Over at DoubleXScience, the frankly amazing Emily Willingham has posted a list of questions you should always ask yourself when unsure whether what’s in front of you is likely to contain any scientific basis whatsoever. The full article, which I urge you to read, contains an explanation of the thinking behind each question.
Every time a medical or scientific claim fails one of these tests, you should be suspicious. It’s a red flag, indicating possible spurious and/or fraudulent claims.
An example… oh, let’s take Stanislaw Burzynski and his claimed treatment for ‘brain cancer’.
- The source: Burzynski himself. Given the complexity of the field and the necessity to cross-check experimental results, you would expect him to be talking on behalf of a team. This is fairly suspicious. The flag says: proceed with caution from this point.
- The agenda: claims to treat otherwise incurable illness – could this be trying to cash in on that market?
- The language: much use of terms such as “cutting edge” (this is supposed to be experimental, not an established therapy) and signs of personality cult. The former is suspicious, the second raises a fully-fledged RED FLAG.
- Testimonials: all over the place. Raises an entire Communist rally of RED FLAGS.
- Exclusivity: clinical trials can’t be used outside of the establishment testing them, according to US law, so normally this would be a false positive. However, a therapy that’s still not passed Phase II trials after 30 years? That might lead some to suspect that the ‘clinic trials’ rule is being used as a smokescreen and so earns this case one really big RED FLAG.
- Conspiracy! Yep, in the disinfomercial Burzynski, The Film (I’ll wait for Burzynski, The Musical On Ice) our Slavonic hero is portrayed as a lone saviour battling The Establishment, a favourite fantasy of quacktum mechanics and a definite RED FLAG.
- Multiple unassociated disorders: apart from the fact that ‘cancer’ is a global term covering a multitude of diseases with different causes (even ‘brain cancer’ is an extremely imprecise term), the therapy is suggested for AIDS, neurofibromatosis. autoimmune diseases. Another indisputable RED FLAG.
- Money trail: all cheques to be made out to Dr Burzynski personally. RED FLAG.
- Any real scientific processes? The FDA sent an official warning letter to Burzynski’s Research Institute in 2009, pointing out that the experiments weren’t being carried out with anything like scientific rigour and that the Independent Review Board was a total joke. Two years later, this major issue is not resolved. RED FLAG.
- Expertise? Burzynski is not a qualified oncologist (RED FLAG) and his claimed PhD in Biochemistry is highly suspect, since his only proof for this is a strangely gushing testimonial, dated 1990 and allegedly signed by a deceased Polish academic, in English and typed on US legal paper – RED FLAG.
So 8 out of those 10 questions raise red flags. We may therefore safely conclude that the medical claims of Stanislaw Burzynski and his clinic are almost certainly bogus and the antineoplaston treatment a con trick hiding behind a legal loophole. All together now:
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The warning flag is deepest red,
It shroudeth oft our hoodwinked dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though journos flinch and quacksters sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
Look ’round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow‘s vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.
If you don’t know the tune to that song, you’ve missed out on a whole era of annoying the 1%.
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A Plague Of Mice
