Improper Criticism?

Many a true word said in this send-up of Crime Opportunity Theory on the Crime Science Blog

Crime Can Be Lethal: Ratortunity is not only wrong it is likely to be very harmful

There is a very useful debate among police, professors and students regarding my argument that ratortunity (the Routine Activities Theory) notion based upon the RAT crime triangle is a harmful  criminology and crime science myth because it cannot possibly be a cause of crime and is diverting our endeavors away from understanding crime causality in favour of over complicating truisms in order to dress them up as causal explanations. 



If you are not already a member of Linked[in] you will need to sign up to see it. The debate is among those in the American Society of Criminology group in Linked[in]. If you are a member and signed in to Linked[in] then the link to the debate is here.  Better still you can join the Dysology conference group and join or start your own discussion.

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, the current 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%2c9942 ) 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

Opportunity Does Not Cause Crime

Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief. Read how the myth was busted.

Crime as opportunity theory is wrong

How can something that has not yet happened make you do it?

Obviously it cannot. And yet the Routine Activities Theory (RAT) notion of Crime as Opportunity as a cause of crime would have you believe it can.

Read how this pathological myth was busted on the Dysology website

Psychic Powers

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^.”

Another Braced Myth?

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 anotherbraced 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. N0. 4. pp 13-17.

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