Feeling the burn

One of the things I sometimes get frustrated with about teaching is when a student says, "If I study for a test, I do worse.  Last time I didn't study at all, and I did fine -- this time, I studied, and I failed."

I know that this comes from the fact that they're frustrated, too -- they worked hard, and didn't do as well as they wanted to.  My fear, though, is that they'll decide that the converse must be true -- that if they don't study, they'll do better.  I always try to point out to them that they're comparing their performance on two different tests over different material taken at two different times.  In other words, that it isn't a controlled experiment, and they shouldn't use this observation of a single data point as a reason not to study.

Not sure how well the argument works, or if at that point it'd be better just to say, "I know, it sucks when you don't do well," and let it go.

It's a problematic way of thinking, though, and one I can sum up as "the plural of anecdote is not data."  Just because something worked (or didn't) for you, once, doesn't mean that you've discovered a correlation.

Take, for example, the latest goofy alt-med approach to avoiding skin damage in the sun: "edible sunscreen."  I'm not making this up.  In fact, there was a piece in The New York Times about it just day before yesterday.  The idea is that you consume a flavored drink ("UVO" is one brand) that contains vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and various other kinds of alt-med fairy dust, and it's supposed to prevent sunburn.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The medical establishment is in agreement that it's useless.  "If you tell someone 'You can take this pill before you go out' or 'you can drink this nice, refreshing, berry-flavored drink,' they are hearing 'magic bullet,'" said Dr. David J. Leffell, chief of dermatologic surgery and cutaneous oncology at the Yale School of Medicine.  "They think, I'll drink this and then I can do whatever I want because I'll be protected...  But there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that UVO functions as a sun protector... There's a sucker born every minute."

What makes this, and the New York Times article, interesting from a critical thinking perspective isn't the woo-woo magic drink phenomenon.  Heaven knows there are enough completely evidence-free alt-med cures and preventatives out there; if I devoted this blog to that topic only, I'd never run out of material (although I might well run out of readers).  What is most interesting is that Alyson Krueger, the author of the article, interviewed Scott Kyle, a 53-year-old competitive sailor from California, who is a devotee of UVO.  Kyle said that when he uses UVO, he doesn't burn.  "Normally I would be sunburned for a couple of days, and now I'm not," Kyle said.  "I give it to other sailors, and they notice a difference...  I totally don't care what doctors think, because it works on me."

Which is, in spirit if not in detail, exactly what my students are saying when they claim that studying simply doesn't work because they tanked on one quiz.  But in the United States, we've been trained to listen to folksy anecdote and somehow give it the same weight (or higher!) than controlled scientific experiment.  In fact, we've been taught to ignore scientific experiment altogether; who knows what those pointy-headed lab-coat-wearing guys are up to, and what their real motives are?

Look, it's not that I like sunscreen myself.  I'm the guy who wears as little clothing as is legally permissible when the weather is warm, and my wife has been known to sneak up behind me and squirt sunscreen on my shoulders when I'm not looking.  But at the same time, I know that sunburn isn't good for you, that sunscreen is a good idea, and that skin cancer sucks.  I'm choosing to ignore a risk (when I can get away with it), not claiming that I'm somehow reducing my risk with the equivalent of medical voodoo.

So sorry, Mr. Kyle, but your "data" doesn't really matter.  Your report of "not as sunburned," collected on different days under differing conditions, represents an anecdote at best.  If UVO is shown to be efficacious -- which, as a guy with a pretty good background in biology, I sort of doubt -- it will come from well-controlled research, not the musings of a guy who is already convinced.

Burn your way to better health

At what point does a publication become so filled with dangerous misinformation that the powers-that-be should step in and shut it down?

I'm all for freedom of speech, and everything, and definitely in favor of people educating themselves sufficiently that they won't fall for ridiculous bullshit.  But still: the media has a responsibility to police themselves, and failing that, to have the rug pulled out from under them.

If such a line does exist -- and I am no expert in jurisprudence who could state the legality of such a move -- then the site Natural News has surely crossed it.  They have become the prime source of bogus "health news," promoting every form of medically-related lunacy, from detox to homeopathy to herbal cures for everything from cancer to depression.

Take a look at their latest salvo, entitled, "What They Won't Tell You: The Sun Is a Full-Spectrum Medicine That Can Heal Cancer."  In it, author Paul Fassa tells us that contrary to conventional wisdom, you are not putting yourself at risk by exposing your skin to the sun; you are giving yourself "healing medicine."  "Truth is," Fassa writes, "we've been systematically lied to about the sun and skin cancer for years...  How many know that there is no definitive proof that the sun alone causes skin cancer?"

Other than, of course, this exhaustive report from the National Cancer Institute.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

He quotes a "naturopathic doctor," David Mihalovic, as support:  "Those that have attempted to convince the world that the Sun, the Earth's primary source of energy and life causes cancer, have done so with malicious intent to deceive the masses into retreating from the one thing that can prevent disease."  Righty-o.  So let me respond with a quote of my own, from the Wikipedia page on "naturopathy:" "Naturopathic medicine is replete with pseudoscientific, ineffective, unethical, and possibly dangerous practices...  Naturopathy lacks an adequate scientific basis, and it is rejected by the medical community...  The scope of practice varies widely between jurisdictions, and naturopaths in some unregulated jurisdictions may use the Naturopathic Doctor designation or other titles regardless of level of education."

Which might seem like an ad hominem, but I don't really care.

What is as certain as anything can be in science is the connection between blistering sunburns, especially in children, and later incidence of melanoma, the most deadly kind of skin cancer.  (Here's one source that lays it out pretty explicitly.)  Instead, Natural News is promoting a combination of misinformation, outright error, and paranoia so extreme that as I read the article I kept wondering if I was reading something from The Onion.  "The reality is that the vast majority of people, including doctors, have been duped into believing the myth that the sun is toxic, carcinogenic and a deadly health hazard," Fassa writes.  "That's why most people slavishly and lavishly slather toxic sunscreens on their skin whenever they anticipate direct contact with the sun's rays.  But in fact, most conventional sunscreens are cancer-causing biohazards.  Meanwhile, the multi-billion-dollar cancer industry and the billion-dollar toxic sunscreen industry are making hay with this hoax."

I think this was the point that my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels, because I am absolutely sick unto death of people yammering about the evils of Big Pharma and Big Medicine as if they were some kind of Illuminati-based death cult.  Could the medical system in the United States be reformed and improved?  Of course.  Is it an evil institution that is trying to make us all sick so as to keep itself in business?  Come on.  We are, right now, one of the healthiest societies the world have ever seen.  Our longevity and quality of life have risen steadily.  On a more personal level, I owe my life to "Big Pharma;" if my mother had not been given the RhoGAM injection when she was pregnant with me, I would almost certainly be dead of Rh-incompatibility syndrome...

... like my older sister, who was born before "Big Pharma" developed the injection, and who only lived ten days.

On some level, of course, this all falls under caveat emptor.  If you are sufficiently ignorant, gullible, or paranoid that you buy what sites like Natural News are selling, then sucks to be you.  The government, I suppose, is not in the business of protecting people from their own stupidity.  But at the same time, that isn't honestly a very ethical position, and there's part of me -- free speech be damned -- that would love it if there was a way for some kind of media watchdog to step in, and shut down what has become a conduit not only for bullshit, but for dangerous (possibly deadly) misinformation.