Caption Contest

As always, place your entries in the comment thread below. (As always, the only prizes around here are fleeting fame and the admiration of regular readers.) 

Background: This week’s contest is in honour of David Bullard, who took to Twitter in early February to accuse Michelle Solomon of fabricating the account of her rape. It’s hard to believe that anybody would sink so low. But if you missed the ruckus and don't believe me, here’s the Tweet:

(Bullard starts, as you can see, with a call to “face facts”. When challenged later -- also on Twitter -- about how he could possibly know what he implied, he said that he didn’t “claim to know any facts”. We leave the task of working out whether or not Harry Frankfurt's analysis of bullshit applies in this case, or whether this falls into some other category, to the reader.)

Some related links:

No thanks, rape NGO tells Bullard.
Bullard slammed over rape talk tweet.
Bullard criticised for tweets over rape.
David Bullard provokes outrage over offensive rape tweets.

More Mad Ads - Prof Bumba and Nangi Herbals

Here are a few more pamphlets making crazy magical claims, as handed out on streets in South Africa. I'm not going to describe these mad ads in much detail - these things get kind of repetitive at some point. Thanks to readers who sent in contributions and links, whicih will all be added eventually.

First up, we have Prof Bumba, based in Johannesburg. The Professor seems to have the power to be in four places at once, given the list of premises. Helpfully, you can use sms to make appointments.

Then we have Nangi Herbals, including the thoughtfully bundled package of schlong related services, the '3 in 1 Penis Combo':

Someone should be printing these things on T-Shirts.

Professor Madu. I kid you not

I've been collecting more mad ads for the current series, including a few print ads, which I'll scan and comment on soon. A big thank you to those who've sent me links and scans of additional examples. This one really is a cracker - spotted by a reader in Gauteng. It's also unusual in being a web-site. Yup, you can email this guy, and specify what spell you want casting.

And there's a pretty cool menu of spells. You can apparently make people marry you, or just be your Valentine. You can get luck, or be a 'Warlock Lover'. The 'Krakow Spell' will help you 'Become the master of your life and determine the course of your destiny!' which seems pretty cool. Obviously there's much more than this, including 'Aura cleansing', some 'Authentic Voodoo Spells' (clearly there's a worry about the efficacy of fake voodoo...), and the 'Black Curse Spell' that, because 'it can bring about horrendous times for the person to whom' it is directed, you are thoughtfully asked not to request 'unless it is absolutely necessary'. Not only can you, as always, get an enlarged schlong, the Professor will also help you get a 'more vascular look' for your member. If your intended is into veins or something. (Sings: "You're so vein...".)

There's loads more, including a startling biography of the good Professor, who, among other things, was 'anointed' by the 'gods of his fore father's ancestral powers' to 'heal and solve most of the problems and ailments that are failed to be healed by others doctors'. It's awesome, and it's all in delightful clunky web 0.6 style, with flashing stuff and lurid backgrounds, and bizarrely selected images.

You can check out the site here: http://www.profmadunativehealer.co.za/index.htm

My favourite odd image on the site is the one at the top of this posting. Except it flashes

Friend Magnets

Quite some time ago I had a few postings about Roger Coghill, who sells magnets that are supposed to have various medicinal powers, spreads alarm about power lines, and offers a large prize for an experiment on a human infant, in his ethically alarming eponymous 'Challenge', a caper with no scientific merit. My mate Dave had one of those generically pointless correspondences with him, which are covered in the earlier postings. (And here.)

Dave now tells me that he's received a friend request, via Facebook, from one Roger Coghill. Torn between curiosity about what jollies might be found in the Dodger's status updates and posted items on the one hand, and lively aversion on the other, Dave asked Roger to 'jog his memory' since he couldn't seem to place him. I wonder what if anything will come in reply?

Anyway, here's the request:

Dr Jose Buba - all the way from Mauritius

Here's one more mad ad before the week is done. I hope to set the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (see earlier post) on a few of these next week if I can find the time to prepare complaints.

This time we've got Dr. Jose Buba. Here's another guy who can apparently do divination with a 'mirror and water' (although unlike the good Dr. Raju he does not claim he can 'sit on a crocodile and lion skin while floating on water and communicating with the dead'). And he can supposely organise you the usual things like a large penis, a job, winning the lottery, not to mention less common services like treating epilepsy and sorting out any hassles you might have with "bewitched people".

Note, if you can be bothered to check out the small print, that this guy gets his leaflets printed by the same establishment as Dr Raju, and Dr Mama Simba, not to mention Dr Mama Hafisa & Dr Hashiraf and Dr Jadhu (and associates). This print shop is getting the lions share of the trade in quack flyers, at least the ones that have come to my attention. The phone numbers for the quacks are all different, though. And the indicated places of business differ too. So it seems as though the number of quacks is large, but for some reason they're using one print shop to do most of their work. I'd be interested to know more about what that is about...

Here are the two sides of the flyer - one in isiZulu, the other in English. Notice the AIDS ribbon in the top left corner of each version. (Larger versions display when you click on these ones.)

Brown-nosing

Not long ago I posted Study in Brown, noting some of the bold claims made about the services of one KS Brown, one of Durban's merry band of peddlers of services including supposed penis-enlarging personal problem solving. Those services were, like most of the competitors who I'm documenting in this series on mad ads, promoted by means of a fairly crudely designed pamphlet. (Many of the pamphlets are strikingly similar, a matter that deserves further investigation.) But KS Brown seems also to have an eye on a somewhat more upmarket crowd of gullible and supersititious types, as the bit of advertising below suggests. I also had it handed to me at a traffic intersection, but the original has the dimensions of a business card, it's printed on card (not low grade paper) and in full colour. Wow.

Otherwise it's pretty much the usual stuff - larger penises, treatment for chronic conditions, fixing relationships. All, of course, 'guaranteed'. And she or he will do 'ancestral problems'. Also, this one has a proper address. Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa here we come!

The less awesome Dr Jadhu

After some of the recent mad ads in my series, I have to say Dr Jadhu is initially something of a disappointment. OK, he uses the title 'Dr', and claims guaranteed results, using 'spiritual powers and astrological charts'. But the list of promised therapies is rather short. No direct reference to enlarged penises, no specific mention of diabetes, AIDS, etc.

Then again, some of the more general claims are still rather impressive. For me "achieve and do whatever you want with the one you love" stands out. This compares rather favourably with the claim by Dr Mama Hafisa & Dr Hashiraf that they'll organise you a penis of "any size you want". And is actually very creepy indeed, given a moment's thought. (What about whatever the one you love might want?) I suppose if you get your monstrous member from the first lot, and your intended doesn't respond as you'd hoped, you head on down to Dr Jadhu's place to deprive them of any say in the matter. How very romantic. And 'Kings of Tokoloshe' would be a pretty good name for a band.

Study in Brown

So, maybe your penis is still too small. Maybe you have financial problems. You want a job, or to pass and exam. You might have AIDS complications. You need to win a court case, ovecome an enemy. Perhaps you want to go 'more rounds' during sex, or have more sexual power (hardness, and strength). You might be married, unmarried, or divorced, or getting divorced and want to switch to one of the others. You could be paralysed from a stroke. Or maybe you just have a cough, or swollen feet. (Or other things I can't be bothered to list.)

But don't worry. K S Brown, who interestingly does not use the title 'doctor' can help. With a belt, braces and who knows what combination of 'God, herbs and ancestors' offerring a range of 'guaranteed' services, including the '4 in 1 sexual gear', and they'll work within 3 to 7 days.

This pamphlet (handed to me at two different traffic intersections last week alone) arrives folded, so the first image below is the front and back cover, the second the inside. Click on images for larger versions.

































This is the most recent in my mad ads series. If you see ones I haven't covered, as long as they're recent and from South Africa, please email me scans. Once the pile has grown enough I may stop this lazy blogging and write something considered about them.

But still, they come: Dr Mama Hafisa & Dr Hashiraf...

I'm continuing with my series on mad ads for this or that spooky, pseudo-scientific or otherwise problematic adverts for services relating to health. Since I started I've run into the pamphlets of several practitioners who are new to me. A trip down town got me two new exhibits, handed out by people on the pavements. I don't know if I'm just noticing it more because I'm paying attention, but it still seems to me as though there's a bit of an upsurge in this kind of advertising.

I mean to make enquiries into what laws cover advertising, and if there are public bodies that it is possible to make complaints to. But I'm kinda busy, and only get to blagging late at night. So for now I'll just carry on scanning and posting the things for your delectation and amazement. The latest one is for the combined services of Dr Mama Hafisa & Dr Hashiraf. In many ways it's similar to the others, including the prominent focus on penis size, and sexual endurance, along with claims to assist with infidelity, court cases, and so forth. And of course the scandalous claim to help 'people with HIV'. The scans are below, and you can check the advert out and form your own opinion. I found a few features of this one especially striking:

First, the appearance of the crescent moon and star symbol of Islam. It seems as though there could be a niche market here, or subtle differences of style and emphasis in the quackery. It would take more than looking at the adverts to figure this out.

Second, the penis related claims are most impressive. Apparently these two can organise 'any size you want'. The typo infested sentence reading "Bring your Penis your Penis to us you will not regreat" inspires a strong version of the fear occasioned by a tattooist who can't spell, as well as raising the question of how you might visit without bringing your penis.

Third, the interventions that can supposedly help win court cases, etc., are herbal, and "100% natural". Boggle.

The incredible 'Dr Maama Mzei Ndimungoma'

Here's another in my 'mad ads' series. This follows earlier postings about The amazing 'Dr Raju', and the (also) amazing 'Dr Mama Simba'. Again, there are some interesting similarities in the services offered, including penis enlargement, crime prevention, court cases and treatment for diabetes and HIV/AIDS, although this one is a little more modest, insofar as there's no talk of a 'guarantee'. You'd think that if she could use super-powers to attract customers, there would be no need for advertising.

Here's the pamphlet, front and back. Enjoy.

The amazing 'Dr Mama Simba'

Not long ago I posted details of the pamphlets of a certain 'Dr Raju' and the remarkable claims made in them. There's more - in fact there are a few regular sources of these amazing adverts. Another that I receive junk from at least as often as from Dr Raju is 'Dr Mama Simba'. Here's the pamphlet (front and back) and then some sardonic comments.

































So there's quite a bit of overlap here. Enlarging penises and shrinking vaginas for example. Not to mention assisting with career advancement and winning court cases, and managing the Tokoloshe. But there's some more conventional medical stuff here too, such as claims to help with diabetes, blood pressure, and (especially alarmingly) AIDS.

There's also the 100% guarantee. This is dreadful exploitative nonsense that in most cases is contingently very false: nothing has 100% effectiveness with any medical condition. And in some cases it's necessarily false, unless Dr Simba would honourably refuse to take the money of one side in a court case, having already rendered a service to the first. Perhaps we could do an experiment on this some time...

If you're in Durban, or elsewhere in SA, and have similar adverts please either email me, or if you've blogged them send me links - I'd like to keep on tracking this stuff.

The amazing 'Dr Raju'

It could be difficult for people outside South Africa to appreciate the level of popular superstition, and the brazenness of those who exploit it. So I'm starting a little series, showcasing some of the advertising. First up one of the pamphlets promoting 'Dr Raju', who offers an impressive array of services including some top of the line divination, and medical interventions that will change physical proportions (making penises larger, and vaginas smaller, 'like a virgin'). Readers should note that the service comes with a 'guarantee' and includes offers to help at the 'Gambling Cassino' (sic). My favourite, though, is the assertion that the good doctor is able to 'sit on a crocodile and lion skin while floating on water and communicating with the dead'. I would totally pay ZAR200 (about USD 26) to see that.

Here's the front and back of the pamphet. I get these dropped into the mailbox where I live regularly (around once a month) and also get handed them at traffic lights, and find them generally lying about the place. Dr Raju is not the only such service provider - I'll follow up with other examples in the future.

































Oh, and ... uh ... I seem to have recovered the will to blog. For a bit. Maybe.

Praying for lower gas prices

As this piece on BBC News reports, some members of the God Squad who have been praying at gas stations in the US are claiming that their petitioning is responsible for the recent fall in gas prices. Besides being all at once a fine example of the 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' (after this therefore because of this) fallacy, and a redundant 'explanation' (since there's the old supply, demand, action of speculators, etc., story as always) this really suggests a dreadful failure of imagination when it comes to what these folks like to ask their imaginary friend for.

How about they prayed for fuel that didn't help cook the planet when it was used? Coal that burned cleaner? A distribution of fossil fuels that didn't give so much power to misogynistic creeps?

Doctor Who? Deception by chiropractors

David Colquhoun's always splendid DC Science blog has a terrific piece on Chiropractic, and the mis-use of the title 'doctor' by pseudo-science whackos. I'm linking it here mostly as an opportunity to tip my hat at a fine blog, one of the ones that helped get me into the blogging enterprise.

So PZ Myers stuck a nail through a cracker…

Following a series of hotly debated posts on Pharyngula (including this and this and this), and a campaign by hysterical cranks to have him fired for suggesting such a thing, PZ Myers has stuck a rusty nail through a communion wafer, and a few pages from the Qur’an and (for good measure) The God Delusion. There’s further yelling going on as we speak, all over the place. I’m not even going to try to give a roundup, but I will tip a nod to Michael over at Ionian Enchantment.

Is there anything wrong with what he did? Was anyone harmed in any sense of ‘harm’ that we should respect? No. No.

It is simply intolerable to allow it to count as harmful for one person to do something that another person doesn’t think should be done.

Some things definitely are harmful. Killing someone is, for example. So is physically hurting them. More generally, in any way obstructing their free pursuit of their own desires and interests, as long as that pursuit doesn’t harm anyone else, is harmful. What PZ did falls on the other side of the lines, and so there’s nothing wrong with it.

I regularly run into people who seem genuinely furious that gay people they don’t know, and will never know, are getting married in some distant country. I’m no longer surprised when I run into another dose of that kind of bigotry, but I still find the state of mind baffling. What the fuck do they think it has to do with them?

There’s an important point here that complicates matters a little, but doesn’t change the main conclusion. You can harm some people by harming others. That’s because how (at least some) others feel is actually worth something to us. Most of us, to say the same thing another way, would make an effort to prevent harm to people we care about, and voluntarily suffer outcomes that we’d seek to avoid if all that was at issue was how we felt. So we step in to break up fights where our friends might get hurt, and we give to charities that benefit people we don’t know at all, but whose well being concerns us.

The crusading bigot types like to think that their apoplectic hostility to the happiness of, for example, gay people they’ll never meet is somehow like this -- that they’re protecting someone or other, maybe even the poor deluded gay folks themselves.

But there’s a key test that has to be applied here: do those we want to help accept having us take an interest in them? If some person on the other side of the world refuses to use a mosquito net, for example, then the charity I give to doesn’t get to force her to do so. And if it is my considered conviction in the light of biology, human history, and everything we know about the properties of matter that the idea that wafers turn into flesh is outrageous bollocks, I don’t get to demand that people who participate in (what I take to be) this idiocy get to be fired or otherwise harassed.

If there is a God, and s/he/it’s annoyed about maltreatment of (a little piece of) the kid some people supposedly had to torture to death because of something to do with a very weird kind of love and forgiveness, then s/he/it can take the matter up with PZ. Worrying that somebody might have insulted one of your imaginary friends isn't a good enough reason to interfere with a real person.

(PS I’m leaving out direct consideration of children, and others where there's a serious presumption of rights to be protected, but that really isn’t relevant to whether PZ has annoyed God, or whether any crazed kooks have a legitimate grievance with him.)

(PPS The image at the top was stolen from cynical-c.com.)

Support for PZ Myers

So, as any fule in the blagosphere kno', crazy catholic fanatics have declared war on PZ Myers. You can read his original posting, the one that annoyed them this time here. You can read their noxious little attempt to attack him here, and his response here. It's also covered (among many, many places) at Richard Dawkins' place here.

All PZ offered to do, is visit some good atheist disrespect on a communion wafer, and blag the process. You know, do some stuff with his free speech, act in ways that made clear that he held beliefs incompatible with those of the loons and freaks who call the act of some poor kid who smuggled a wafer out of church to show a friend a "hate crime" and a "hostake taking".

My mate Dave wrote a letter to the President of PZ's university. It's copied below. Also, if anyone can get me a wafer, then by golly I'll give it a going over myself.

President Robert H. Bruininks,

The public campaign against Professor P.Z. Myers by one Bill Donohue has recently come to my attention. I understand that he is exhorting people to write directly to your office calling for action against Professor Myers. While I object to their methods, under the circumstances -- including my rejection of their intentions -- I feel that it is my responsibility to add to the flood of messages.

Myers is not only a fine scholar, but an important and energetic public intellectual defending science and learning against some of its most committed and often unprincipled enemies. He is famous and widely admired for this among scientists, just as he is disliked by many opponents of science. His proposal to publicly express his lack of belief in the supernatural status of a communion wafer was, I think, an entirely legitimate exercise of free speech. It strikes me, furthermore, as an important intervention in the ridiculous reaction to the action of Webster Cook, including suggestions that Cook was guilty of a hate crime, and that taking the wafer amounted to holding a hostage.

With respect to the specific suggestion that Myers' remarks violate a university requirement to be 'respectful, fair and civil', it seems to me that the following points are worth making:

(1) Myers' proposal was calibrated to respond to the outrageous response to the actions of Webster Cook, which have included death threats to Cook. (And now, I gather, to Myers himself.)

(2) Myers' proposal is in an important sense brave - he's offering to put himself on the line, in defence of the rights of those who do not hold the communion sacred.

(3) While admittedly expressed with a certain fire, I do not believe that his post is in fact disrespectful, or unfair. That is, unless asserting that one emphatically holds a belief incompatible with that held by another is disrespectful or unfair. If it is, and fairness holds trumps, it's hard to see the point of universities, or a future for science.

(4) Finally, I do not think Myers' public utterances are truly examples of a failure of civility. They are a vigorous assertion of the right of some to do things that others find objectionable falling short of infringing those of their freedoms that do deserve protecting. They are no different in principle from the act of any individual who allows it to be known that she or he eats pork, shaves, thinks women have a right to education, has a same-sex partner, etc. If universities do not hold the line against conflating disagreement with lapses of civility, I wonder who will.

Regards,

And apologies again for feeling duty bound to add to the deluge,

David Spurrett

Professor of Philosophy

Head of School of Philosophy and Ethics

University of KwaZulu-Natal,

Howard College Campus

Durban

South Africa

The Coghill Challenge - Part 2

So I mentioned "The Cohgill Challege" a little while ago. It's hardly news - the challenge has been out there for years (since at least 1993 I hear) and attracted comment from various places. (Among them see a letter in the BMJ, some remarks in the Randi forums.)

Roger Coghill thinks exposure to ELF electric fields is dangerous at thresholds lower than many others claim. He thinks there's a big cover up, hence the challenge:

Place any human infant of less than three months age to sleep each night for at least eight hours in an ELF electric field of 100 Volts per metre for thirty days. My studies predict that child will die, or become so seriously ill that the test will have to be called off
. The NRPB and the power utilities' investigation levels by contrast predict there will be no adverse effect.

So this strikes many as very, very unethical. My mate Dave wrote to Coghill to ask him about it. He said (I've cut some sentences for brevity in some emails, but only ever quoted whole sentences verbatim):

It appears that you are encouraging people (by tempting them with a significant amount of money) to engage in behavior that you are very confident would harm a human infant. I have to say that this seems to me ethically dubious. Perhaps you could explain why it is morally defensible to challenge people to engage in behaviour while at the same time being confident that this behaviour would harm an innocent?

Coghill replied:

I disagree. The ICNIRP Guidelines argue that human exposure to ELF electric fields is safe below 5000 volts per metre. Actually this is a curious figure, being only half the occupational exposure guideline, when all their other EMF guidelines impose a fivefold safety factor. If the same fivefold safety factor had been exposed with the ELF electric field too – i.e. 2000V/m – then it would be exceeded under many UK powerlines, - very inconvenient for the power utilities.

He went on to say something about why he thought this, and concluded saying "If you have better ideas of how to bring about this change, please let me know."

This doesn't really address the ethical question at all, which Dave tried to point out. He said in a follow up email:

It appears to me that your challenge calls on others to do something that, given your reasons, you believe would harm another person, in particular a preverbal human infant who is unable to consent to the procedure.
I asked whether in your view it was ethical for you to challenge people to do something you believed would harm an innocent. This calls for something other than an indication of the fact that you believe that their doing the thing in question would harm the infant, or an indication of your reasons for having the belief in the first place.

Coghill's reply again didn't answer the question at all:

So what is your opinion of those who very well know there are hazards from exposure to weak electric fields and deliberately cover this up by misdirecting research, procrastinating the research process and obfuscating and suppressing the results of research already carried out? For that is exactly what the power utilities have done over the last two decades. I do not dare to count how many people have suffered serious ill health or died as a result, whereas my Challenge has never hurt anyone.

So Davie boy tried again:

Suppose for the purposes of argument that I concede that those you refer to do indeed know that there are hazards and cover this up.
That doesn't seem to give an answer to the question whether it is right for you to challenge people to do what you seriously believe would harm a non-consenting person.

Coghill yet again didn't answer the question, pointedly banging on about what had been conceded for the purposes of argument:

Sorry David, but if you keep avoiding my points I see no point in continuing the dialogue. I suggest we just agree to differ in our opinions of who is the villain in this issue.

Ever patient if by now somewhat irked, Dave pressed on:

I don't believe I was avoiding your points, nor did I suggest that anyone was a villain. I was prepared to concede for the purposes of argument that your convictions regarding human exposure to ELF electric fields were correct, and asked a specific question about the ethics of offering an inducement to harm, and possibly kill, a non-consenting human infant for the purposes of proving a point. Since I was prepared to concede that point, I don't see that I was avoiding anything. As far as I can tell you have no interest in responding to the ethical question.

Given your lack of interest, you are probably also not concerned that the parameters of your challenge violate every code of ethics I know of for research involving human subjects that has been recognised in any democracy for nearly 60 years, starting with the Nuremberg Code.

Coghill was irked by this point too:

Rubbish! No one is going to be taken in by your false pretensions to propriety: it is transparent that neither you nor the power utilities are interested in the actual issue, namely that ICNIRP guidelines do not protect the public from ill health, so instead you try to attack the messenger using false moral values. Take a deeper look at yourself and examine your real motives.

Except it's not rubbish at all. Here's the "Directives for Human Experimentation" or Nuremberg Code, with the bits that the Coghill Challenge fails marked (Reprinted from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, pp. 181-182.. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.):

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.

FAIL! The challenge requires a preverbal infant. Hell, it doesn't even bother to ask for parental consent - any power worker who can get hold of a baby somehow is eligible for The Coghill Challenge.

2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

FAIL! A trial with a single subject (and no control group) proves nothing, so giving no results fruitful or otherwise.

3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

FAIL! The most obvious thing to do here is a rigorous animal trial (there are ethical considerations there too), but Coghill shows no evidence of being bothered, preferring to hype his silly challenge instead.

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

FAIL! Obviously.

5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

FAIL! Coghill has just such a reason, even if his reasons are garbage.

6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

FAIL! (Given fails on 1 through 5, this is practically guaranteed.)

7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

FAIL! There are no preparations, no requirements for facilities, no oversight. As far as I can tell, you show up on Coghill's doorstep with a dead baby and get your cash.

8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

FAIL! Any bozo is eligible, as long as she or he works for a power utility.

9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

FAIL! (Guaranteed by the reasons for failing 1.)

10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

FAIL! There is no scientist in charge at all.

It's also pretty trivial to see that the Challenge fails current guidelines, for example those of the NIH pertaining to use of human subjects (especially here), or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now it's possible that Roger the Dodger could try to argue that this isn't relevant because The Coghill Challenge isn't an experiment at all. That would be a lame defence, since he clearly thinks it would prove a point (which it wouldn't) and that it's an effective way of proving the point (which it isn't, given that only an ethically conducted animal trial would have a chance of making an impact on the research literature). But saying it's not an experiment won't help in another way. Even though it is clearly no more than a shameful PR stunt, it's still not OK to offer an incentive to kill babies as a PR stunt.

There's a lesson here. This quack isn't just bad at epistemology. He's resolutely unconcerned with the most basic ethical guidelines for the epistemic enterprise as well. Do you really reckon he'd reach for the cheque book if you showed up with a dead baby?

The Coghill Challenge

Since a piece by Ben Goldacre (also picked up by PZ Myers) got me onto Roger Coghill, I've been sniffing around a bit. I found his web store, and fired off a query about the 'research' they refer to in the case of the impressively named 'Coghill Supermagnet'.

Then I figured to see what else there was on the tubes about the Supermagnet, and soon found the website of The Medcross Group. On that site you can find the "Coghill Challenge". More on this anon.

For readers who're unfamiliar with Coghill, he's big on magnets, and electromagnetic radiation. According to him they're very bad (which is how he got to be called on by the UK Daily Mail when they wanted someone to say that cell phone towers made people suicidal) and also very good (at least when he's selling them for therapy).

So what's the challenge? You can read the official description with all it's clunky expression here. The bottom line is this (quoted with odd line breaks, etc., as in the original):

Place any human infant of less than three months age to sleep each night for at least eight hours in an ELF electric field of 100 Volts per metre for thirty days. My studies predict that child will die, or become so seriously ill that the test will have to be called off
. The NRPB and the power utilities' investigation levels by contrast predict there will be no adverse effect.

I will personally bet any NRPB member of staff or any any electric power utility worker around the world £2000 (or US$3000) willing to do this experiment, that my prediction will prove correct.

Pause. Breathe.

Yes, that's right. This guy is really confident that something would kill or harm a human infant, and his idea of a good way of making the point is to bet with real money that you can't prove him wrong. According to what he says he knows, he's bribing you to kill babies.

So, no trials with ... er ... mice (for example), then?

I'm sort of stunned. Not only do these pseudoscience bozos know very little about science epistemically speaking, it seems as though their idea of research ethics is at best about 5 decades out of date. I've emailed Coghill to ask wassup with this, and will follow up here in due course.