Official Quackery

The Vitamin C and Iron Myth: Death by Quackery?

Research across the board shows that the evidence is at best inconclusive regarding whether or not vitamin C can help us to better absorb iron from non heme iron sources such as spinach and other plants (see Sutton 2011).

Official advice that vitamin C is known to enhance the iron absorption from plant and other non heme sources is wrong. This advice is wrong because the overall evidence, from the results of many properly conducted trials is that we have a mixed bag of disconfirming and confirming research findings. In sum, evidence of the iron absorbing benefits of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in our diet is at best inconclusive.

Unfortunately, the websites promoting vitamin c in this way ignore all the disconfirming evidence.

In light of the facts revealed in a paper published by Best Thinking (Sutton 2011), I am grateful to the USDA for deleting their misleading spreadsheet from the Internet, which claimed that drinking Florida grapefruit juice would help humans to absorb two to four times as much iron from spinach as would otherwise be possible.

Unfortunately the US Government Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) continues to claim that vitamin C will increase the iron absorption form non heme iron sources, such as spinach, as (ironically) does the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/iron.html. Unsurprisingly Wikipedia makes the same erroneous claims.

Many other websites - including one run by MIT (http://web.mit.edu/athletics/sportsmedicine/wcrminerals.html) also continue to boldly claim that vitamin C helps with iron absorption.

Since low iron levels - linked to poor diet - kill people in large numbers (see http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=9942,9942 ) there should be more care taken to get the facts right.
Here are just few of the very many web sites that still promote the fallacy (or at least to promote vitamin C in this role when the evidence is inconclusive) some are giving advice on cancer - other are for children's diets.. Just Google ‘iron vitamin c’ and the list seems endless:

• 
  http://www.parentingscience.com/iron-absorption.html
  http://www.ehow.com/list_7165582_foods-block-iron.html
  http://coloncancer.about.com/od/nutritionanddiet/a/irondefanemia.htm

If poor nutrition directly kills, and in other cases takes years from life spans, it seems reasonable to speculate that erroneous nutrition advice, if relied upon, might do likewise.

We can only hope that not a single one of the tens of millions of lost years of life globally - and the many hundreds sometimes thousands of deaths that happen as a direct result of iron deficiency each year in the USA - are due to that earlier bad science promoted by the USDA. And we can only hope that the hundreds of thousands of deaths occurring each year on Earth (Stoltzfus 2003) from iron deficiency are not due to current US Government and private sector bad science promotion of vitamin C as a miracle way for humans to better absorb iron non heme iron sources, such as spinach. Because,surely, that should be 'criminal' quackery.

References

Stoltzfus RJ . (2003) Iron deficiency: global prevalence and consequences. Food Nutr Bull. 2003 Dec;24(4 Suppl):S99-103

Sutton, M. (2011) SPIN@GE USA Beware of the Bull: The United States Department of Agriculture is Spreading Bull about Spinach, Iron and Vitamin C on the Internet: http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/chemistry/biochemistry/spin-ge-usa-beware-of-the-bull-the-united-states-department-of-agriculture-is-spreading-bull-about-spinach-iron-and-vitamin-c-on-the-internet

DOG IN THE MOON

Do wolves howl at it because there is a dog in full moon?

Check out bias and pattern recognition - over on Best Thinking it leads to all kinds of fallacies, myths, bad research, bad eyewitness testimony and money making on eBay.

Reference:

http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=16733

Criminological Myth

Read the latest mythbusting on Best Thinking: Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief

Crime as Opportunity Theory is Wrong

Spuriofact: Crime as Opportunity Theory is Wrong spuriofact.blogspot.com/2012/02/crime-…

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) February 28, 2012

How can something that has not yet happened make you do it? Obviously it can't. Someone should tell all those US and UK police forces and Government departments that believe in the Routine Activity Theory notion that every successfully completed crime is the cause of itself. Check out the debunked myth at the Dysology website:

Dysology Prize: would you wager your reputation on your claims?

Do we really all have psychic powers? If so then how come I never knew? And how come no one has won the Randi Prize?

In September 2011 The Dysology Challenge was first laid down on BestThinking.com to two professors of physics. The prize offer and conditions were and remain as follows:

The Dysology Challenge – For Cold Fusion Energy

“If cold fusion produces commercially viable free energy in 2 years time you win and get to present me (Mike Sutton) with a prize for Dysology (bad scholarship) that I'll fund at a cost of £1000 in the form of a bronze trophy depicting the theme of veracity versus claptrap – with my name engraved on it.

And if that happens I will thank you in public for proving me wrong.

If it does not produce such energy then I get to present you with the same trophy that I paid for. In this event you fail, but you still get to keep the prize even though it happens that you are wrong. Only now it is your name that will be engraved on it .”

On September 15^th 2011 the Nobel Laureate and Cambridge professor of physics Brian D. Josephson refused to put his reputation where his brain is by boldly declining to accept the Dysology Challenge regarding our difference of opinion regarding whether or not George Washington University Professor Simon Berkovich was right regarding his belief in mysterious free energy existing in the universe. Birkovich, similarly failed to take up the Dysology Challenge. (click here to read the comments section on this article to see how the challenge was made, refused by Josephson and weirdly ignored by Berkovich).

Today I am extending the Dysology Prize to include proof of genuine psychic powers existing beyond coincidence, fraud, methodological bias, or measurement error.

I am in good company. Because the Dysology Prize will be added to the current total of one million three hundred and 64 thousand pounds ($2,105,000 US) offered by a total of nine organisations and individuals, including the massive $1m Randi Prize for anyone who can prove that psychic powers exist. Despite being on offer for many years, and despite the extreme simplicity and fairness of the conditions required, no one has ever succeeded in winning any of these prizes.

Today (8th Jan. 2012) I hereby challenge University of Cambridge scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake to accept the Dysology challenge for psychic powers. I argue that there is no veracious scientific evidence that proves humans have psychic powers. I publicly challenge Dr Rupert Sheldrake here on the Best Thinking website:

The Dysology Challenge – For Proof of Psychic Powers

I hereby challenge University of Cambridge scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake to accept the Dysology challenge for psychic powers:

“If you can demonstrate in controlled conditions of the kind laid down by the James Randi Prize and can win the Randi Prize by proving that psychic powers exist then you get to present me (Mike Sutton) with the Veracity versus Claptrap trophy prize for Dysology (with my name engraved on it for bad scholarship) that I'll commission at a personal cost of over £1000. If the outcome is not obvious the British Royal Society will be invited to determine the winner.

And if you win then I will thank you in public for proving me wrong.

If, on the other hand, you fail, then I get to present you with the same prize that I paid for. Only you also get to keep the prize – with your name engraved on it - for your bad scholarship.”

I am prompted to publically challenge Dr Sheldrake following his article in the Daily Mail today (Sheldrake 2012) in which he claims that we all have psychic powers.

I strongly suspect that Dr Sheldrake wrote the article in order to sell his latest book: The Science of Delusion - which is released this week. If he is right then he will win the Dysology Challenge and there is no reason why he should not win a further whopping great pay out of £1,364,000 to add to whatever he makes flogging his book.

If Dr Sheldrake fails to apply for the Randi Prize, and all the other significant cash prizes and accept the Dysology Challenge then we must draw our own rational conclusions about his audacious claims. If he is right then surely winning the Randi prize would sell far more copies of his book than his article in the Daily Mail.

Finally, what kind of newspaper editor or journalist worth his or her salt would not ask Sheldrake why he has not applied for the Randi Prize?

Dr Mike Sutton (Dysology.org)

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Reference

Sheldrake, R. (2012) Why we ALL have psychic powers. Daily Mail. pp.56-57. Jan 7^th.

Note on Sheldrake

According to his page on Wikipedia today: “In September 2005 until 2010, Sheldrake received the Perrott-Warrick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology, which is administered by TrinityCollege, Cambridge.Sheldrake then took his current position as Academic Director for the Learning and Thinking Program at The Graduate Institute in Bethany, Connecticut^.”

Skeptical Dysology? Surely not.

What is the most effective way to challenge orthodoxy, knowledge consensus, pseudoscience, junk science and apparently simple claptrap?

Michael Shermer is the founder and Editor in Chief of the Skeptic magazine. Shermer’s position has long been that the most effective way to challenge fallacies and myths is to publish from a position of seeking to understand rather than ridicule (Shermer 1997). The same conclusions have been put forward by Hyman (2001) and Loxton (2011). But how do they know they are right? This is a strangely unexplored area and it is surely perverse that these leading and acknowledged healthy sceptics should accept their own intuitive and appealing beliefs in this area albeit supported in part by anecdotal evidence possibly gathered from an unintentional position of confirmation bias. For all we know, sceptics in their aim to be effective myth busters have created a braced myth. Because ridicule, done the right way, might possibly turn out to be the most effective way to spread the word that certain myths are busted and to stop others from publishing claptrap. More research is needed. And from that cause I have created Disology.com as a sibling site to Dysology.org.

Mike Sutton (2011)

References

Hyman, R. (2001) Proper Criticism. The Skeptical Inquirer. Volume 24. 4^th July. Available free online from The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/proper_criticism/

Loxton, D. (2011) What Is the Most Effective Way To Be A Skeptic: The Great Debate Between Confrontational Activism v. Educational Outreach. Skeptic. Vol 16. No. 4. pp. 13-17

Shermer, M. (1997) Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and other confusions of our time. London. Souvenir Press.

Implementer Versus Implementor Failure

Acknowledged and Ignored Interlocking Contingencies in Social Interventions

(Reprinted from my criminology blog).

In any field that tackles social issues with 'schemes' - such as crime reduction and policing Intervention schemes, strategic applications, templates, frameworks and approaches – success will be contingent upon the skills, motivation, intelligence, gravitas and all round mettle of the staff involved in implementing them. And yet due consideration of the importance of the personal abilities of implementors is weirdly absent on official government websites promoting ‘what works’, ‘promising’ and effective practice.

A well designed crime reduction scheme may be reflexive and adaptive so that it can be tailored to a specific crime problem in a particular place, and adaptive to unique variations in the social setting of the problem. But can any such scheme possibly be so powerful that it can adapt to the mediocrity, or worse, of those hired to manage its implementation?

David Kennedy (2010), the originator of the famously ‘successful’ Boston Gun Project (Operation Ceasefire) describes how his scheme was successfully re-applied in some places but failed in others. When it failed, Professor Kennedy explains that this happened because the scheme was not implemented properly. What Kennedy fails to address is why it was not implemented properly. Was it :

1. Implementer failure (component or rank and file staff inadequacy) because the scheme cannot be implemented properly in particular settings or time and/or with particular ranks?
or was it

2. due implementor failure (key managerial inadequacy)?

Failure to consider the importance of the individual abilities and the behaviour of implementors (managers) charged with making a success of any social intervention leaves us with a menu of ‘best’, ‘recommended’, ‘good’ or promising practice schemes that will simply fail to deliver in the wrong hands.

The fact that this issue is not addressed on those official websites that promote these menus of social interventions is a serious handicap to knowledge progression. By way of example, my own Market Reduction Approach to theft (MRA) is recommended as good, promising or effective ‘best practice’ by official government websites in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand (Sutton 2011) – and is praised in many academic texts . And yet the only time the MRA was ever evaluated the results were inconclusive - due to the reported failure of the two English police forces involved (Kent and Manchester ) to implement the scheme according to official guidance (Hale et al 2004) .

Can it be implemented properly? Perhaps the MRA is badly desinged and so will be forever doomed to implementer (component failure/inadequacy). Alternatively, it might be potentially good practice that has failed to date simply as a result of manager (implementor) inadequacy. We don't know. And that is all there is to it.

Until we begin to seriously address this question for schemes – such as Operation Ceasefire, the MRA and other templates for social action - they should not be promoted as ‘best’, ‘promising’ or ‘effective’ practice.

Today the British Government is seriously considering the option of funding the implementation of Operation Ceasefire's template to tackle gang crime (Travis 2011). If it does then the Prime Minister David Cameron would be wise to address in advance the issue of implementor inadequacy. Because all too often in life mediocre and inadequate individuals are recruited to perform functions that are beyond them – often for no other reason than that they look and sound like the general public thinks an ideal leader should (Gladwell 2005).

Conclusion and the way forward

Unless future research reveals that certain social intervention templates are so well designed that they are powerful enough to ameliorate the problem of mediocre and/or incompetent implementors then we need to know more so that we can seek to avoid the harmful effects of implementor failure on knowledge progression regarding what works to make the world a better place.

References

Gladwell, M. (2005) Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York. Little Brown and Co.

Hale, C. Harris, C. Uglow, S. Gilling. L and Netten, A. (2004). Targeting the markets for stolen goods: two targeted policing initiative projects. Home Office Development and Practice Report 17.

Kennedy, D. (2010) . David Kennedy . In Fox, A. and Gold, E. (2010) Daring to Fail: First-person Stories of Criminal Justice Reform. New York. Center for Court Innovation.

Sutton, M. (2011). Impact of my research is much greater than I thought: thanks to Google. Criminology: The Blog of Mike Sutton: http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=14781%2c1478

Travis, A. (2011) What policies lie behind Cameron's 'all-out war on gangs'? The Guardian. Monday 15 August. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/15/policies-cameron-all-out-war-gangs