Heather Boon

On teaching pseudoscientific controversies in universities...

oracknows — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 06:45:16 +0000

On teaching pseudoscientific controversies in universities...

About a month ago, a number of news stories were published reporting that the University of Toronto had offered a course in alternative medicine taught by a homeopath named Beth Laundau-Halpern that presented a segment that was clearly highly biased towards antivaccine pseudoscience. It was worse than that, though, because this homeopathy just happened to be married to a dean at the university named Rick Halpern. The whole thing blew up into an embarrassing fiasco that demanded a response from the University. Unfortunately, this came in the form of a weaselly report, in which Vivek Goel, Vice-President Research and Innovation, was charged with investigating. He actually looked at the course's syllabus, interviewed Landau-Halpern and various other people involved, and, incredibly, concluded that this alternative medicine course was "not unbalanced." Not surprisingly, those of us who devote significant proportions of our free time promoting science- and evidence-based medicine were—shall we say?—less than pleased. Blogospheric volleys against the University of Toronto's class and its attempt to claim it wasn't "unbalanced" started with Jen Gunter, who sarcastically noted that the University of Toronto apparently thought that Andrew Wakefield is a legitimate source of vaccine information, and then proceeded to the likes of Steve Novella, a heavy hitter in this area, and, of course, little ol' me, a somewhat less heavy hitter. As I noted at the time, the University of Toronto's course was yet another example of what I like to call quackademia or quackademic medicine; i.e., the infiltration of pseudoscience taught and even practiced uncritically in academic medical centers.

Of course, it was pointed out, even right here in the comment section of this very blog, that this was not a course offered by the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, and indeed this was true. The course was in fact offered as part of the Health Studies Program and fell under the auspices of the Department of Anthropology. As such, this course wasn't teaching medical students the quackery that is homeopathy, although, as I couldn't help but note at the time, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto has on its faculty a true believer in homeopathy named Heather Boon, who's carrying out a clinical trial of homeopathy for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In fact, Heather Boon is more than just faculty; she's the dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy! (Also not surprisingly, she doesn't like Dr. Novella or myself.) So, naturally, it was hard for skeptics not to see Landau-Halpern's course, apparently offered more because her husband was a dean than because of any merit the course had, through the lense of other even more disturbing infiltrations of quackademic medicine at the University of Toronto.

In any case, it was ultimately reported that Landau-Halpern is no longer U. of T. faculty and the university will no longer offer the course, and, as I learned recently, Rick Halpern resigned as dean to return to teaching history. It's hard not to link the embarrassment his university suffered in the wake of the news reports about his wife's course to Halpern's rather sudden resignation as dean. Although it was messy, and the university's report made the risible statement that Landau-Halpern's course was "not unbalanced," all's corrected, right?

Sort of. At best.

The campus of the University of Toronto these days?

This ugly incident and the university's unsatisfactory response notwithstanding, the other day I was disappointed to see a senior faculty member at U. of T. not only defending the university but defending its having offered the course in the first place. Because it is someone who is usually soundly in the science-based camp, I had to take his viewpoint seriously. Unfortunately, I find his arguments unpersuasive. Equally unfortunately, this defense of the university included an unjustified swipe at medical skeptics like myself that I personally found downright insulting.

I'm referring to Larry Moran, a Professor of Biochemistry at U. of T., who wrote a post on his blog, On teaching alternative medicine at the University of Toronto. First, let me deal with the insulting part, so that I don't have to deal with it again and can proceed from areas where there is more common ground and hopefully finish on a high (or at least not on a nasty) note. Near the end of his post, Moran dismissively and condescendingly attacks a massive straw man, one so massive that, were it set on fire, it could probably be seen from space and I could probably see its glow in the east at night even though Toronto is well over 200 miles away from where I live:

From an academic pedagogical perspective, there's nothing wrong with a course that has a reading list emphasizing quack medicine. This is the view that people outside of the university don't understand. They appear to want to prevent students from ever learning about, or discussing, the anti-vax movement and how to deal with it.

They are wrong.²

Those of you who read the articles and have seen talks by supporters of science-based medicine like Steve Novella and myself will recognize this for the straw man that it is. We never say anything like this, that we want to prevent students from learning about or discussing the antivaccine movement. That is an assertion that is unsupported and, quite frankly, downright risible. So you should understand that I was more than a little pissed off when I read this part of Moran's post. We never say that we don't want alternative medicine to be taught or antivaccine views taught. (Indeed, I really wish that pediatrics residency programs, for instance, would do a better job of teaching antivaccine views, so that they don't catch pediatricians by surprise when parents start expressing them.) What we complain about is the uncritical teaching of these topics, the teaching, for example, of alternative medicine modalities as though they had scientific merit. This is a massive problem in medical academia. I've lost track of how many times I've reiterated this very point going back at least a decade.

Indeed, in the very post about Landau-Halpern's course, I wrote:

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t object in concept to a course that looks at the antivaccine movement and its arguments, but such a course must be rooted in science and critical thinking, so that it helps students understand why antivaccine misinformation is not supported by science. Ditto quantum quackery.

And in his post on the topic, Steve Novella wrote:

Optimally, courses promoting pseudoscience would not be taught at any university. If a university wants to teach about alternative medicine, or creationism, or astrology, they should teach it from a critical point of view. This should not be confused with promoting pseudoscientific propaganda, however.

And that is exactly the issue with Landau-Halpern's course, as I will discuss in a moment. Its syllabus reviewed it to be far more about propaganda for alternative medicine than a critical evaluation of various alternative medicine topics.

Now let's see what Moran also said after his footnote:

2. If any of these people respond to this post, you can be certain that they are going to move the goalposts. They are now going to say that they were never opposed to exposing students to anti-vaccine material but only opposed to the way it would have been taught in this particular course.

Bullshit, Professor Moran. Bullshit. I don't know what posts you've been reading, but I, at least, have been utterly consistent in this position since I was first shocked out of my shruggie complacency by learning of the existence of quackademic medicine, lo nearly a decade ago (for Steve Novella and other skeptics who were among my inspirations, even longer). I became involved with my not-so-super-secret other blog in order to combat the uncritical teaching of alternative medicine pseudoscience and quackery in medical schools and academia.

There, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can calm down and discuss the rest of Profesor Moran's arguments a bit more dispassionately, albeit not much less snarkily. This is, after all, the Respectful Insolence blog, and what better form of Insolence is there than snark? But, first, because there is a fair amount of common ground between Prof. Moran an myself, an olive branch of sorts.

Moran writes:

From my perspective, the main problem was not the content of the course but the qualifications of the instructor and the reason she got her job. The instructor was not qualified to teach a university course, although I would have no problem with her giving some of the lectures in a course run by a qualified university instructor. I think the university has done a fine job of resolving that issue.

Oy, that last sentence. So close, and yet so far. I'll ignore it for the moment because I do, actually, agree with the bulk of this passage. Certainly, there was at least the the appearance of impropriety, if not actual impropriety, in way that a dean's wife got to teach this course even though, by virtue of being a homeopath, she was utterly unqualified to teach such a course. Why was she unqualified? For one thing, she is biased in favor of pseudoscience. Indeed, homeopathy as a "profession" (my fingers seized up as I typed that word and it took two or three attempts to get them to work) is generally very much antivaccine. But wait! you say. Just because Landau-Halpern is a homeopath doesn't necessarily mean she is antivaccine herself. True enough! I suppose it's possible that there are rare ~~unicorns~~ homeopaths who aren't antivaccine. However, if these ~~unicorns~~ homeopaths exist, they are so rare that I can't remember having encountered one in my 15+ years of examining pseudoscientific medical claims. Indeed, the closest thing I ever came to a homeopath who isn't antivaccine was a naturopath who claimed not to be antivaccine (remember, you can't have naturopathy without homeopathy), and it turns out that she spouted plenty of antivaccine pseudoscience.

So let's look at Landau-Halpern herself, whose history provides copious evidence that she is antivaccine. For instance, as I documented, Halpern was busted by CBC Marketplace advising a reporter posing as a young mother not to vaccinate and promoted the quackery of homeopathic nosodes as an alternative to vaccines. Not only that, but she treats ADHD (she ought to get along with Prof. Boon quite famously) and autism with homeopathy as well, which tells me her understanding of science is incredibly lacking. On her very own website, she writes:

My interest in autism was sparked by my experiences with the detoxification of children who were damaged by the administration of vaccines. Many behavioral problems soon disappeared when vaccines were detoxified, even when many of these children came to me for completely different reasons. In my practice it turned out that mood swings, aggression, restlessness, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and ADHD often are correlated to the many and early vaccinations in children. When some of my autistic patients greatly improved after the detoxification of their vaccines, my interest was aroused, and I became increasingly convinced that autism must at least partially tie in with the administration of vaccines. At the Chicago congress on autism in May of 2003 I presented 30 cases of behavioral disorders that had significantly improved with the detoxification of the vaccines (among these were three autistic children). Nowadays it has become clear that vaccines are not the only culprit, although the most important, other toxic substances can also play an important role.

So, yes, Halpern is antivaccine and was utterly unqualified to teach a course about alternative medicine. However, as a homeopath, she was very much qualified to teach an overview course in alternative medicine.

I note that there's a big difference between teaching a course about a subject like alternative medicine and teaching a course in such a subject. I like to make an analogy, albeit an imperfect one, to religion dating back to my days attending a Catholic school. Think of this difference as the difference between teaching a course about world religions and the courses offered on Catholic religion. In the former case, we were taught in an amazingly dispassionate fashion about the various world religions, their doctrines, and their histories. In our Catholic religion class, however, we were taught Catholic doctrine as Truth. In other words, I'm referring to the difference between education and indoctrination.

Of course, there is nothing in a world religion class to let students figure out which religions have more validity than others. An atheist might say they are all equally invalid while a believer would simply say that his religion is valid and all those others are not. In science, however, we can determine what is and isn't scientific, and in medicine we can determine what is and isn't quackery. Moran makes an analogy:

Lots of people are getting their knickers in a twist because the university offers a course on "Alternative Health." That's mostly because they don't understand how universities are supposed to work. As most Sandwalk readers know, I advocate dealing directly with controversies and, to that end, I think it's a good idea to teach a course where students can examine the main creationist arguments. It's a good way to practice critical thinking. For many years I taught a course where the main reading was Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution.

It's not a bad analogy. But see where it falls down. Prof. Moran, not a creationist, taught the course and led the discussions. He is a biochemist and very much a defender of evolution. Depending on how good a teacher he is and what his style of teaching this particular course was, he could guide the students to see the flaws in creationist arguments or tweak them so that they found them on their own. That's not at all what was going on with the alternative medicine course that caused the controversy, as the course's syllabus (dissected in detail by Jen Gunter, Steve Novella, and myself) inarguably indicates, containing nothing but credulous takes on quantum quackery and antivaccine views, among others. Basically, U. of T. had a quack teaching a course in quackery in a manner that would be akin to having a creationist teach Prof. Moran's course in creationist arguments. You can bet that the students would likely come away from such a course with a different take on creationist arguments than they did from his version of the course! You can also bet that Prof. Moran wouldn't be happy to find out that a course about "controversies" in evolution was being taught by, say, Ken Ham or a flack from the Discovery Institute. So why doesn't he understand why we are unhappy about an antivaccinationist and quack teaching a course that included a module on "controversies in vaccination" and issues in alternative medicine?

A lot of his other objections seem to boil down to a rather condescending dismissal of concerns as being due to critics allegedly not understanding how universities work. I understand how universities, at least medical schools, work just fine, having spent my entire career in medical academia, and so does Steve Novella, having spent his entire career in medical academia. Now, to be fair, medical academia is a specialized beast and not run quite the way other schools in the university tend to be run. For one thing, medical schools have to produce a curriculum that is approved by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME); there is less freedom, at least in clinical departments, over what courses can be offered. The rest of medical school departments tend to train primarily graduate students, necessitating graduate-level classes. On the other hand, that very lack of freedom also causes one of our biggest headaches with respect to quackademic medicine, and that's the LCME's requirement that "complementary and alternative medicine" be taught in the curriculum. There are, of course, two ways of doing that: from a critical and science-based viewpoint, or from a more credulous viewpoint. Sadly, all too many medical schools choose the latter or methods that lean towards the latter, with actual alternative medicine practitioners teaching the courses, and that is what science-based medicine battles against.

Be that as it may, yes, it's a good thing that U. of T. apparently brought the offending program under tighter departmental control, apparently declined to re-sign the offending homeopath as adjunct faculty, and—this is just my guess but a plausible one, I think—probably encouraged Rick Halpern to resign as dean. It really is. In contrast, it's not a good thing that Vivek Goel, Vice-President Research and Innovation, could look at the curriculum for Halpern-Landau's course and conclude that it was "not unbalanced." I would have been far more impressed if U. of T. had simply said, "Hey, we screwed up. We somehow let a homeopath slip an unbalanced class past our usual checks and balances. We shouldn't be teaching quackery as though it were medicine any more than we should be teaching creationism as though it were evolution."

Moran also asks readers to put this course in context, to look at the rest of the curriculum. I argue that in this case that's a red herring. There's nothing wrong with offering a course that examines pseudoscience and even invites advocates of pseudoscience to give guest lectures, but when the person running the course is herself the practitioner of a pseudoscientific form of medicine, there's a real problem. I don't care what the prerequisites to the class were or what other courses are taught in the program. Moran goes on and on about a university's responsibility to expose students to controversies in a field of study. True enough. However, a university also has a responsibility to teach such controversies from the perspective of what can be demonstrated with evidence. Putting a purveyor of magic water in charge of a course on magic treatments fails that test.

Finally, Moran also goes wrong here:

It's important to understand that we are not dealing with children. These are mature university students taking a course in their final year of study. They do not need to be "protected" from the evil bogeyman of quack medicine. Most of the outsiders complaining about this course seem to think that these naive students are going to be swayed to the dark side by being exposed to the real world of quackery. If that were true (it is not true) then we would have a much more serious problem on our hands than just this course.

Here's where, I suspect, Moran's own background betrays him and he doesn't see the broader picture, at least not in medicine. Remember, he is a professor in a hard core basic science department (biochemistry) that accepts and teaches evolution. There is little or no danger that its students, by the time they reach upper levels, would not be well-equipped to deal with creationist fallacies, particularly with him on the faculty. His confidence in them is understandable. Contrast that to this program, the Health Studies Program at UTSC, which is a lot less hard core, combining "courses from a range of disciplines to examine this critical area from a biological, social and policy perspective." It's also an undergraduate program, which virtually by definition means that the students won't be receiving as deep a background in the issues relevant to alternative medicine as medical and graduate students do.

In the end, my little fit of pique over Prof. Moran's condescending and dismissive attitude towards those of us who were so outraged by this course being offered by U. of T. aside, we actually (mostly agree). Moran supports "teaching the controversy" with respect to evolution and with respect to alternative medicine. So do I. Where we disagree is over what "teaching the controversy" actually entails. Can Prof. Moran can honestly say that he wouldn't be the least bit upset if his own department were to offer an entire course on "controversies in evolution" taught by Ken Ham, Casey Luskin, and a Discovery Institute fellow to be named later? That he would approve of such a class as a great way to "teach the controversy"? If he can, I'd say there's a problem. If he can't say that, I congratulate him. That's the correct reaction. In that case, I also point out that he has no business being so contemptuous of our anger over a homeopath teaching a course in alternative medicine as a way of "teaching the controversy."

oracknows Tue, 08/04/2015 - 02:45

Categories

Education

It's nice that Prof. Moran believes upper level students at his university are so steeped in logic and critical thinking that they will all see through "the dark side" with no trouble. Apart from this being a fallacy - then why should U. of Toronto bother with "teaching the controversy" in the first place? Sounds completely unnecessary.

I suspect Moran's pride is hurt at U. of Toronto having become a laughingstock over this issue, and he also sees an opportunity here to suck up to the administration by congratulating them for their, uh, superb handling of the affair.

"I don't understand the uproar. We've been teaching a class on Hitler's Mein Kampf for years. Just because we got David Duke to teach this semester to give a contemporary outlook shouldn't distract from the topic."

Does that mean the University of Toronto is going to get Lysenko in to teach genetics?

And Boon's ADHD paper proposal is really, really bad, speaking as a former child and adolescent MH bod.

These are mature university students taking a course in their final year of study.

I'm sorry, Pr Moran, but right now you are telling you expect your students coming to your own lectures to be thinking "Let's see what stupid things the old fool will say this time".

For one, I would have been thinking students are supposed to entertain the idea that the guy/lady they are listening to has some mastery of the lecture's topic. If not, what's the point of attending? There is so better use of one's time. Not to mention the entrance fee.

For two, if you believe that students are, on average, ready to parse your sayings and check for accuracy, you must suck as a teacher. I know we are supposed to use our brain, but from what I remember from my university years, it's easier to just go along with the teacher and regurgitate the lessons during the finals.

They are now going to say that they were never opposed to exposing students to anti-vaccine material but only opposed to the way it would have been taught in this particular course.

I am glad Pr Moran isn't teaching in nuclear physics*.
*talking about his project to walk with his students inside an uranium processing plant without hazmat suits*
"My critics are going to say that they were never opposed to exposing students to radioactive material but only opposed to the way it would have been done in this particular course."

*Or chemistry. Or microbiology. Let's throw some high explosives or a vial of Ebola virus to a bunch of unsuspecting students and see what they do with it.

Many behavioral problems soon disappeared when vaccines were detoxified,

What the h-e-double-hockeystick does that even mean?

“I don’t understand the uproar. We’ve been teaching a class on Hitler’s Mein Kampf for years. Just because we got David Duke to teach this semester to give a contemporary outlook shouldn’t distract from the topic.”

Or David Irving.

Heh. You are more evil than I. :-)

One quibble, of which I'm sure most readers are aware:

"Teaching the controversy" is fine in principle, but the phrase has been used by creationists to create a Trojan horse they can use to insert creationism into the public schools.

It's a classic case of false balance.

"What the h-e-double-hockeystick does that even mean?"

Um, you have to take the class to find out.

Oh, and, you'll have to buy the book written by the professor too.

“Teaching the controversy” is fine in principle, but the phrase has been used by creationists to create a Trojan horse they can use to insert creationism into the public schools.

It’s a classic case of false balance.

Yes, but it's not the same thing. "Teach the controversy" is a rallying cry creationists use to insert creationism into public schools, true, but K-12 education is a very different beast than college education. In K-12 science education, you want to give children the basics, principles of how to do science and the knowledge of what is well-supported science. As such, teaching creationism, even as controversy, in public schools undermines what public schools are supposed to be doing.

Contrast this to college, a higher level of education. There, ostensibly, the goal is to produce a student who can evaluate claims and evidence by himself. In such an environment teaching a pseudocontroversy like creationism or alternative medicine, if done correctly and not from the point of view of the pseudoscience, can be a good exercise teaching critical thinking.

So, I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it applies as much to college, particularly upper level college, education the way it does to K-12.

DB@1: It is often useful, and in fact desirable, for a university course to teach not only what we know, but how we know it. In the context of Prof. Moran's course, this includes discussing what the proposed alternatives to evolution are and why they don't work. That's why having, e.g., Ken Ham teach such a course would lead to an epic fail: Ham would not teach such a course in that manner, because he already "knows" the answer and will not be persuaded by evidence to the contrary.

The latter scenario is a good analogy for Ms. Landau-Halpern's course. It would be reasonable for an anthropology department to offer a course in pre-scientific belief systems, complete with discussions of why people believed those systems at the time and why we now know them to be incorrect. Ms. Landau-Halpern was instead starting from the premise that her views were necessarily true, and that made her course worse than useless.

Of course it's a harder tightrope to walk in departments like anthropology, where often there are multiple equally valid ways of viewing the evidence, than in STEM departments, where experiments can be done and theoretical predictions falsified. But it's something that should and must be done.

As for whether upper division undergraduates can see whether creationist arguments are bogus: Most of them can, at least in STEM majors (this is Canada, not the US, we are talking about), but yes, there are a few outliers (probably not as many as there would be in a US program of similar size, but not always zero either--there are creationists who have gone to the trouble of getting Ph.D. degrees in biology).

@ palindrom:

Many of the woo-entranced believe that one can remove the toxins that vaccines deposit into their pristine offspring/ patients through various whimsy-based procedures ( like chelation, green juices, supplements, energy healing) *et voila!* the signs and symptoms of ASDs will ameliorate or disappear.

I suppose it cleans out the clogged tubes in the CNS or suchlike.

Denice -- It's toxins all the way down!

Someone should sound the tocsin.

Orac @9 -- We are in perfect agreement. I just thought it worth pointing out how that particular phrase has been abused in another context.

Just spent 10 minutes trying to comment on Moran's blog. What an annoying experience - whatever I tried it kept kicking me back to the "publish" button. Eventually it kicked me out and I lost the entire post.

Briefly - his post is a massive exercise in missing the point. The course was not "dealing directly with controversies," it was teaching pseudoscience as if it were science.

Gotta love Blogger, eh?

You know, I remember taking an upperclassman honors seminar on various issues in medicine. (It was sort of a grab bag: we could talk about the history of pharmacology, body modification and circumcision, and, yes, homeopathy/alt med.) Because science-themed honors seminars were short on the ground but needed to stay in the honors program, most of the students were science majors of one stripe or another.

When we discussed homeopathy, we had readings from both sides, and the professors were more trying to get us to think about why such things were practiced (or not) rather than our instance of 'what the flying fuck is this nonsense'. (We also had a guest naturopath visit, but given the tone of the discussion, the professors warned us that we had to be polite. Even then, I think our 'how the hell does this work' came through, while she seemed more in the 'this helped my kids, so I studied it'. It also was a useful lesson in the difference between what was written to convince the skeptical and the 'on the ground' practice.)

Which, as Orac said, asking why is useful to both anthropology and pre-med/medical students, but would look different than 'teach the controversy'.

I get what Moran is saying, though I'll tone troll HIM, and suggest he could have been more persuasive without the pique.

Landau-Halpern was unqualified to teach the class, which pretty clearly would not even have been offered (by anyone) had Rick Halpern not been seeking a perk for his wife. Reading between the lines, the Health Studies faculty was seriously POed at being forced into this. Goel probably took full measure of just what a mess Halpern created inside the U, amongst his own colleagues. When that results in bad pub, that's a major sin, while bad pub sans internal procedural turmoil not so much. Anyway, Goel's statement is ure CYA, as "Hey, we screwed up!" just isn't in the vocabulary of any university administrator anywhere.

But whether the course itself as actually taught was out-of-bounds can't be determined from the syllabus or Landau-Halpern's cv. You'd need 'objective' accounts from observers of how she conducted class sessions and especially how she graded an kind of essay assignments or tests. I've know mildly profs mildly 'partisan' on some academic divide who punish all dissenting students in grading, and profs who are themselves far more committed to position (X) but give the highest grade to students who mount good arguments in their dissent.

So, no, I wouldn't let David Duke teach Mein Kampf – he's a troll and has no academic credentials. But I have run into some intellectuals who are quite fond of fascist ideology, but don't run the classrooms or grade assignments fascistically, and they can actually do a good job... (Of course, i have no idea how Landau-Halpern actually ran her class.)

Mainly, I have to support Moran's point about putting the course in the context of the curricullum, and disagree with Orac that this is a red herring. This is not just (or even mainly) a question of the manifest content of prerequisites courses, but again of pedagogical method. Specifically, it's a question of whether reading assignments in other Health Studies courses are bracketed as Info Dumps of 'Truth', or as 'interesting ideas worth having an argument about.'

Goel's report (cited at length by Moran, check Orac's link above) emphasizes that Heath Studies majors DO have enough enough background on science, especially vaccines to already know the mainstream position and thus be critical of woo. But IMHO this misses the point. If they've been taught that stuff on a model of 'authoritative prof and text deliver the facts', getting a different instructor assigning ONLY material opposed to that could indeed mess with the kids heads.

On the other hand, proper pedagogy in the humanities expects/encourages/demands students do critical thinking about EVERYTHING. Again, I can't speak to UT's Health Studies program, but by the time the majors reach their senior year, they could be trained to treat every reading assignment as 'chew this over' not 'suck this in'. Goel wrote, "Students in their final year of study and are expected to approach controversial topics with a critical lens."

In fact, if you have a curriculum that's effective at inculcating a critical approach, it can be useful to toss the kids a live bozo, and see how well they do responding, and without putting an 'opposing authority' on the dais for them to lean on as a crutch. That should be able to do it themselves. Would I devote a WHOLE COURSE to one corner and voice of bozo? Hell, no. I've seen it done though, albeit not on anything as charged as medi-woo. The one time my own program wound up (mostly by accident) with an adjunct from an 'opposing paradigm' (though the question was more of interpretation than 'fact' and the facts weren't scientific at all) the guy got challenged by the students so much, he shuffled away with his tail between his legs at the end of the term.

In conclusion, for something like Health Studies, framed within a humanities department like Anthro, it's not about the 'balance' or 'accuracy' of any one specific course, or even the 'valid truth quotient' of the curriculum as a whole; it's about how the curriculum as a whole teaches students to process and evaluate any sort of truth claims.

P.S. to palindom:
'Teach the controversy' came out of 'Culture War' debates about the literary canon, it's primary advocate being respected literary critic Gerald Graff. The concept itself was controversial in those circles, but part of an overall respectable dialogue. The creationists, as is the won't of woo-ists, will appropriate and mangle any rhetoric they can to justify their BS.

This has the result (to my unending angst) of these terms first reaching a wider public consciousness in these disingenuous, Machiavellian, and Orwellian re-definitions – enslaved to bad ends – which leads folks to think that's what these concepts just ARE, which totally screws up the attempts of the legit scholars who framed them to go about their work and have it understood by anyone outside their field. (E.g. no one makes MY blood boil more than Lionel F***-S***-Asswipe Milgrom...)

So, no, I wouldn’t let David Duke teach Mein Kampf – he’s a troll and has no academic credentials.

I would point out that, as far as I can tell, Beth Landau-Halpern has no academic credentials to speak of, either, and she's clearly biased against vaccines. I can provide more evidence if you like.

@Palindrome #7 Despite Orac's more nuanced view I think you were right. Within the semantics of quackery, “controversy” is a hopelessly corrupted word from which false balance can’t be excised. An argument where one side is dependent upon prejudice, stupidity, dishonesty or mere contrarianism can not be elevated to a “controversy”. To have any useful meaning controversy must be defined by the involvement of two or more contending arguments of equal or close to equal validity, otherwise we make a ‘controversy’ out of every 8 year old’s argument to stay up late on a school night. The are of course genuine scientific controversies where evidence is unclear, lacking or contradictory and all sides of the argument may have claim to validity. There is no controversy involving homeopathy as a valid treatment because there is no valid argument for the positive case. Controversy is used by quacks in the same way that it is used by the tabloid media – to cast authenticity on the vapid, the irrelevant and the bankrupt in order to claim value where non exists.

@Orlac
#19

Hit the nail on the head.

Orlac, I agree with your view about naming it controversy, but unaddressed it will grow.

How would you approach tearing apart the arguments for homeopathy in a course?

I just feel that anything being taught has to have the burden of proof. I could see it being taught in a class on spotting pseudoscience.

2. If any of these people respond to this post, you can be certain that they are going to move the goalposts. They are now going to say that they were never opposed to exposing students to anti-vaccine material but only opposed to the way it would have been taught in this particular course.

This looks like the classic ploy of accusing your adversaries of doing exactly what you are guilty of. To overuse the goalposts analogy: Move the goalposts to mid field. Complain bitterly when your critics insist on returning them to the end zone.

^ If taught as a medical treatment or placed into a medical debate or journal, I agree. If taught anthropologically, there are many things taught in the soft sciences are light on proof and heavy on theory. Comes with the territory, I think.

What would this qualify as? It seems to me that the claims are all medical. Is that the wrong way to think about it?

I really, really thought these stupid, bloody stupid arguments had been dismissed five years ago.

Yet I read in our Blinky Box Host's post that they haven't, and then, closer to home, I discover that the wife of the owner of my newest, tiniest local pub has refused to have her children vaccinated. Against anything. I think she's the first genuine anti-vaxxer I've come across here in middle England. (I've come across a couple who didn't want the 'flu vaccine ("because of the mercury"), or the MMR ("it causes autism" - have you been reading the Daily Fascist? "Yes" - It's not true - "OK"), but the first real live anti-vaxxer.

My question is, should I carry on supporting the pub (which is BLOODY WONDERFUL), or should I boycott it due to the wife of the landlord's views? He doesn't agree, but has gone along with her for a quiet life.

Please be quick with answers as I'm on two weeks annual leave, and he's open at lunchtime tomorrow.

jonnybdead - When taught as medicine or as the truth, I'm always against it but here I'm tending towards sadar's opinion because it was a Special Topics course in Anthropology.

I think the bigger crime was the nepotism for an unqualified professor, and I don't doubt that this course resurfaces in the curriculum in the future because POPULAR but I don't know if we'll see her as a professor again.

Rich Scopie - Beer solves everything. Doesn't matter where you get it, does it?

not a troll
oh ok, i see what your saying.

Argh. How could I have forgotten this?

http://www.hrandequity.utoronto.ca/about-hr-equity/news/2015n/bcabppft2…

Excerpt:

The EHC plan existing coverage for Chiropractor, Physiotherapist and Registered Massage Therapist treatment will now include coverage for naturopathy (ND designation), homeopathy, acupuncture (Acupuncturist of Ontario registration), osteopaths and Occupational Therapy, under the same maximum $700 combined coverage per person per plan year.

Yep, the U. of T. health plan now covers naturopaths, homeopaths, and acupuncturists.

@Rich Scopie - It all depends on your personal values. I would have issues with frequenting a pub owned by, say, a known child abuser or spouse killer. However, if she's merely misguided and misinformed, not actually evil, then I see no harm in judging the pub by its ale.

Remember that no known pathogens grow in beer. However, if they start allowing acetobacter to grow in their kegs that is beyond the pale.

Yeah, unless she is actually using proceeds from the pub to spread antivaccine misinformation or lobby against vaccine coverage, I don't see the point in not frequenting the pub as usual; that is, unless she insists on talking to customers about her antivaccine beliefs whenever they show up.

An undergraduate liberal arts course like "Survey of Art History" might cover shamanism relative to 15,000 year old cave paintings, and an instructor might ask student to construct a project in that style or with the same materials. Cave paintings are wonderful, but at most they'd take one lecture out of a semester for that lesson. They certainly aren't going to teach students how to be a shaman.
In a science course, I can't see why you'd spend more than 13 min. 3 to talk about homeopaths health assessment techniques, 5 to discuss its history and 19th century popularity, 2 minutes to demonstrate succession, and 3 minutes practicing laughter therapy.

edit: succ u s s ion.
!@#$ spell correction

A rogue group in a homeopathic association develops new methods of agitating the solutions upon dilution. After bitter arguments, they decide to withdraw and start their own organization.

If their new organization prospers, one could say that their secession over succussion was a success.

It may be dumb, but it's succinct!

palindrom -- you're going to make herr doctor bimler look to his laurels.

The downside of resting on one's laurels is the aphids up the bum.

Better resting on your laurels than on holly.

Unless Holly's OK with that, of course.

Let me think about the pub and the anti-vaxxer, Rich.

Well, I suppose it would be depend upon:
- whether there were other pubs nearby
- if the creature-in-question made her presence known
- if the proprietor or barkeeper ( whoever IS present) held the same views

vs how much I wanted a drink/ liked the ambience there

In other words, I would have to like the place/ need a drink a great deal in order to overcome three yes answers above.

@Orlac Not Orac #:

Excellent point! Misappropriation of the term "controversy" is one that, IMO, should be included in any course on homeopathy given by an unbiased authority.

In Canada and any other country where the government has sanctioned homeopathic preparations and the practice of homeopathy, academic courses on the subject fill a legitimate need to educate students of medicine about the kinds of treatments patients are currently accessing in the marketplace. If nothing else, they would then be able to assert that, contrary to popular assertions, they understand homeopathy, warts and all.

hdb: "The downside of resting on one’s laurels is the aphids up the bum."

Looks at bay laurel outside window. No, not aphids but wooly scale, and the occasional snail. It is very annoying.

Plus it is hard to rest on a twenty five foot tall tree.

Color me gobsmacked.

Three decades ago I hung out on the fringes of talk.origins where Larry Moran and a gang merry scientists would cheerfully kidney punch any creationist dumb enough to blunder within arm's reach.

I simply can not understand his making such a naive public statement, under any circumstances nor for any reason. This is utterly contrary to what I remember of his usually thought writings.

I think the obvious counter to Moran's "they're grownups" is: If being misinformed doesn't influence people. Then what actually does? If the input isn't part of the problem then isn't he arguing for some kind of weird determinism? i.e. "The people who become quacks would have become so anyway"

As an aside my wife did her MD at another Ontario university. They brought in exactly one speaker to talk about integrative medicine. The way she tells it the students were actually angry that the administration would waste their time with this. The speaker, to say the least did not get off easy that day.

I'll second Robert L Bell's thoughts. I kept thinking, "this can't be the Dr. Moran I'm familiar with from evolution-creation stuff". But it was. That'd he'd make such logical fallacies when he was pretty good at spotting them when they were used by creationists indicates Dr. Moran has developed a black hole-sized blind spot.

I do hope he'll take a second look at his arguments and reconsider. Maybe the example of having Ham teach his evolution class using Icons of Evolution will be the "ah-ha" moment. Still, as Robert said, "gobsmacked".

Sadmar - the true equivalent, I think, would not be a fascist teaching *Mein Kampf*, but a Holocaust denier teaching it.

Hi all,

Thanks for the thoughts on the pub. Given that I've only seen Mrs Landlord in the pub once, it's not as though she's spreading anti-vax nonsense. I'll just keep on enjoying the beer and keep trying to chip away at Mr Landlord.

Cheers!

Rich.

Larry tends to view issues such as this as matters of "academic freedom". His definition of this is that pretty much anything and everything goes so far as curriculum and teaching is concerned, and that it is for internal faculty to sort out any nonsense. He doesn't seem to have figured out the implications of this when the faculty gene pool has been diluted by a flock of dingbats.

@#24

“there are many things taught in the soft sciences are light on proof and heavy on theory. "

Anthropology has four or five sub fields, Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, Linguistics, Cultural Anthropology and/or sometimes Social Anthropology. My university also did Museology (museum work, not music-lol). Even if you get a PhD and go on to solve a famous archaeology problem, you are still an anthropologist--in this country anyway. Physical Anthropology and Archaeology in particular are very hard science-based and rely heavily on utilizing other fields of study such as Geology, Biology (we study Human Biology including genetics, and do basic Primate Zoology, but it’s fairly intro level at the BA level). There is a Master’s level area called Medical Anthropology that USED TO BE taught as an adjunct to Cultural Anthropology and involved more or less a liason process to people adapting to rapid cultural change. These days a lot of that seems to have gone to woo (poo?), or so I’ve been told.

I learned almost everything I know about the history of science, the life of Darwin, critical thinking, and the evidence for evolution from Anthropology 101 and Physical Anthropology (third year course). I learned how to write a scientific paper and had to defend any position I took in an essay test or term paper with solid science.

Please don’t lump my beloved field of study in with sociology, some of psychology, and whatever else falls into “soft science”. Maybe I was just lucky to have excellent professors from Harvard, Cornell, Berkeley, and a noted State University, but in my chosen sub field of archaeology, there is a whole year of methodology that is pure scientific method. You have to prove things in archaeology and you will be held to account. We have our cranks (there was one tenured professor who wrote books about Bigfoot in my time at college), but we don’t coddle them or ask anyone to give them equal time.

darwinslapdog,

You have my apologies. I was wrong and I didn't mean to smear a whole field like that. The courses I am thinking of were all lower level ones at a SUNY college that is well known for their business degrees (and their level of partying).

You made me curious so I checked the current course descriptions. I don't recall it being even as rigorous as it is now but that was many years ago. If so inclined take a look and let me know what you think. http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/anthro/course.html

Sadmar has it right.

Neptoism/unqualified professor is unacceptable, but restricting academic freedom based on the individual's 'belief' is worse.

Does Orac suggest that Jesuits should be prohibited from teaching a course on RC theology to students of comparative religion?

Considering that vaccines do not immunize 100% of those vaccinated, you can justify not going to the pub because being there could be a health hazard .

This is what completely infuriates me about Bill Maher. He has no problems with the science for evolution and climate change, but when it comes to medicine he is pretty quacky. Larry Moran seems to show a similar approach. Do they just think medicine isn't backed by good science, or are they picking which sciences they like and ones they don't? Regardless, I think it's pretty obvious that Moran would never have someone like Ham as a guest speaker.

It occurs to me that the splinter homeopathic association hypothesized @34 might have advocated quick, efficient means of agitation on dilution, and suggested that the language used in homeopathic diagnoses had become too verbose as well. When their splinter association proved viable, the headlines of course read

"Succinct Succussionists Successfully Secede"

Try the veal, be sure to tip your sever. I'll be here until the manager fires me.

Moran supported the teaching of Intelligent Design by an ID advocate as part of a science degree at Ball State University.
The reading list was heavily biased towards ID as being science, not religion.

The course was closed because of the controversy when the news became public. Moran has a quixotic opinion when it comes to academic freedom. He believes that if you qualify to stand in front of a university class then you should be allowed to say anything without concern for the academic integrity of the institution in which they teach. Personal academic freedom is absolute for him. Which is ridiculous, IMO.

Quackademia at the University of Toronto: Antivaccine pseudoscience taught by a homeopath is "not unbalanced"

oracknows — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 01:00:40 +0000

Quackademia at the University of Toronto: Antivaccine pseudoscience taught by a homeopath is "not unbalanced"

Aside from deconstructing the misinformation and pseudoscience of the antivaccine movement, another of the top three or so topics I routinely discuss here is the infiltration of pseudoscience into medicine. In particular, I've found and discussed more examples than I can possibly remember of what I like to call quackademic medicine, defined as the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. This quackery mainly insinuates its way into medical schools and academic medical centers through the emerging specialty known as "integrative medicine," which used to be called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM). What "integrative medicine" involves is the integration of prescientific mystical beliefs about medicine rooted in vitalism and pseudoscientific quackery into science-based medicine (SBM). That's how we find modalities like reiki (faith healing that substitutes Eastern mystical beliefs for Christian beliefs) and traditional Chinese medicine (which is based on concepts very much like the "Western" idea of the four humors) in many prestigious academic medical centers, such as the Cleveland Clinic, University of Arizona, UCSF, and even the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Meanwhile, medical schools like Georgetown and the University of Maryland (to name but a couple) rush to integrate quackery into their undergraduate medical curricula, while respectable professional societies like the American Society of Clinical Oncology feature "integrative medicine" sessions at their annual meetings. Years ago, I used to maintain a list that I called the Academic Woo Aggregator, but there was just so much quackademic medicine that I gave up updating it long ago.

When I noted that my very own alma mater, the University of Michigan, has a program in anthroposophic medicine, I despaired. I thought that that was as bad as it could get. Then I came across Jen Gunter's blog posts and news stories about quackery at the University of Toronto, specifically a course being taught by Beth Landau-Halpern, a homeopath.

Let that sink in a minute. There is a course in medicine, specifically alternative medicine, being taught by a homeopath, and, worse than that, it's featuring Joe Mercola interviewing Andrew Wakefield as a legitimate source of information on vaccines.

This particular homeopath happens to be the wife of Rick Halpern, the Dean of the University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus, which is the campus where the course was offered this spring. The course was called Alternative Health: Practice and Theory HLTD04H3-S Special Topics in Health, and it is loaded with quackery, as you can tell just from the course description:

Alternative medicine (i.e. the wide range of modalities other than conventional western biomedicine), has gained unprecedented popularity among patients, and a nearly unprecedented backlash from the scientific and conventional medicine communities of late. Dissatisfaction with the results and quality of care patients get from mainstream medicine, how well they are (or aren’t) listened to, the astronomical cost of such medicine, increased suspicion of pharmaceutical safety, a generalized belief that natural is better, and, in some instances, a preference for culturally traditional medicinal practices, are some of the many factors that drive patients to seek alternative health care. At the same time, the “scientification” and “technicalization” of medicine seems to be widely accepted and is employed to assert the perceived fundamental superiority of a biomedical approach to disease; to further the financial incentive of the pharmaceutical industry which has an enormous stake in the scientific, drug-based approach to health; and to disparage “alternative” approaches as quackery and fraud.

Yes, there are the same old complaints from alternative medicine practitioners, such as that medicine is arrogant and asserts its superiority due to science (as if being science-based were a bad thing!) and invokes a bit of the old "pharma shill" gambit as a reason why alternative medicine hasn't become more accepted. Then, there's some serious woo-speak that regular readers of this blog will have seen in various forms before but that one doesn't expect to find stated unironically in the course description of a class offered by a major university:

We will delve into a quantum physics’ understanding of disease and alternative medicine to provide a scientific hypothesis of how these modalities may work. Quantum physics is a branch of physics that understands the interrelationship between matter and energy. This science offers clear explanations as to why homeopathic remedies with seemingly no chemical trace of the original substance are able to resolve chronic diseases, why acupuncture can offer patients enough pain relief to undergo surgery without anesthesia, why meditation alone can, in some instances, reduce the size of cancerous tumors.

Yes, there's quantum quackery in that there course description! Need it be repeated that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All, and that quantum "explanations" offered by homeopaths for homeopathy can "work" invoking "energy" are abuses of physics of the worst sort, as are other scientific concepts co-opted to serve the quackery that is homeopathy, such as nanoparticles. Don't believe me? Just check out Charlene Werner's explanation of "energy" to get an idea of how bad it can be (NOTE: this is NOT Beth Landau-Halpern):

I'm not saying that's what Landau-Halpern taught (that is, after all, not her), but it is the sort of nonsense you get when a homeopath invokes quantum mechanics, which is why, based on the syllabus, it wouldn't surprise me if that's the sort of thing Landau-Halpern taught. If that's not enough for you, you should try to check out Lionel Milgrom's epic quantum quackiness about homeopathy. But beware. If you're an honest-to-goodness physicist, reading Milgrom's stylings could melt your brain. If you're a skeptic, they'll evoke a combination of disgust and hilarity. It was so bad that physicists wrote to the university to complain.

It gets worse, though. The abuse of physics is nothing more than the standard quantum nonsense that quacks invoke the way shamans invoke magic and the gods. it's bad, but it doesn't directly degrade public health. (Indirectly is another matter.) One of the classes in the course, however, does just that. I'm referring to week 9, a class entitled Vaccination – the King of Controversy. First, before I show you the suggested reading, let me just say this. Vaccination is not controversial from a scientific standpoint. It's really not. The "controversy" over vaccinations is what I like to call a pseudodebate, where science denialists use misinformation, cherry picked studies, and bad reasoning to attack established science. This course does nothing but feed that pseudodebate among its student,s as though it were legitimate. Don't get me wrong. I don't object in concept to a course that looks at the antivaccine movement and its arguments, but such a course must be rooted in science and critical thinking, so that it helps students understand why antivaccine misinformation is not supported by science. Ditto quantum quackery. Instead, we get this:

Required Readings/ Viewings for this week:

VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Wakefield: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield…

VIDEO: Shedding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKSeiAs_A4w (new addition to syllabus)

VIDEO: Vaccine's Safety A Crime Against Humanity, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N3oHLe80O4

Dissolving Illusions, Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History, pp vii-xvi, 445-479

Optional Reading:

Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality; The Medical Assault on the American Brain, Harris Coulter – Ch. 7 (Medical Hubris and Its Consequences), Ch 3 (The Post-Encephalitic Syndrome)

ARTICLE: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/09/12/22-medical-studies-that-…

ARTICLE: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/12/03/mit-scientist-shows-what…

96 Research Papers Autism/ Vaccination. http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-V…

This Physician’s Assessment of Flu Vaccines in Pregnancy http://www.safeminds.org/blog/2014/09/24/physicians-assessment-flu-vacc…

Safeminds? Collective Evolution? Joe Mercola? Andrew Wakefield? These are not reliable sources on vaccines. They represent the underbelly of the antivaccine movement. Hell, why not include the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism as a legitimate source while you're at it? Notice also how there isn't the "other side" of this "controversy" offered, as in information on vaccines from the CDC, vaccine scientists, and legitimate sources. It's all one-sided—the antivaccine side.

But wait, there's more! Week 10 is all about "detoxification" in the context of naturopathy: CAM Modality: Naturopathic Medicine: Nutritional Deprivation and Environmental Toxins and Their Impact on Health and Brain Function. Naturopathy, of course, is pure quackery, as is the "detoxification" recommended by naturopaths, who, by the way, also are all trained in homeopathy and most of whom still use it.

Now here's the incredible thing. Because of the complaints, the University of Toronto undertook a review of the course. According to the review, carried out by Vivek Goel, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, there wasn't a problem! Seriously, after examining the curriculum of the 2015 course and the student evaluations from the 2014 course, Goel concluded that there wasn't a problem! First off, he let Landau-Halpern off the hook for her antivaccine nonsense by noting that she changed the curriculum in 2015 in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak and had "voluntarily removed the section for which the greatest degree of concerns were subsequently raised."

Incredibly, Goel then concluded:

I did explore with her how she approached this topic in 2014 and how she would have done so if it had remained on the curriculum this year. She reports that she approaches this issue from a nuanced perspective and encourages students to think critically about vaccine effectiveness and safety.

The syllabus for the course contains a reading list for the immunization class which gives emphasis to materials s that primarily focus on risks for vaccines. The instructor reports that she provides these readings as the students have already seen the other side in previous courses. In class they are then able to have a discussion from all perspectives.

As a result, I do not find that the instructor’s approach in this class has been, or would have reasonably been perceived to be unbalanced, in the sense that it deviated from a presentation of material that, in context, would enable critical analysis, and inquiry. Thus, from an academic pedagogy perspective, I do not find that there has been sufficient deviation from the range of normal approaches to warrant concerns.

With a reading list like this, there's no way what was being taught in any way resembled critical thinking, particularly taking into account that Landau-Halpern is a homeopath. More than that, she's a homeopath who's been busted by investigative journalists. A CBC Marketplace investigation filmed her advising a young mother against vaccines and promoting homeopathic nosodes as an alternative. Nosodes, of course, are pure quackery. Not surprisingly, Landau-Halpern cried "entrapment! She also offers homeopathy to treat ADHD and CEASE therapy (based in homeopathy) to treat autism.

Shockingly, all Goel could come up with was this:

On review of the process it does not appear that there was adequate consideration or comment by the department and colleagues on the proposed course outline developed in 2013 for the Spring 2014 session, nor for the Spring 2015 session. While I do not find that the course is unbalanced, in the sense of the term used above, I do believe it could be strengthened by greater engagement of academic colleagues through such a review process. The Department Chair and Program Director will continue to work closely with the instructor through the balance of the term. If the course is to be offered again in the future it should be developed as a regular course and taken through the usual governance reviews.

Oddly enough, the Department of Anthropology is the department responsible for the Health Studies Program, under which this course fell. Clearly, the department utterly failed, and U of T administration is basically shrugging its shoulders over it. Goel sees nothing, hears nothing, knows nothing, just like Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heroes.

Unfortunately, this is not the only problem that U of T has had with quackademic medicine. U of T is, after all, the home of another homeopathy aficionado, namely Heather Boon, Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and principal investigator of a clinical trial testing homeopathy for ADHD. The university has also hosted a quackfest known as the IN-CAM Symposium, where homeopathy, naturopathy, and chelation therapy featured prominently. This is consistent with its recent founding of a its new Centre for Integrative Medicine on—surprise! surprise!—the Scarborough Campus. This is a typical center dedicated to integrating quackery with medicine, in particular traditional Chinese medicine. When pseudoscience invades a campus that way, is it any surprise that a course taught by a homeopathy spouting antivaccine propaganda and quantum woo start popping up?

I feel sorry for my bud Scott Gavura and all the good pharmacists, nurses, and physicians who trained at U of T, because it's clear that the university has gone all in for quackademic medicine. What's next? Teaching young earth creationism in biology classes? Teaching astrology in astronomy class? If U of T doesn't care whether its course offerings are scientifically valid any more, why not really go all in for pseudoscience? After all, Beth Landau-Halpern's course is nothing more than the latest culmination of an infiltration of quackery that's been going on for years now. The administration might as well found a naturopathy school at this point.

ADDENDUM: Apparently Beth Landau-Halpern's class is gone and she is no longer on staff:

http://www.speakingupforscience.ca/news/2015/7/6/lecturer-who-taught-anti-vaxxer-propaganda-no-longer-at-u-of-t

Not much in the post in that link hopefully we'll learn more.

oracknows Mon, 07/06/2015 - 21:00

Categories

Environment

All the education you have under your name and yet you are still a moron.
William W Thompson just went to the Obama administration and applied and received f'Whistleblower status' in regards to Autism and the MMR.
Btw right after he was granted Whisteblower, Julie Gerberding just sold a ton of Merck stock for over 2 million dollars. Cashing out while she can I suppose.

oh and btw, these are his lawyers. Their specialty is Whistleblowers.
Hear that sound? That is the ship striking the iceberg.

http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-…

Here is an actual unbiased article that examines the 2 sides of the vaccine debate. The anti-vaxxers and the people such as yourself. Both groups completely unwilling to ever consider middle ground. I suggest you read it, as maybe you will actually learn something for once.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29060-selective-outrage-and-publi…

I read it first yesterday night at Jen Gunther's blog. I have been working around Toronto a few years ago, and UToronto was then regarded as a landmark of excellence, so this story was resonating slightly personally.
I knew they already had "integrated" a naturopath cursus. But this story about an homeopath teaching the other side of vaccines triggered in me a massive WTF moment.
Coming from a place where insulin was first extracted and then used to save the life of a diabetic boy in the hospital next door, it's a really sad orientation.

A CBC Marketplace investigation filmed her advising a young mother against vaccines and promoting homeopathic nosodes as an alternative.

Oh, so it was her, to top it. I didn't know that.
And how the heck the university dean doesn't smell some massive conflict of interest, here?
I mean, it's one thing to teach about something you happen to be selling, but a whole course dedicated in dissing your competitors?

I have to be honest, I could not get through more than a couple minutes of that video - it was downright painful. Forget quantum physics, I don't think she even understands algebra.

Aaaand... she's gone.

http://www.speakingupforscience.ca/news/2015/7/6/lecturer-who-taught-an…

We will delve into a quantum physics’ understanding of disease and alternative medicine to provide a scientific hypothesis of how these modalities may work. ... This science offers clear explanations as to why homeopathic remedies with seemingly no chemical trace of the original substance are able to resolve chronic diseases, why acupuncture can offer patients enough pain relief to undergo surgery without anesthesia, why meditation alone can, in some instances, reduce the size of cancerous tumors.

I did my Masters and PhD at UofT in physics (particle physics) so have more than a passing knowledge of QM. It saddens me that UofT offers a course where such a statement can be made. Letters of concern shall be sent.

Aaaand… she’s gone.

That was quick.

Someone from higher up in the administration saw the potential reputational damage this might cause.

Aaaand… she’s gone.

I should have read the comments first.

This all sounded so familiar. Turns out a very similar thing happened just a stone's throw away at Queen's University earlier this year. For a while I wondered if it was the same person, but no it was not.

http://storify.com/iDuchaine/anti-vax-have-no-place-in-canada-s-univers…

William W Thompson just went to the Obama administration and applied and received f’Whistleblower status’

I am not sure this is the case. There is no record that this has happened.

What it has to do with teaching homeopathy at the University of Toronto I am struggling with.

Nothing. It has nothing to do with U of T. I suggest that "he who laughs last" choose a vaccine thread if he/she/it wants to spew that nonsense. If he persists on this post with off-topic comments I will simply delete them.

@ Bob

I don’t think she even understands algebra

There is some part in the video where she simplifies E=m.c2 into E=c2, because the mass of the whole universe is negligible.
The most beautiful* division by zero I ever saw.

* in the artistic sense. In the arithmetic sense, it's awful.

I just explained her simplification of E=mc^2 into E=c^2 to a colleague. We had a good laugh (tinged with sadness that this level of crap could be taught in a University Course). I used to have 1st year students do this on lab reports/assignments (when stuck on a problem) in the hope that I'd not notice.

Whatever the case may be, someone's corn flakes definitely got pissed in this morning.

Quantum physics is a branch of physics that understands the interrelationship between matter and energy. This science offers clear explanations as to why homeopathic remedies with seemingly no chemical trace of the original substance are able to resolve chronic diseases, why acupuncture can offer patients enough pain relief to undergo surgery without anesthesia, why meditation alone can, in some instances, reduce the size of cancerous tumors.

As Stewart (above) notes, the University of Toronto has a reputable physics department, and even the undergraduate students in that program (let alone the faculty) could tell you that the above quotation is unadulterated malarkey. Quantum physics deals with the microscopic behavior of matter. It can tell you in precise mathematical detail why homeopathy doesn't work (but it's overkill for that purpose; you get essentially the same answer if you use high school chemistry). Acupuncture needles are big enough that any effects they might have should be explainable with classical physics, without invoking quantum effects (at that scale quantum physics reduces to classical physics). The last claim about meditation is meaningless, since we don't have an adequate description of the physics of meditation.

Oh, and she (or maybe the woman in the video, which I haven't watched) is invoking E = mc^2? That's special relativity, not quantum physics. TV Tropes has an entire page devoted to that sort of thing.

"While I do not find that the course is unbalanced, in the sense of the term used above, I do believe it could be strengthened by greater engagement of academic colleagues through such a review process... If the course is to be offered again in the future it should be developed as a regular course and taken through the usual governance reviews."

This is academic-speak for "We've got to cover our asses better the next time we offer crap taught by relatives of influential administrators."

#3 @he who laughs last

So what does your middle ground look like?

Because there is something a bit binary about it. Either you vaccinate enough people to either eradicate a disease (which we can do with significant effort and expense) or keep it mostly at bay or you do not. Because lets work really hard to make sure the grandkids don't even need some of the vaccinations anymore because it is gone makes more sense to me than lets work really hard to make sure the disease will always be with us because we will not ever do anything to make sure enough people are vaccinated against anything ever again.

Vaccinating 50% of the people 50% of the time (the absolute middle) just ensures the diseases can never be eliminated and no amount of sanitation or vitamin pills is going to do what the vaccine will.

Or do you pick 50% of the vaccines to keep mandating and just hope enough people volunteer for the rest that you never come across someone contagious with the other things?

Do you include the harms from the diseases in determining where "middle" is?

Do you just chuck all the science because we don't actually spend the time and money it would take to fix the system, and do you acknowledge there can be bad science on both sides of the debate or is most pro-vaccine science bad and most anti-vaxx science is good no matter how many times it is found to be problematic? Or just put it all in a blender and hope the sludge is about 50% right?

Oops, sorry I asked questions, I just find the middle ground argument annoying. I will stay on the topic of U of T from now on in the thread.

@16 - Eric Lund
Thank you for being much more eloquent and actually explaining what is wrong with the QM woo taught in this course.

Too much time zone crossing has occurred as of late (with more to come) such that it is amazing that pointing and grunting are not the only form of communication that I possess.

General relativists use notation in which G = c = 1, in which case that the equation would simplify to E = m, not E = c^2, which is just plain stupid -- indeed, the stupid, it burns!

A sibling of mine teaches at Scarborough Campus. All I'm going to say is politics.

Pardon the theological expletive, but, "Good God!!"

This should have been sufficient to produce two firings, not one: "This particular homeopath happens to be the wife of Rick Halpern, the Dean of the University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus, which is the campus where the course was offered this spring."

Whatever happened to rules against nepotism??

I finally understand why quantum quackery is dangerous. Apologies for the long learning curve on this one:

Having gotten through classical physics well enough to make a fool of myself in public, I knew next to zilch about QM until I started reading (reputable books & stuff online, yeah I know) on my own and interacting with working physicists in various forums. So with that description of Landau-Halpern's quantum BS (I didn't watch the video, having just eaten I didn't want to waste a meal and clean the barf off my desk), I envisioned myself as student sitting in that course, knowing about physics what I knew at the relevant age.

Uh-oh.

Because at that age I knew next to nothing about QM, so my mind would have been an open field, ripe for infesting with wacky weeds, plus or minus getting a serious "WTF?" moment about her torture of Einstein. Whether or not that particular WTF would have been sufficient to plant some seeds of doubt to keep the wacky weeds from taking over, I don't know.

But assuming that credulousness follows a normal curve, and the curve is skewed for the population who would take that class: there would be plenty of kids there who would swallow the garbage whole and not even burp. Thereafter going on to spread it like measles among their peers and some day, their patients.

Aack.

No, we can't have that. Glad to hear a bunch of physicists complained.

Best of all to hear she's out of there. I'll guess that everyone involved is going to concoct a placebo press release with a homeopathic dose of excuses (diluted to what level?) to cover their derrieres. But at least she's out of there.

Unbelieveably, bald-faced, nepotism. Like Dr. Oz and his hand-waving wife, the head of UT clearly wanted to a: keep peace at home, and b: steer more Loonies from the Uni coffers into their household. I hope the latest slap on the wrist puts the entire program on notice.

In other news, a local doyenne of the business community in my happy hamlet, has announced in a 3000 word interview penned by our local corporate butt-nuzzling rag, that her company may basically pollute at will because a disembodied Native American spirit told her it was okay as long as she added some solar panels. And she's a reiki practitioner.

That is all.

#14 stewartt1982

You missed the worst of it: e = mc^2 morphed into e=c. She did not even understand the distinction between c and c^2 in her talk.

Overall thought, thevideo was excellent. I am now a total convert to homoeopathy. How exactly do I hold the bottle while I shake it? Oh and can I dilute with a 50/50 mixture of gin and white vermouth rather than water?

I barely got out of Gr 13 Physics alive but the sheer idiocy of her presentation is amazing even to me. Are we sure she is not Alan Sokal in disguise?

As the video played I was also looking at something on the desk and I failed to notice when it ended. The next time I looked it was a man with a white beard (no not him) talking and I looked on with shock at the Caltech sign on the lecture. Woo at Caltech? Ah no, it was James Randi doing a marvellously funny take-down on homoeopathy. Lovely segue

I knew U of T had woo problems but it is a pity to see it spreading like that.

I was under the impression that my local university (Queen's Kingston) was pretty-well woo free--at least nothing in the medical school seems to show up but last winter the student newspaper, The Journal had some articles on a Health Sciences course with anti-vax propaganda. From the article, it looked like the course had been run by the same woman or 2 or 3 years.

It was heartwarming to read about student response to such a course. There had been complaints before but the student government this year reported “Zarzour said, a complaint was filed to him on behalf of an entire class”. http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2015-02-05/news/queens-prof-slammed-a…

I believe something was finally done, the instructor was eased out of the course and is not teaching it again as far as I can see. To be fair to her, it seems that the course was quite outside her area and she may have just been dropped into it.

Adjuncts don't have a lot of bargaining power it they want to keep eating but one wonders why the Faculty kept her in such a course after all those complaints.

It is to be hoped that she is not spreading too much woo in the courses she does teach. However a quick look at RateMyProf is not totally encouraging “While some of the material was questionable, she definitely did her best” for another course.

Gray Squirrel is correct:
woo invoking QM is often aimed at an audience that has no idea what it's really about and it sounds IMPRESSIVE as well- simultaneously science-y and sophisticated- above the common masses' ken, elevating its interpreter to his rightful place above most of humanity.

Idiotic woo-slingers like Mikey and Gary Null similarly mangle physics - including classical - in order to awe their audiences into a worshipful stupor. Incredibly, they might decorate their physics with a dollop of Eastern Religion as well making for a mighty mashup of ideas most likely beyond their OWN ken.
But then, they may have read a page or two of Capra's book.

Interestingly, Mike, paragon of faux science that he is, isn't content until he has included all branches of research science in his mind-boggling parody of meaningfulness: he opines esoterically upon cognitive psychology which he claims to have studied.

Really. He said that.

I would venture a guess that he mentions it because MOST people do not study cognitive psychology so it has that *mysterioso* aura much as QM does. Similarly, anything with 'neuro-' as a prefix.

Thus, whenever I hear an altie bring up QM, cognition or epigenetics ( but hardly ever JUST genetics) I see it as a shibboleth that this is indeed woo and self-PR, enhanced by delusions of grandeur as well as a canny business sense.

Whatever happened to rules against nepotism??

I can't speak for the Canadian system, and my comments are only relevant if the dean in question was an external hire, but it's common in the US to include a job offer for the spouse in an offer package when hiring at the dean level or above (this has even been known to happen at the assistant professor level, but the likelihood increases with the level of the hire). One of the drawbacks of being in academia is what is called the two-body problem: the difficulty of finding two faculty-level jobs within feasible commuting distance of each other. It's a particular problem in physics: I understand that a majority of the women in the US who have Ph.D. degrees in physics are married to men who have Ph.D. degrees in physics. And many of the ones who aren't are married to people with Ph.D. degrees in some other discipline. I don't know how big an issue it is in other fields, but university hiring committees do have to consider the two-body problem if they want to hire their preferred candidates. So if Halpern was an external hire, hiring his wife as well is not necessarily nefarious. But if he was an internal hire, that's more of an issue.

applied and received f’Whistleblower status’

Owing to a clerical error, Thompson actually received Vuvuzuela-blower status.

After watching that video, I can finally achieve all my wildest dreams by simply ignoring mass! This is quite liberating. I no longer drive to work, but rather float on light beams of energy. What a time-saver! Also, I can eat whatever I want, and I can tell my SO that mass is irrelevant, so pass the cheese fries! Wait, I think we just solved the obesity epidemic. Thanks, homeopathy!

"Thompson actually received Vuvuzuela-blower status."

No, he is a whistle blower, though more accurately a dog whistle blower. Only the dogs can hear him blowing. Or at least they imagine that's what he's doing.

@27 Eric Lund
While I'm Canadian, but can't really speak to how common hiring both members of a couple in the two-body problem is in Canada. I do know that it is common outside of the US as I'm friends with 3 physics couples in Europe who had their spouse receiving a position as part of their contracts. It is probably the same in Canada.

Anyone in academia outside of physics know if this is common practice for other fields?

"General relativists use notation in which G = c = 1, in which case that the equation would simplify to E = m, not E = c^2, which is just plain stupid — indeed, the stupid, it burns!"

Indeed. The relativistic conservation law conserves mass-energy (since they are fundamentally equivalent), replacing the older conservation laws. So if she's reduced mass all she's done is invoke thermonuclear fusion. She has truly bombed.

#3 Truth-Out, huh?

You honestly think no one has seen this before?

"Alex James is a critical scholar of science, culture and social policy. He has a MA in cultural translation from the American University of Paris, France, and a BA in political science from California State University, Sacramento."

Exactly the credentials I like to see in my medical advisers.

I don't know what the funding arrangements are for students in Canada. If it's like Britain, where the kids take out massive loans to pay for their education, and then spend much of their lives paying it back, I think some of them should think carefully about what they've paid for with this course.

And then they should issue small claims lawsuits against the University of Toronto - who, I can guarantee - will pay back some element of the fees for this course, just to make what they have done go away. There would be no shortage of medical and scientific opinion, not only that the course was worthless, but that participants were educationally damaged by it.

Seriously, guys, get advice, sue them, and watch them run.

Oh herr doktor, how you made me laugh. I'm so stealing that.

Newsflash: CDC informant granted Vuvuzuela-blower status!

I got sort of curious and wanted to find out where the whole "Obama granted Thompson ’Whistleblower status’" thing started. It turns out it was an article headlined "Obama Admin Grants Immunity To CDC Scientist That Fudged Vaccine Report…Whistleblower Plans To Testify Before Congress," written by a fellow named Patrick Howley and published Febraury 3 2015 at something called "The Daily Caller".

This is what The Daily Caller says about itself

Founded in 2010 by Tucker Carlson, a 20-year veteran journalist, and Neil Patel, former chief policy advisor to Vice President Cheney, The Daily Caller is a 24-hour news publication providing its audience with original reporting, in-depth investigations, thought-provoking commentary and breaking news.

The original article did not substantiate the headline claim in the body of the article. Never the less, it has been widely repeated by the usual suspects.

Whatever happened to rules against nepotism??

Rules against nepotism? In academia? Not only are there no specific rules against it, spousal hires are a thing, at least at my university.

^ Ah, I see Eric Lund preceded me with a comment about spousal hires. I can say that other forms of nepotism are not exactly uncommon, though, either.

Maybe she discarded mass because, hey, the universe is 90% dark matter and we can't do much with that stuff anyhow, like, you know.

Maybe homeopaths should start invoking dark matter interactions as the next nonexistent reason for their quackery.

"Obama Admin Grants Immunity To CDC Scientist That Fudged Vaccine Report…Whistleblower Plans To Testify Before Congress”

This is obviously false. The Obama Administration is spending all its time these days urging Americans to refinance their mortgages.

Tucker Carlson,geez.I am not surprised in the least.Tucker is a friend of Alex Jones and a 9/11 Truther.

In many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following.

The Daily Caller has been known to sink to even lower depths than Glenn Beck.In many ways they could be called the whale.to or Natural News of right wing news sites.

Oh, and she (or maybe the woman in the video, which I haven’t watched) is invoking E = mc^2? That’s special relativity, not quantum physics.

Am I the only one who gets irritated when the momentum term is left out?

Maybe homeopaths should start invoking dark matter interactions as the next nonexistent reason for their quackery.

LMAO

A "former pharmaceutical company employee now making the AVx rounds claiming that she now uses homeopathy 'because Vioxx.' I needed a good laugh.

Denice/Gr*ySquirrel "woo invoking Quantum Mechanics" can only be invoked as mysterioso psychedelia by those who have never actually actually had to cram for Schroedinger equations on a college finals exam, when quantum mechanics is not entirely a bowl of bon bons.

@34 - Brian Deer

I came out of a long stint (12 years in all) of university education 2 years ago. The typical student in Canada has student loans, mine totalled ~26000 CAD or ~13000 GBP at todays exchange rates (loans for only the first 5.5 years ... had a research stipend+teaching assistant salary in grad school).
This value is approximately the average student loan in Canada. Not sure how this compares to the UK.

Payments every month ... thank goodness the pound has done nothing but rise relative to the Canadian dollar.

Liz @35: Wikipedia's article on Tucker Carlson mentions this gem:

Columnist Mickey Kaus quit [the Daily Caller] after Carlson refused to run a column critical of Fox News' coverage of the immigration policy debate.

Carlson also works for Fox News. So yes, we are talking about a suspect source.

@Narad

Am I the only one who gets irritated when the momentum term is left out?

It's at rest, so you can leave out the momentum. And um, the rest mass as well, apparently, because quantum.

@41 - Narad

I become a little annoyed. I can't remember how many times I've come across people with disproofs of relativity based on E=mc^2 ... because how could a photon have energy if m=0!

@ #34

Won't happen. It's not the culture. This will all just go away.

The mass of the universe is negligible because if it were compressed down to the size of a ball (which couldn't happen because of electromagnetic forces) then its mass would be negligible? Did she really say that? And did she really say that if the mass is negligible then the value of "m" is 1? On the other hand, according to Douglas Adams,

The Universe is a very big thing that contains a great number of planets and a great number of beings. It is Everything. What we live in. All around us. The lot. Not nothing. It is quite difficult to actually define what the Universe means, but fortunately the Guide doesn't worry about that and just gives us some useful information to live in it.
Area: The area of the Universe is infinite.

Imports: None. This is a by product of infinity; it is impossible to import things into something that has infinite volume because by definition there is no outside to import things from.

Exports: None, for similar reasons as imports.

Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero, therefore the average population of the Universe is zero, and so the total population must be zero.

Art: None. Because the function of art is to hold a mirror up to nature there can be no art because the Universe is infinite which means there simply isn't a mirror big enough.

Sex: None. Although in fact there is quite a lot, given the zero population of the Universe there can in fact be no beings to have sex, and therefore no sex happens in the Universe.”

E=mc*2 becomes E=c*2 because m is negligible???? Maybe she has an alternative (sorry, integrative) theory of arithmetic.... Like the strange law of cancellation : To divide 64 by 16, just cancel the 6's. Similarly, to divide 98 by 49, cancel the 9's.

@ stewartt1982:

I think you got away fairly cheaply:
this story may make you feel so-

my cousin died suddenly 10 years ago, leaving a daughter who wanted to be an architect:
she was left an insurance policy from his employer and a year later, money from his father who also died, for her education ( I imagine both together equaled about 400000 in CAD). She acquired a bachelor's degree and a master's and now is working, evaluating buildings,
HOWEVER her mother still has a loan which she needed to compete her terminal degree.
I didn't dare ask how much the loan was for.

@52 - Denice Walter

I count my blessings that I did my schooling in Canada where my tuition from 2000-2012 varied from 4500-7000 per annum (different schools and degrees). For Canada the 26000 CAD loan is about average but it was a bargain compared to a comparable education in the US.

There appears to be no prerequisite for the course, so I suspect it is a "general interest" sort of thing.

Won’t happen. It’s not the culture. This will all just go away.

I agree, especially in view of my remark, above. I think it is actually likely that many people who took the course would welcome more of the same. If it were made into a core course in a normal academic program, then loud howling would certainly be justified.

I don't know how U of T works, but at my former institution of servitude all academic appointments, including those for part-time sessional instructors ("adjunct", in many places) came from the Board of Governors, so there was some barrier to crass nepotism or other favoritism.

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien

On the other hand, according to Douglas Adams,

IIRC, following the passage you quoted is a very appropriate footnote about UToronto situation, stating that this diatribe about the bigness of the universe is that you get for leaving the doors open during lunchtime and letting the first idiot walk in and writing down any sort of nonsense.

It is hardly necessary to criticize Werner's arithmetic. She doesn't even comprehend the difference between mass and volume.

If one were to make a bowling ball with a mass of one percent of the total mass of the universe, and barring the existence of other objects of significant mass, how far would a bowling pin have to be from the ball to keep it from falling over/flying a great velocity due to the ball's gravity?

I count my blessings that I did my schooling in Canada where my tuition from 2000-2012 varied from 4500-7000 per annum (different schools and degrees). For Canada the 26000 CAD loan is about average but it was a bargain compared to a comparable education in the US.

My undergrad tuition was actually about $5000 a year*, back in 2005-2009. I did go to the cheapest four-year college in Washington state, though.** Being dirt poor actually had some benefits, in that in addition to a Pell grant, I also got a grant from the state of Washington that pretty much matched it. Jobs and scholarships rounded out the rest, which is how I managed to graduate without any debt. Getting a PhD, of course, is not something a smart person pays for, either.

I was honestly shocked and appalled at how expensive undergrad tuition is even for in-state students at the University of Michigan these days.

*I even paid it out like half of pocket during my second year, when I didn't have any financial aid except a couple scholarships. (Long story.) That was the year I lived in things like sheds and sailboats.

**I picked it because it was cheap and I heard you could get in fairly easy with a GED, and apparently they didn't look askance at 16-year-olds, not realizing that I probably could have gotten into most places I'd have wanted to. I'm glad I went there, though, in hindsight.

I count my blessings that I did my schooling in Canada where my tuition from 2000-2012 varied from 4500-7000 per annum (different schools and degrees). For Canada the 26000 CAD loan is about average but it was a bargain compared to a comparable education in the US.

My tuition back in the '80s was $25,000 a year IIRC, but not many paid rack rate. I was left with $10,000 in loans to be repaid over 10 years.

@57 - JP
I did my undergrad at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) (the Canadian province not the city in NJ). A small university, with a relatively low tuition, and not particularly world renowned. I picked it because it was in my home city and I could live at home. In hindsight I think it was for the best ... a good education with small class sizes where one was able to get know their professors (even in 'large' first year classes). Having demonstrated labs at UofT where class sizes were much larger (my graduate level courses were ~the same size as my more specialised undergraduate 1st and 2nd year courses) I think I choose wisely for undergrad.

Getting a PhD, of course, is not something a smart person pays for, either.

I always loved getting my stipend at the beginning of the year, then immediately seeing a large chunk disappear to pay tuition. I'm sure there is a good reason (or at least a reason) but not charging tuition and paying a smaller stipend somehow seems easier.

I did my undergrad at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) (the Canadian province not the city in NJ). A small university, with a relatively low tuition, and not particularly world renowned.

I went here: I wouldn't say it's renowned, but it seems to a growing cachet the further east you go. "Oh, you went to Evergreen," I remember the chair of my department remarking when I was visiting the campus five years ago.

a good education with small class sizes where one was able to get know their professors (even in ‘large’ first year classes).

Yeah, same with Evergreen. The whole "getting to know your professors" aspect led to near-radioactive recommendation letters, I'm pretty sure.

I was also more than used to seminars by the time I got to grad school, too, not to mention writing research papers. I didn't realize just how good I had it until I heard some stories from my Russian students about 400-student lectures involving something called an "i-clicker."

I always loved getting my stipend at the beginning of the year, then immediately seeing a large chunk disappear to pay tuition. I’m sure there is a good reason (or at least a reason) but not charging tuition and paying a smaller stipend somehow seems easier.

I get a notice that I've been billed for tuition, but it's just paid on my behalf, which, yes, seems much easier. I also don't know if I could cope with that much money being deposited in my bank account and then parting with it immediately afterward.

Not unbalanced, no. Unhinged is the word.

I count my blessings that I did my education post-Marine Corps so that Uncle Sugar picked up the tab for about 80% of it.

(whenever some well-meaning citizens thank me for my service I thank them for my master's).

From mothering.com on the piece. Haha.

"You posted "Required Readings/ Viewings for this week:"
What about the other 11 weeks? Easy to judge a class based on one week of required readings.

Besides, when you talk about a topic for a college class that week's readings are usually all about that specific topic. Looks like that week was about vaccine critics. This is a valid topic for research and study.

Poor woman was trying to get her students to actual compare this information to the normally accepted beliefs and studies to see if there was a difference in methods, results, implications, etc. Too see how they differed in logic, assumptions, etc. It's really quite an exquisite example of a college class.

It's unfortunate that book burners still exist. Freedom of literature, language, and science unfortunately doesn't just mean agreeing with whatever is considered true according to 1. the government, 2. religion, 3. the medical establishment, 4. your family, 5. etc.

The purpose of a college education is to read things you may or may not agree with and to learn to handle them - to critically analyze, to interpret, to read between the lines. If you believe that this woman had no right to teach something that you disagree with then you have other issues relating to freedom of speech and education. I wonder if you ever had to read and study something you didn't agree with? It's terribly valuable for cognition."

They really are something else...

" It's terribly valuable for cognition"

Yiiiiii! Another one on the cognition!

The purpose of a college education is to read things you may or may not agree with and to learn to handle them – to critically analyze, to interpret, to read between the lines. If you believe that this woman had no right to teach something that you disagree with then you have other issues relating to freedom of speech and education. I wonder if you ever had to read and study something you didn’t agree with? It’s terribly valuable for cognition.”

This is established scientific fact , not a comparative literature course. Then again, most all of the sMothering critters aren't real big on science and critical-thinking.

What about the other 11 weeks? Easy to judge a class based on one week of required readings.

They couldn't find the syllabus (PDF)?

Tucker Carlson,geez.I am not surprised in the least.Tucker is a friend of Alex Jones and a 9/11 Truther.

I am given to believe that he aspires to Dead Breitbart levels of relevance. I doubt that he is as sincerely deranged as Jones; he's just a skeevy little ratfecker who goes where the money is. Also he wears a bowtie.

@hewholaughs last:

If you wonder why your latest comment didn't show up, it's because you changed your e-mail address and the system saw it as a new commenter, and the first comment from all new commenters automatically go to moderation. This reminds me of the behavior of a certain other commenter, who used to change his e-mail address to various variants practically every day, if not every hour. I got fed up with it and no longer put up with such behavior. If you can't be bothered to use a consistent 'nym and e-mail address, I can't be bothered to re-approve you each time you change.

No, I didn't approve the comment. Use the e-mail address you started with if you want your comments to show up.

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/06/homeopathy-invaded-er.html

@ #1, #2, #3

999 times out of 1000 someone laughing on their own is indicative of psychosis, not victory.

999 times out of 1000 someone laughing on their own is indicative of psychosis, not victory.

Oh jeez, maybe that's why I have such a hard time getting a clean bill of mental health.

Naaaah, it's probably the extensive raft of pathologies.

Denise @ 26: Thanks, and yeah they like "neuro-" too. The worst of it is The Singularity, utter quack nonsense with the full endorsement of Google. The flashy garbage attracts its deluded devotees, but the flip side of that coin is that legit work in any of these areas can get tarred with the same brush, so everybody loses.

Eric Lund @ 27: The two-body problem: good point. I've heard about this before and it goes hand-in-hand with a particularly obnoxious aspect of the academic world: Shuffling people around geographically until they get tenure somewhere (or starve), by which point they have become completely disconnected from any sense of geographic roots (or they've starved).

Barefoot @ 43: But psychedelia is _good_, as long as one doesn't overdo, and as long as one doesn't engage in "psychedelic fundamentalism" ("it felt powerful therefore it's literal revealed truth as given"). Self-skepticism is a necessary skill for those sorts of things, as with any other state of consciousness including our "normal waking state" with all of its emotional biases.

Annie @ 63: That's all fine & fair in the humanities, for example literature. But science has right and wrong answers (as well as some very large gray zones where we don't have clear answers yet), and the answers don't care about our feelings. Try making a paper airplane that looks like a flower and see if it flies. See if it flies any better if you "really put your heart into it." And the problem with "believing in" wrong answers (such as homeopathy and anti-vax) is that trying to act on those answers makes people sick and kills them. Now imagine building an airliner that looks like a flower, and see how you feel about 200 dead bodies strewn across the runway. Does that make sense to you?

@Gray Squirrel

Annie pulled that quote from mothering.com. I gather from the "haha" that she's most likely not in agreement with it. ㋡

My tuition back in the ’80s was $25,000 a year IIRC

You're probably including room and board in that figure, and possibly some other fees. I recall my annual tuition bill (at a private university known among other things for its high tuition costs) crossing the $10k line while I was an undergraduate. The nominal dollar cost of attending the flagship state university of my state as an in-state student is now higher than that. And many of the students here are from out of state--even out of country (the Chinese are the most obvious contingent due to their numbers--it's no longer weird to hear conversations in Chinese on the streets of Universityville--but we see students from other countries as well). Foreigners can sometimes get work-study positions and private loans, but for any other kind of financial aid in the US you have to be a US citizen or permanent resident.

I find it disturbing that Integrated medicine is basically sneaking into Universities. After I read this article I went onto my school website and sure enough it was there. Acupuncture, chiropractic, and biofeedback was all there. What's worse is that it's based on the medical and health sciences campus.

I dropped a sadarian screed at SBM in reply to Steve Novella's post on this today (7/8).
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/university-of-toronto-coddles-quac…

While much of this applies to Orac's post as well, I commend the blinking box for mentioning Rick Halpern by name (this is rather obviously his show) and noting that his wife's class was a Special Topics course offered under the auspices of the Anthropology Department.

A couple corrections: "Aand... she's gone." "This should have been sufficient to produce two firings, not one." Nope. She wasn't fired, and she was never really 'there' in the first place. The UT PR peeps are trying to make the U seen more proactive by saying "she is no longer on the staff," hinting that they 'did the right thing' by dumping here. She was teaching one class as an adjunct. That's not being "on the staff". It's temp work; contracting; ends each term at the end of the class. What has happened is that UT has declared they will not enter another contract with Landau-Halpernwas to offer a section of their Special Topics course devoted to CAM.

The happy noises you're hearing coming from the vicinity of Scarborough are the chuckles and sighs of relief from the Health Studies faculty, as the controversy ginned up over the class has gotten Rick Halpern off their back, and he'll no longer be able to meddle with their curriculum to help his wife promote her homeoathy practice.

As Delphine says, this will all 'go away' because they're not going to dump Halpern over something as petty as getting his wife an adjunct gig. Given her dubious credentials even for a Health Studies course in woo, had he bullied Anthro into opening any kind of continuing position for her (say, a half-time instructorship) this bad press MIGHT pose a real threat to his position. As it happened, he's probably in the dog-house with his bosses and will be slowly bled dry by being denied promotion or new perks, and tighter reign/oversight on whatever power he has.

OF COURSE, Vivek Goel is going to defend everything and everyone involved in public as that is seen as 'protecting UTs reputation'. That's how bureaucracies work: deny everything to the outside world and TCB in private. The knives come out behind closed doors...

What’s next? Teaching young earth creationism in biology classes? Teaching astrology in astronomy class?

I don't know, but if so that will be the doing of the Pharmacy Department or an Integretive Medicine program in the Health SCIENCES. This was a class in Health STUDIES; ain't the same thing. Creationism, astrology, homeopathy, and anti-vax are not only allowable subjects for Anthropology, but quite pertinent exactly because some, uhh, 'questionable things' are going on under the rubric of 'legitimate science'.

Yes, Beth Landau-Halpern should never have been contracted to teach in this program – even if she kept her pedagogy free of her own partisanship, she has huge COI with the public positions she's taken in her 'professional' practice via endorsing CEASE 'therapy' and homeopathic treatment for ADHD. But Vivik Goel is right about one thing – as part of an Anthro program, Health Studies students ought to be well prepared to consider the course materials IN CONTEXT, in a spirit of critical analysis, and inquiry., as that context WILL have included enough material on where legit medical science stands on CAM. This isn't a field where students memorize the content of authoritative readings, and get evaluated by machine scored 'objective' tests. The purpose of assigning a reading is to generate student discussion and debate around the claims of the author, and the proper role of the instructor is to keep the discussion on track, and pose key questions via the Socratic method, to be a cheerleader for thinking-through the topics, not for any given perspective on them..

A kind of on topic sort of rant:

It drives me crazy. All kinds of woo. From antivax explanations that go too deeply into how vaccines might cause damage in the body to how some supplements or device or treatment might work ('oh! it's quantum!) or trying to argue why there isn't one major conspiracy that conveniently ties them all together to makes them work.

How in the world do you ever get smart enough to be able to explain that "quantum" is not a defense for homeopathy? Especially when you know enough to know quantum deals with matter and energy at atomic and subatomic levels, and you learned Avagadro's number in ninth grade chemistry, and nothing has demonstrated that water has memory.

For that matter, you are immune to the natural thing because you had a wonderful time learning about organic chemistry molecules in advanced science senior year, understand they have their own little names and end up showing up in the compounds... that everything is a "chemical" or can be described as a chemical name.

But I am too stupid to argue with antivax people or quantum wooists, iridologists, or even a really enthusiastic massage therapist. I get so frustrated with this.

Orac mentioned Lionel "derailed train" Milgrom. That bozo makes Humpty Dumpty look like Bertrand Russell. When he uses language, you can guarantee that whatever he tries to make it mean is WRONG, by which I mean it means something utterly different in the communities that formed the concepts and use them in actual, you know, thinking. An equal-opportunity crap artist, is manglings of 'Theory' are as loopy-awful as his manglings of 'Science'. Or worse, considering the wider acceptable free-play in the Humanities, from which he's still way, waaay off.

I'd say it's not his stylings per se that can melt the brains of honest-to-goodness physicists AND honest-to-goodness scholars of cultural studies/PoMo/yada-yada-yada. The melt comes from the heat of anger at the thought that even one human being might consider Milgrom knows what he's talking about. Thankfully, most 'theory' folk are safe from combustion in fits of quintillion K burning rage, as they have never heard of this putz, and have no cause to encounter his hyper-garbage in the course of their labors.

Yes, ignorance of the depths of WTF can be bliss. I'd curse Orac for the RI post that pointed me to Milgrom, but there's something to be said for the empathy developed by sharing another's pain... I feel you, my brother, I really do.

Oh, I have more posts about Milgrom. He's the gift, as far as blog fodder goes, that keeps on giving...

I'm reminded of the course John Wayne, Father of NATO.

So what does your middle ground look like?
Because there is something a bit binary about it. Either you vaccinate enough people to either eradicate a disease (which we can do with significant effort and expense) or keep it mostly at bay or you do not. Because lets work really hard to make sure the grandkids don’t even need some of the sedef vaccinations anymore because it is gone makes more sense to me than lets work really hard to make sure the disease will always be with us because we will not ever do anything to make sure enough people are vaccinated against anything ever again.
Vaccinating 50% of the people 50% of the time (the absolute middle) just ensures the diseases can never be eliminated and no amount of sanitation or vitamin pills is going to do what the vaccine will.

Or do you pick 50% of the vaccines to keep mandating and just hope enough people volunteer for the rest that you never come across someone contagious with the other things?
Do you include the harms from the diseases in determining where “middle” is?
Do you just chuck all the science because we don’t actually spend the time and money it would take to fix the system, and do you acknowledge there can be bad science on both sides of the debate or is most pro-vaccine science bad and most anti-vaxx science is good no matter how many times it is found to be problematic? Or just put it all in a blender and hope the sludge is about 50% right

FYI the exact copy of my comment @ #18 by a sound alike name was not done by me.

Because the nonsense comment #81 is spam.

Well, it's not exact. I see a link has been added, that I wouldn't click for love or money.

TraceRT shows me that the link @81 goes to a server in Turkey. I'll ZAG our host a note and suggest the comment be removed.

The pdf of the course description is no longer available at https://ahautsc.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hltd04-alternative-health-p…

I knew I should have downloaded it.

Seems to me Werner (and no doubt the rest) are applying homeopathic theory to physics. Namely, take a quantum physics theory, dilute it down until there isn't a particle of the original truth left, and parcel it as Quantum-Physics-Based Homeopathic Therapy.

E=mc*2 becomes E=c*2 because m is negligible???? Maybe she has an alternative (sorry, integrative) theory of arithmetic…. Like the strange law of cancellation : To divide 64 by 16, just cancel the 6’s. Similarly, to divide 98 by 49, cancel the 9’s

I was shocked to hear Indre Viskontas of Inquiring Minds podcast support this class at her alma mater! She presents a master class on how one can end up over one's head outside their field of expertise...

It could get worse. There's Aaron Carroll writing stuff like this in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/labels-like-alternative-medici…

There's a germ of an idea I agree with, but it's slathered so deep in false equivalence between quackery and science that I can't stand it.