Synogenes.com

Leaving the Land of Woo, by Bob Lloyd, is now in production and should be out by the middle of October.

Woo is that land where the constraints of the real world don't apply, where therapies and cures are effected through undetectable energies, where our biochemistry and physiology are irrelevant and are replaced by aligning chakras, and unblocking channels. It's the land where magnets and crystals can influence our bodies in ways unknown to modern science, defying all reason and rationality.

Leaving the Land of Woo looks at how we get our knowledge of the way the world works, how we test it, and how we can challenge theories to see if they are right. It looks at the varieties of Woo including theories about alternative medicine, food, religious beliefs, and claims about the paranormal. It takes a critical look at what these varieties of Woo have in common, and shows how the theories all rely on a believing viewpoint in which our rational faculties are suspended. Such a viewpoint would have catastrophic effects on our practical lives if allowed to extend into all areas, and yet we are led, credulously, to spend vast amounts of money on untested, baseless products.

Leaving the Land of Woo provides a checklist of useful questions to be asked of alternative medicine practitioners, and a guide to evaluating the claims made.

If you have ever even been tempted to spend real money on Woo products, whether alt-med, foody therapies, supplements, detox, or religion, you could save yourself money by buying this book. It would pay for itself just by avoiding one encounter with Woo.

Watch out for the release:
http://www.leavingthelandofwoo.com

The continuing saga of the misplaced libel suit against Simon Singh brought by the British Chiropractic Association grinds into its latest phase today, as Dr Singh applies again for permission to appeal. He's been denied twice, but once he has exhausted the UK courts, he can then take the case to the European Court. He's back in court today, but with little chance of success - judges very rarely challenge each other's judgements.

Already we have seen the British chiropractors reeling from the attention they have attracted to unfounded claims of what they can treat, including childhood colic and asthma. More than 500 of them have been reported to the regulatory authorities including the Advertising Standards Authority, the Trading Standards Authority, and even their own regulatory council, the General Chiropractic Council.

The McTimony Chiropractic Association issued a rather panicky letter to its members urging them to take down their websites and remove unevidenced claims, and whole business is feeling the effects of the Quacklash.

The evidence offered by the BCA to support the use of chiropractic in treating childhood colic and asthma was reviewed by the British Medical Journal who had an exceptionally low opinion of them. The BMJ editorial described the references as having been totally demolished. Which to any reasonable person indicates that there wasn't any evidence there.

We hope that Simon Singh is successful, not just for him personally, so he can get on with his excellent work unhindered by this ludicrous case, but because there are wider implications for the free criticism of medical therapies. If someone comes along with a preposterous theory and starts charging confused people for treatment that has no scientific basis, we'd all be justifiably talking about fraud, deception, dishonesty, unethical practice and so on. And the way to establish whether or not that really is the case, is to look at the evidence. That's all Dr Singh tried to do.

The reaction of the BCA in resorting to libel laws to try to shut him up, rather than offering high quality scientific and medical research speaks volumes about them, and their concern for commercial opportunity rather than scientific credibility. Let's hope the Quacklash they've unleashed on themselves spreads to all the other purveyors of Woo. At the very least, it might make them think twice before trying to stifle the voice of reason.

Latest news, just in...

Simon Singh has been granted leave to appeal, in a scathing judgement against Justice Eady.

Details here: Index on censorship.

Great news. Let's hope that the Quacklash continues and spreads against all those dodgy purveyors of Woo.

The business of Reiki is interesting because it is based on undetectable energy, so practitioners have to claim to have received it from a Reiki practitioner or trainer, or even Master. Based on their personal statement that it has happened, anyone assessing them can do nothing other than go along with it. If the paying customer says they've received energy (because that's what they just bought), the seller will obviously accept the money.

That form of self-assessment is the basis of Reiki qualifications. The way it works is this. There are three levels (which they disingenuously call degrees) of supposed Reiki training and the first is supposed to be about self-healing. You can get that by just attending a one-day session and paying a fee. You won't have to be assessed other than by being asked what you feel and as long as you give the expected answers, you're in. You're now qualified at the first level and that's a necessary precondition for getting to the second level, where you make money.

The second level is supposed to be about you being able to download energy so that you can then pass it on to someone else, friends, relatives, or customers, through a process called empowerment. Again, give the right words and pay the money, and you're in. That entitles you to set yourself up officially as a practitioner. In many places, to get business insurance you have to provide some kind of written certificate to show you've been trained and that arbitrarily means level two. Sometimes there are associations which sell the insurance, and you have to join them first.

So how does the Reiki pyramid selling business work? First you get yourself joined up which involves an outlay of around £740 - around £130 for the first level, £160 for the second level, and a massive £450 for the third level. The first two levels are normally each one-day courses, and the third one is generally a two-day event. All of the sessions typically involve self-treatment as well so there won't be any stressful learning involved.

Now you've paid your money and joined the pyramid, you can start transferring the financial risk to others by charging for treatment sessions. You can officially do that once you've done the second day session. Once you are up to level three, you can start charging people learning Reiki by running the courses yourself, pretending to be training others.

All you need to do to get your money back is to be able to maintain the delusional marketing activity, say the right things about downloading energy, and empowerments, ride on the wave of Woo publicity, and attract customers. Once you've recovered your outlay, you can begin to collect the profit, perhaps spending some of it on getting more non-qualifications which you can use to boost your marketing message. As long as you don't care about how things work in the real world, as long as you don't think about whether it is even credible that this energy exists, you can submerge yourself in Woo nonsense.

During the process you have to go along with the mumbo-jumbo but it's a small price to pay for inclusion in a very lucrative pyramid selling scheme.

The interesting question is how any Reiki trainer could ever tell whether the undetectable energy has been transferred anywhere, given that the customers could just be playing the game to get the piece of paper, to join the club. Someone claiming to receive the empowerment is just as untestable as someone claiming to provide it. Boths sides of a consensual fraud aim to gain by perpetuating the pyramid selling. If you try not to think about that, you might even delude yourself into thinking that it's not really fraud.

The real losers are those who pay for the treatment without joining the pyramid. The real con artists are those perpetuating the delusional business, by doing the courses and conning gullible customers into paying them.