I appear to be utter-bollocks-intolerant

I am not a doctor, as you know. But I'm pretty sure even I can spot a couple of problems with the so-called science in a couple of the articles in The Independent today. Which is a shame, as I like the Indy very much, but this is just a bit embarrassing.

Firstly, Jeremy Laurance's article about some studies done on acupuncture and back pain in Germany. Note the headline: "Acupuncture is best way to treat back pain, study finds". Then note the numbers in the body of the article - conventional treatment: 27% successful, acupuncture treatment: 47% successful. Convincing? Well, superficially. But then they give you another figure, almost as an aside, and it's this one: "sham" acupuncture treatment (i.e. whereby they just stick needles in you at random rather than in the mystical Qi channels dictated by acupuncture technique): 44% successful. Now (and I should point out at this point that I'm not a statistician either) that suggests a fairly obvious conclusion to me, but it isn't the one in the headline, it's something rather less newsworthy concerning the placebo effect. A very interesting phenomenon, and arguably under-explored, partly because it raises some sticky ethical issues, i.e. the use of placebo techniques by "conventional" medical practitioners involves knowingly lying to your patients, something a lot of people have problems with. But proof of the statement in the headline? Nope, sorry. A similarly nonsensical headline can be found here, though to be fair the article itself does a better job of getting a grip on the reality of the results (i.e. it at least mentions the word "placebo", which is a start).

Secondly, an article about food allergies and intolerances (the original link here doesn't seem to work at the moment, but the same article is available in the Irish Independent). An interesting subject, though one where the blizzard of anecdotal evidence often obscures the actual science. Unfortunately the Indy contributes to the obscuring of science by wheeling in Patrick Holford as an expert, a man with a certain amount of amusing previous in this area, including tangling repeatedly with Ben Goldacre and David Colquhoun, as well as inspiring a blog exclusively dedicated to monitoring his output. A blog with lots of actual good stuff on it, though I'm not convinced the regular lolcats images inserted in the text (funny though they are) project quite the required gravitas.