorty Awards are quickly becoming a platform for defamation and false accusations where those who can spread the most aggressive insults are allowed to win.”

He then wrote a a truly epic post entitled “What sceptics really believe”. I won’t post the original blog here because it’s much more fun to read the various take-downs. Orac over at “Respectful Insolence” described it as A pyromaniac in a field of straw man or black hole of burning stupid incinerating every straw man in the universe? Mike Adams attacks skeptics. Phil Plait described it as “Alt. Med. guy whacked with the Shorty end of the stick”. Steve Novella over at Neurologica also covered it.

The following day Adams wrote another post referring to “hate speech from jackals who attack natural medicine” (all up, he wrote about four ranting posts about skeptics, filled with conspiracy theories and references to Big Pharma). My personal favourite was the claim that skeptics believe that the water in your toilet is the same as water from a mineral spring.

Adams got so asinine on his Facebook page that some of his followers suggested that his computer had been hacked. Not so I’m afraid. He really is that nasty. Many people covered Adam’s public tantrums, but I especially enjoyed the analysis by the Merseyside skeptics on their Skeptics with a K podcast. I recommend you have a listen.

But now it was Mercola’s turn to throw his toys out of the pram. He posted an acerbic rant on his Facebook page, pleading with his followers to vote for him by insulting me;

The ad hominem attacks became decidedly more charming, until some of his followers began to question his motives and behaviour;

The ‘little known’ bit might have been accurate before the Streisand effect multiplied my Twitter followers by a huge amount and traffic to my website doubled overnight – all thanks to Mercola putting my url on his website with the comment;

‘If you want a real laugh to see how ridiculous some of her positions are you can go to her site’. www.skepticsbooks.com

Thank you Joe Mercola.

Someone might want to direct Mercola to the definition of The Streisand Effect.

Interestingly, all the while Mercola was ranting and railing about me and pleading with his fans to vote and ask three friends to vote, he was simultaneously dismissing the Shortys as ‘just a stupid popularity contest’. One he cares about deeply it seems. He also made remarks about how him winning would have implications for the credibility of alternative medicine and natural health providers everywhere. Well I guess that never happened.

As the voting round continued, things began to get difficult for us. Remember mercola.com is one of the largest natural health websites in the world, he had at the time 64,000 fans on Facebook, he even claimed to have emailed 2.5 million people pleading with them to vote for him. At one stage, his votes went from 600 less than me to overtake me by more than 2000. I thought we might have lost it then, but as soon as they appeared, the Shortys removed them.

It doesn’t matter how many fans you have if they can’t read the rules, their votes won’t count.

Of course as you can predict as his votes started to disappear his fans accused me of having some kind of influence over the Shortys and called me a cheat, a fraud and a liar, amongst other things. I began to get votes in such categories, meanwhile my fans were much more creative, nominating Mercola for ‘mythical half fish, half drink’ – a category which he took out comfortably I am happy to say!

As the deadline for the voting round drew closer, I asked Tim Minchin to ask his 50,000+ followers to vote for me, which he very kindly did. (Interestingly, in contrast to when PZ Myers tweeted it, this kind gesture did not translate into many more votes. Clearly, PZ has his fans much better trained).

So it all ended on Wednesday and so far there has not been a squeak from the Adam’s or Mercola camps. What began as a fight for our principles, science and evidence, ended as an incredibly interesting insight into the minds of believers who when challenged in lieu of any evidence to support their claims, simply run behind the shelter shed and call me fat.

To my surprise and delight, there has been a huge amount of mainstream media coverage of the awards, probably because news agregator AFP picked up the story. In Australia, my name even appeared in the headline of many articles, whilst others described “Aussie biologist honoured for ‘tweeting’.”

My sister learned of the award from Brisbane commercial radio who ran it as a news item. The free afternoon newspaper, MX which is distributed to over 700,000 commuters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane ran the story on page two in Sydney (see left) and page four in Melbourne.

A Big Pharma thank you to all my supporters and all who voted for me throughout the process. I guess this little known non-physician is not so ‘little known’ anymore.

To reiterate my acceptance speech;

This award recognises the value of sharing evidence based health information on twitter. For science, reason and critical thinking, thank you.

Good manners doesn’t hurt either.

—-

Media coverage I have collected so far.

Nine msn; Aussie Biologist Honoured for Tweeting

The Australian; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

Adelaide Now; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

Sydney Morning Herald; Aussie biologist honoured for tweeting

BigPond News; Aussie honoured at Twitter awards

PerthNow; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

The Mercury Tasmania; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award

News dot com dot au; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award

Audio Boo from Richard Saunders; Congratulations Dr Rachie (includes audio of announcement)

CNN dot com reports on the Shortys

A reader emailed me this site and asked me to take a look. It’s called BICOM Bioresonance Therapy and is described, “as a gentle computer modulated therapy which helps to identify and treat the underlying causes of the disease, not only the symptoms”.

In the BICOM device the disharmonious frequencies are filtered out and inverted. These inverted therapeutic oscillations are now given back to the patient. This makes no sense to me, and I am a scientist.

Has your quack alert been activated yet?

If not, it should have. Familiarise yourself with the seven signs of pseudoscience. This is a great way to learn to spot quack products and avoid yourself getting scammed (or worse, put your health at risk).

BICOM is just another one of those “zapping” devices, sometimes known as Bioresonance therapy or Vega testing, and is not a dissimiliar concept to the E-meter used  for personality profiling by the Church of Scientology.

These things claim they will treat or cure just about anything, from allergies and geopathic stress (?) to cancers, but there is scant evidenc that they do any of these things.  They all make similar claims, but for the sake of clarity, I will use Biocom as an example to analyse some of these claims.

Bicom fits the “junk science” label pretty well, and also has the dubious honor of hijacking scientific terminology and technology to lend legitimacy to it’s product. This has the effect of “blinding consumers with science” to make them think if it sounds sciencey, then it must work! See the diagram. Science!

This is a particular heinous modus operandi in my opinion, particularly because since these therapies are not based in evidence, they choose to
cherry pick science to suit their agenda.

So, whilst homeopaths will tell you that quantum physics explains that water has memory, on the other hand randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can’t be used on homeopathy – this is usually because the results do not turn out like they want.

*Sulk*.

Wow, looks sciencey, must be good!

Anti-vaxers on the other hand repeatedly demand RCTs for vaccine safety, but reject the mounting scientific evidence that mercury does not cause autism. Convenient hey?

But then I never claimed these people were rational or logical, did I?

But I digress, back to BICOM. I’ve picked some gems from their website as examples of junk science.

First thing you should always look for when determining if a product is a scam if it claims to treat or cure many unrelated diseases.

Bingo!

“The BICOM device detects and treats problems with Candida, parasites, bacteria, fungi, viruses, heavy metals, chemicals, miasms, allergies and food intolerances, immune system, treats geopathic stress, reduces scar interference, detoxifies, reduces pain and inflammation and regulates the hormonal system.

Programmes in the device are applied for a wide range of conditions such as smoking addiction, allergies, ankle problems, bedwetting, blood circulation, blood pressure, bowel and other digestive problems, catarrh, colitis, depression, dizziness, ear complaints, lack of energy, eye problems, fever, hay fever, hip/joint issues, impotence, liver, lymph, MS, pain, prostate, rheumatism, sinusitis, skin, spine, thyroid, warts, etc.”

I stopped counting at fifteen. Note the claims of “detects and treats”. Perhaps the Complaints Resolution Panel of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (Australia’s equivalent of the FDA in America) would be interested in hearing about this? Just a thought.

Also, unlike the conventional science based option, this one will be completely safe, has no side effects and be non invasive.

Oh wait, look what I found.

“It is a highly effective, painfree, and non-invasive therapy without harmful side effects”.

Tick.

Next, look for any connection to quantum mechanics or quantum physics.

“Findings from the area of biophysical and quantum mechanics and quantum physics have opened up amazing possibilities and have led to impressive developments in technology. Such findings are useful to explain the basis of bioresonance therapy.”

Tick.

In the category of “pardon?”
“…it been proven that cells communicate with each other by means of “flashes of light”

No, it hasn’t. You just made this up. Cells communicate by sending messages via chemicals. Not baby fireworks.

“Every substance and therefore every cell of every part of the body (but also viruses, bacteria, pollen, etc..) emit their energy. They have a highly specific, typical wavelength or frequency with entirely individual characteristics. This is termed the ‘frequency pattern’.”

Wha? This is an example of making stuff up and chucking in “energy” to make it sound kinda sciencey. Funny, whenever you ask these people exactly what they mean by “energy” they fail to answer the question. That’s because they have no idea themselves.

This is what I like to call the “put science words in a hat and draw them out at random” fallacy.

But what about the Treatment of Pathological Oscillations? Well Bioresonance therapy can do that too.

“Many diseases start with pathological oscillations or vibrations from toxins, moulds, parasites and chemicals.”

Again nonsense. Why is the alternative medicine crowd are so taken with energy and “vibrations”?

If a therapy present testimonials in the place of evidence you should also be suspicious. Does Bioresonance therapy do this? Yes they do.

If you’re still unsure then always check for the obligatory disclaimer. Here they will tell you themselves (to cover their ass from lawyers) that their product does nothing, their website may be wrong, and don’t take advice from them.

DISCLAIMER:

This website is not designed to be used to make any diagnoses, prescribe any form of treatment or medication or order tests. The information contained is provided as an educational service. The website contains articles on many health and wellness topics; however, no warranty is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained or cited in an article touching on medical matters is true, correct, precise or up to date.

Quack alert.

The BICOM Bioresonance is another “zapper*” that does nothing except empty your wallet.

*Hulda Clark sells zappers that she claims can treat cancer. She wrote the book “The cure for all cancers”. She died of cancer.

The Iraqi government has spent 85 million dollars, at a cost of 40 thousand dollars each, on the dowsing-like ADE-651 devices, but there are now fears that they failed to prevent bomb attacks which killed hundreds of military personal and civilians. Sidney Alford a leading explosives expert, said the sale of the devices was “absolutely immoral”.

He told Newsnight; “It could result in people being killed in the dozens, if not hundreds.”

This comes after three recent suicide car bomb attacks in Baghdad, with one attack in December killing over 120 Iraqis.

But the ADE-651 devices had never been shown to work scientifically. The device consists of a rotating rod inside a plastic case and a “programmed substance detection card” which is “tuned into the frequency of a particular explosive”. However, when Newsnight had the cards tested by Cambridge University’s Computer Lab, they were found to be nothing more than store security tags.

Dr Markus Kuhn who tested the cards said; “There is nothing to program in these cards. There is no memory. There is no microcontroller. There is no way any form of information can be stored,” he added. Furthermore, the tags which are supposed to be the heart of such an expensive system cost around two to three pence.

“These are the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card,” Dr Kuhn told NewsNight.

Even the Iraqis themselves are sceptical about the device. “They don’t work properly,” Umm Muhammad, a retired schoolteacher said. “Sometimes when I drive through checkpoints, the device moves simply because I have medications in my handbag. Sometimes it doesn’t – even when I have the same handbag.”

Concerns about the legitimacy of a virtually identical device were first raised by sceptic and magician, James Randi back in the late 1990s (see below). When the devices were investigated by the FBI and others agencies in laboratory tests, they found that “there were no functioning parts and the device failed very definitive tests.”

The dowsing technique used by the ADE-651 devices, is not new and is well known to be bunk. Australian Skeptics have produced a video testing the effectiveness of dowsing to find water, and after numerous tests, found its success rate was no better than chance.

Watch the full story from the BBC. It’s chilling.

As a sceptic, I have been accused of being closed minded, arrogant and rude. Yet, it seems a healthy dose of scepticism with respect to these crank devices quite possibly would have saved lives in this case.