Snake Oil

This is a speech I gave at Toastmasters a few years ago.

Come one! Come all! Step right up and see the miracle cure, the guaranteed, in-arguable, un-beatable medicament, and cure-all. It reduces swelling, soothes arth-ritis, and grows new hair on the bald. It relieves indigestion, cools fever, and smoothes out pimples. And this marvel, this balm and universal comforter, can be YOURS for the low price of one dollar -- that's only ONE dollar for this six-ounce bottle, good for a full YEAR of treatment.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? But if I used scientific-sounding words, instead of carnival-barker talk, there are millions -- billions -- of people who'd believe it.

We want to be healthy. Actually it's stronger than that: we're all afraid to be sick, and that fear can motivate people to do totally unreasonable things, things that make no sense, in order to at least have the HOPE of health.

What I'm going to do today is describe a couple of the enormous number of useless remedies that are being used right now, in this country, by perfectly intelligent people. For each, I'll describe what it is, then why it's silly, and why people continue to use it. Then it'll be time to discuss the important question: what can we do about it?

If anyone listening has used one of these treatments, I hope you won't be offended. As I said, millions of people have at least tried each of these.

I'll begin with something that even sounds silly. "Ear Candling". It's just what it sounds like, too. You put a candle in your ear and light it. Actually, an assistant does the work while you lie on your side.

What's the benefit of this? Well, it's a special cone-shaped hollow candle, and the idea is that the heat of the flame warms the ear, and the wicking effect of the candle draws excess ear wax out. A list of only some of the things it's supposed to cure include: TMJ (temporo-mandibular joint syndrome), tinnitus (ringing in the ears), relieving sinus pressure, earache, and much vaguer things like "relieve tension" and "purify the blood".

That's one characteristic of snake-oil medicine, by the way: making lots of claims, some of them very vague and hard to pin down.

Why is it snake oil? Because, for one thing, careful experiments have shown that the candles don't remove any wax from the ear. The idea that the candle somehow sucks anything out of the sinuses is naive. The ear drum blocks the ear canal off from all other structures inside the head. Bottom line: there is NO evidence that ear candles work.

So why believe it? Well, it's cheap to do -- the candles cost as little as two dollars. It has a nice "New Age" sound to it -- talk of things like "energy" and "stress reduction" on the package. And it doesn't seem very risky. Mostly, though, I think people just don't think about it. If you see the product in a health food store, it must be healthy.

Well, okay, you're thinking. Ear candling is OBVIOUSLY stupid. It doesn't even sound scientific! Well "Homeopathy" sure does. A very, very popular school of "alternative medicine" right now, homeopathy is based on two principles. One says that you cure a disease by giving the patient a substance that would, in larger quantities, CAUSE the same symptoms. The other says that the LESS of the medication you give, the GREATER the effect. Homeopathic remedies are almost all completely harmless, even if they give something toxic like mercury, because they're really, really diluted. Sometimes they're so diluted they're GONE. A common homeopathic remedy for the common cold, oscillococcinium (duck liver and heart) is diluted 100:1 200 times. Ask any chemist -- that dilution mean that NOT ONE MOLECULE of the duck remains in the actual product people are taking. It's chemically pure sugar, which has touched water that has touched water that once touched a molecule of the original duck liver.

Okay, it sounds silly, but experimental evidence is always the deciding factor. As you might expect when I'm discussing it here, many, many experiments over decades of research have found no evidence that a homeopathic remedy works better than plain water or sugar -- which is, after all, what it is. Oscillococcinium is literally a sugar pill.

Some people believe it on the evidence that it's old -- "If it were false, why would people still believe it?" Well, because people don't always decide based on the evidence. And it sounds scientific, if you don't know science -- it uses Latin words like "similas", practitioners write prescriptions.

Actually, that leads to my next point: people who think critically always saw the flaws in homeopathy. I have read a lecture by the famous judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1842, in which he points out the flaws.

So, my proposed solution to the problem of quack medical treatments is better thinking. That is, to use a relevant expression, easy to prescribe but hard to administer. How can we make people think?

We can't. But we can encourage them.

I used to be a schoolteacher. What with teaching to standardized tests, short class periods, short school years, and all the other problems you all know about, it's very hard to teach anything but memorization -- if the kid can't recite back the required standard answers on standard tests, your school loses funding. We can change that.

Another thing that can be done is fixing the FDA. Currently the FDA can't properly regulate in these matters. Their budget is too small, and Congress keeps restricting their powers. They HAVE made ear candles illegal, but they can't enforce that. Again, if people want this fixed, it's up to our representatives and eventually, it's up to us.

And in the end, that's my answer. It's up to us -- to think carefully, to educate OURSELVES before we believe the line about a "balm and universal comforter", and to spread the message to others.

As I hope I've done today. Thank you.