Download Lectures on Biostatistics (1971). Corrected and searchable version of Google books edition
Download review of Lectures on Biostatistics (THES, 1973).
The Nature title picture was ‘Taken from The Complete Guide to Homeopathy, © Dorling Kindersley Ltd’ (not a recommended text book at UCL)
Nature (March 22 2007) ran this commentary, alongside a News item by Jim Giles:
Download a reprint of the article here.
Download the while 2005 westminster University miasmatic exam paper here.
Degrees in homeopathy slated as unscientific
and a Nature podcast [listen to podcast].
Here is some of the coverage of this commentary (more soon, including some of the abuse). A transcript pf the podcast is here.
Interview on the BBC’s Today Programme, with Edward Stourton.
Listen to interview
Material World (BBC Radio 4). This excellent science programme, presented by Quentin Cooper, had a longer version of DC versus David Peters (Westminster University). There was helpful intervention from Michael Marmot who had talked, in the first half of the programme, about his longitudinal population studies. [listen to part 2].
Radio 5 Live interview.
BBC London News (BBC1 TV), An interview of DC and Peter Fisher
by the News Presenter, Riz Lateef. Dr Fisher, who is clinical director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, made a very interesting comment, at the end of a discussion about whether homeopathy was a suitable subject for a science degree.
| Riz Lateef (presenter): “Dr Fisher, could you ever see it [homeopathy] as a science degree in the future? Dr Peter Fisher: “I would hope so. I wouldn’t deny that a lot of scientific research needs to be done, and I would hope that in the future it would have a scientific basis. I have to say that at the moment that basis isn’t comprehensive. To that extent I would agree with Professor Colquhoun.” |
Download the movie (5.9 Mb .wmv file: (quotation is at the end)
]
A shorter version of the movie, showing only the quotation at the end has appeared on YouTube.
Evidence? During the interview, Peter Fisher said
“. . .if you look in the Cochrane library, . . . you will find that there are two treatments for flu that appear to be effective, and one of them is homeopathic”
I presume this refers to the Cochrane review “Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like yndromes”. What this actually says is
“Trials do not show that homoeopathic Oscillococcinum can prevent influenza. However, taking homoeopathic Oscillococcinum once you have influenza might shorten the illness, but more research is needed.”
Well, it might, but even if it did, the average length of the putative “shortening” of the illness was a mere 0.28 days, i.e. 6.7 hours. To call that “effective” seems to me to be just a tiny bit of an exaggeration.
The newspapers
“Faith-based degree ‘damages science’ ”
Mark Henderson, Science Editor, The Times. I love that title: it says it all.
Homeopathy science degrees ‘gobbledygook’
Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian.
Alternative medicine degrees ‘anti-scientific’
Roger Highfield, Science Editor, in the Daily Telegraph
Universities ‘are duping students with homeopathy science degrees’
Steve Connor, science correspondent The Independent
Less than complementary? James Morgan in the Glasgow Herald
Alternative therapy degree attack
UK universities are teaching “gobbledygook” following the explosion in science degrees in complementary medicine, a leading expert says. BBC News web site
University homoeopathy degrees ‘gobbledygook’, claims Professor
Fiona McRae in the Daily Mail.
and the story even got into the free London papers, Metro and The London
Paper
And some from abroad
British health expert brands homeopathy ‘gobbledygook’
From ‘our correspondent’ at DailyIndia.com.
Homeopathic Degree in Britain Puts Scientific Gloss on Nonscientific Dross, Critics Say
Susan Brown in The Chronicle of Higher Education (USA)
UK Fight Over Anti-Science in Medicine
Dr Steven Novella comments in the NeuroLogica Blog, part of the New England Skeptical Society site.
Some follow up
A matter of degree. Why the letters after a homoeopath’s name really do count
Mark Henderson, 24th March, in The Times (Body and Soul section)
Ann Robinson, in the Guardian’s Comment is Free (Sunday 25th March) gives me a bit of a slagging off. But her piece is followed by a flood of comments, almost all of them thoroughly sensible. One comment, from ‘Midas’ ends thus.
So why not homeopathy alongside medicine? Right. Why not Levitation alongside Aeronautical Engineering?
And the blogs: quite a lot of blogs picked up the story.
Thanks to everyone who sent letters of support, not least the regular scientists from Westminster, and University of Central Lancashire who are clearly rather embarrassed by their homeopathic colleagues.
Inevitably there were a few bits of hate mail too, each answered politely, and some even resulting in a degree of agreement. The only one worth quoting is a rather mild one from George Lewith (see below).
| “Do you realise that your own university (University College London) offers a BSc in architecture? I have yet to find that this particular course (from personal experience) involves a single piece of science. You might like to investigate at the Bartlett.” . . .”I suggest you make a formal complaint to your Provost, the Dean of the Medical School, and the committee of UK Vice-Chancellors of Medical Schools. You must know that you are completely out of sync but perhaps you don’t? Kind regards George |
I guess one of us is out of sync anyway. Unlike George (it appears), I know little about architecture, but the idea of design for a tower block based on homeopathic principles sounds a bit scary to me.
38 Responses to Degrees in anti-science
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My sister-in-law is doing a homeopathic degree thru Salford Uni. Recently my niece has had to endure stomach pains for a month as she was subjected to homeopathy, rather than medicine.
I’ve calculated that with the time she has spent so far, she could have watched all the episodes of Casualty, which would have been more enjoyable, and she would have learnt more real medicine than she has so far.
[…] January 2004 ← On sham consultations […]
[…] day after “Science degrees without the Science“ appeared in Nature, the University of Westminster issued a statement . In my view, their […]
[…] the kerfuffle caused by Nature, THES asked for 800 words on the same topic, Bachelor of Science degrees in subjects that are […]
[…] point of clarification, at least some sceptics are quite happy to engage with this evidence. (see here and here, for […]
[…] things that are untrue, and things that a merely not a great intellectual challenge. In “Science degrees in anti-science” I said “What matters here is that degrees in things such as golf-course management […]
[…] the Queen’s Homeopathic physician thinks it is unjustified to run BSc degrees in homeopathy (watch him say so). We’ve seen the malign influence of corporate money (most strikingly in the UK in the […]
[…] hard to know how you can fill up a three or four year course with anything but idle speculations. Universities should not being giving degrees in idle […]
[…] the academic betrayal that BSc. Degrees in homeopathy currently represent, this is a worrying opinion; one can only hope […]
I’m sure that you’ll be interested to learn that Dana Ullman appears to be citing these Nature articles in support of homoeopathy over on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Partyoffive
“As the trends in the UK, the data that I see are mixed. While there has been a decrease in funding from select PCTs, there has been an increase in university training programs. NATURE published an article about this, noting that there are now 45 (!) “BSc” honors degrees in CAM from 16 universities, and 6 “BSc” degree programs in homeopathy alone. As for referrals, doctors do not have to provide them, but they do and in notable numbers. DanaUllman”
Oh that is quite amusing Mojo. I notice that he doesn’t supply a link to the article. I guess he wouldn’t want anyone reading it. The pdf is at
Click to access colquhoun-nature-07.pdf
Does anyone know how to get that into the Wiki?
Did you want a direct link to the Nature PDF to be placed in the talk page that Mojo had linked to?
[…] the UK most good universities have stayed fairly free of quackery (the exceptions being the sixteen post-1992 universities that give BSc degrees in things like homeopathy). But now it is creeping in though the back door of […]
[…] year, Nature published a pretty forthright condemnation of the award of Bachelor of Science degrees in subjects that are […]
[…] are creating courses in anti-science like this is nothing short of a national scandal. As both Nature and the THES have noted, these degrees often claim to be critical study, when in fact the aim is to […]
[…] interests in spreading quackery. It shows an execrable ability to assess evidence, and it advocates degrees in antiscience It would fail any examination. Sorry, Prof Pittilo, but it’s gamma minus.[Download the […]
[…] is it too much to hope that the Vice Chancellors of those Universities offering “B.Sc. degrees” in Homeopathy and other belief-based nonsense might be reading […]
[…] 6. Colquhoun D. Science degrees without the Science, Nature 2007;446:373–4. See also here. […]
[…] meaning of the last sentence. It’s back now, with blame allocated unambiguously to the vice-chancellors of the 16 or so universities who run this sort of […]
[…] know all about the sixteen or so universities that run “BSc” degrees in hokum. They are all “post-1992″ universities, which used to be polytechnics. That is one […]
[…] opposer was my old friend Peter Fisher, homeopathic physician to the Queen. It was a pleasure to show the video of Fisher agreeing with me that there is not enough science in homeopathy to justify a BSc degree […]
[…] Universities such as Westminster, Central Lancashire and the rest, which promote the spreading of false health claims […]
[…] as saying that there is not enough science in homeopathy to justifiy offering a BSc degree in it (watch the movie). He is the Queen’s Homeopathic Physician, and Clinical Director of the Royal London […]
[…] medicine in UK Universities” is an extended version of what was published in Nature last year (I don’t use the term CAM because I don’t believe anything can be labelled […]
[…] to go in for degrees in mumbo jumbo, but at least 16 of the modern (post-1992) universities give bachelor of science degrees in anything from homeopathy to naturopathy, subjects that are not only not science, but which are […]
[…] March 2007 I wrote a piece in Nature on Science degrees without the science. At that time there were five “BSc” degrees in homeopathy. A couple of weeks ago […]
[…] 11.Degrees in anti-science UK universities are teaching “gobbledygook” following the explosion in science degrees in complementary medicine, a leading expert says. BBC News web site… […]
[…] by people who have never given a moment’s thought to what is taught. In 2007, after my Nature article on the topic, the Glasgow Herald […]
[…] a good job. But sometimes even he falls foul of the phony balance argument After my piece in Nature on the shameful degrees in pseudo-scientific medicine got discussed on Material World, (audio […]
[…] David Peters comes from the University of Westminster, which is famous for offering more degrees than any other in anti-scientific nonsense. […]
[…] In 2007, I wrote, in Nature (see also here), […]
[…] Fisher is, of course, the Queen’s homeopathic physician and clinical director at Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (revently renamed to remove the word homeopathy from its name). He may be a homeopath, but at moments like this he feels like an ally. After all it was Fisher who agreed with me that BSc degrees in homeopathy could not be justified. He may be a homeopath but that alone means his intellect is sharper (or perhaps his honesty greater) than that of several university vice-chancellors, the QAA and UUK. Watch him say so (more detail here). […]
[…] has been almost won. Now not a single Bachelors degree in homeopathy appears in UCAS, compared with at least five in 2007. But the battle is not quite won with the UK Government. This post is not so much about homeopathy […]
[…] have blogged about. For instance, my friend David Colquhoun, having written extensively about bogus B.Sc. degrees in Unreality, often gets plain-brown-envelope anonymous deliveries of material relating to such – usually, […]
[…] was reading about problems with universities endorsing science degrees in homeopathy and other complimentary medicine […]
[…] writing about anti-scientific degrees in Nature (March 2007), much has been revealed about the nonsense that is taught on these degrees. New Year’s day […]
[…] medicine in UK Universities” is an extended version of what was published in Nature last year (I don’t use the term CAM because I don’t believe anything can be labelled […]
[…] hard to know how you can fill up a three or four year course with anything but idle speculations. Universities should not being giving degrees in idle […]