Broken record: Homeopathy no better than placebo

Time and time again science has shown homeopathy is no better than a placebo. An observation I have documented before. Needless to say I was shocked, shocked I tell you, when The Independent reported that:

Campaigners have welcomed the latest study to show that homeopathy "treatments" are no more effective than a placebo, and called for the technique to be cut from the NHS.

It noted:

The Good Thinking Society, which campaigns against homeopathy, said the latest study bolstered scientific consensus that the “treatments” do not work. 

Popular Science has seen the study too:

Homeopathy, the form of alternative medicine in which proponents claim that small doses of natural substances can cure patient’s ailments, has come under fire recently—Australia deemed the practice “useless” in 2014, and last year the FDA considered cracking down on unregulated treatments sold over the counter. Now homeopathy has received another blow: Paul Glasziou, a professor of evidence-based medicine at Bond University in the United Kingdom, called homeopathy a “therapeutic dead-end," according to a blog post published on the website of the British Medical Journal last week and covered by The Independent.

Of course, last year Australia came to the same conclusion:

The draft paper by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) assessed research into the effectiveness of the alternative medicine on 68 health conditions and concluded “there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”.

For those new to the world of quackery homeopathy Orac has a  great summary of what it entails, the scientific and legal challenges: 

the developments in homeopathy last year, which have now been recapped in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Actually, the developments weren’t so much in homeopathy, which basically never changes, other than sometimes in the extravagant imagination of homeopaths trying to justify their quackery with everything from quantum mechanics to “nanoparticles.” Rather, the developments concerned the regulation of homeopathy in the US.

In light of this latest study, let me leave you with a comment by Emeritus Professor of Complementary Medicine at the Peninsula School of Medicine, University of Exeter, Edzard Ernst:

The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia recently published what might be the most thorough evaluation of homeopathy ever since it began 200 years ago.

I warned against homeopathy in 2002, and a range medical experts have been vocal about the dangers of homeopathy for many years now. Yet homeopaths around the world seemed shocked by the news of this study, and are now on the warpath to suppress it.

Despite the numerous intricate explanations homeopaths have imagined the underlying placebo-effect remains the same: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Corrupting science

As been noted before science is not necessarily reliable. Since monetary gains trump scientific integrity it is difficult to prevent the misrepresentation or fabrication of science. A previous post explained the use of claimed uncertainty in science confabulated by the  Merchants of Doubt.

Case in point, Emilie Udell for the Center for Public Integrity reports how a lawyer (Evan Nelson of the law firm Tucker Ellis & West) invited a scientist to publish a "scientific theory" regarding the cause of mesothelioma. Coincidentally:

Nelson defended companies that had exposed people to asbestos .........

Luckily for his clients

Nelson came up with a new culprit: tobacco.

But:

There was an obvious problem with Nelson’s “science.” Researchers for decades have exhaustively analyzed data on the health of hundreds of thousands of smokers. Since 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General has summarized the findings of study after study, none of which shows evidence that tobacco causes mesothelioma.

The scientist involved offered to write "scientific articles" meant to be used in court cases. A firm offering such services is Gradient.

A group of academic researchers were so outraged by an article on BPA [bisphenol A, which, according to hundreds of studies is linked to health problems] written by Gradient’s Julie Goodman and Lorenz Rhomberg that they wrote a lengthy response with a table listing all the “false statements” in it.

In the words of the report:

Gradient has become a leading scientific voice in trying to prevent further regulation of air pollution.

Continuing the exposé the Center for Public Integrity recounts the case of Pam Collins, who was suffering from mesothelioma allegedly caused by asbestos gloves. Shawn Acton, one of the lawyers, was confronted with a novel theory regarding the cause of mesothelioma:

Acton did a little research and discovered that Valberg [the aforementioned scientist] had just co-authored an article in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity saying that cigarette smoke emits radiation. And he noticed that the article was funded by the law firm representing the maker of the gloves.

Acton had no idea that months earlier a lawyer at the firm, Evan Nelson, had concocted the scientific theory that Valberg was using against Collins. Or that Valberg and colleague Goodman had emailed drafts of the article in advance to the lawyer, as their contract required.

In another court case lawyers

decided to subpoena all records .....

The discovery led to e-mails showing how Nelson had commissioned three scientific articles and how its authors struggled to get it published. Eventually two got published.

Pam Collins’s lawyer said efforts by industry consultants to absolve asbestos of blame show they will say almost anything.

“Why are some of these companies putting so much money into research to be published in scientific and medical journals years and sometimes decades after they stop making the product?” Acton asked rhetorically. “Is its purpose for the advancement of medicine? Is its purpose to address a public health concern? Its purpose is for litigation. It’s science for sale.”

The article proves that even scientists are not above human nature.

Politics vs. Reality revisited

There are many that fail to appreciate how their lack of knowledge leads them to feel they are experts, this infliction has unfortunately been diagnosed among politicians.

As you undoubtedly remember this has led me to suggest limiting the politicians ability to view their job description to be ideology-driven as opposed to reality-based. 

Recent events appear to justify that. Several news items show how today we have unfortunate situations that might have not occurred had politicians adhered to Evidence-Based Policy. However, considering the total failure of the media one does have to admit the problem is not just politicians. We lack incentives to adopt an approach that puts the best for society at the top of the politicians to-do list.

The events in Flint illustrate the tension between responsible governance and opportunism:

As (Governor) Snyder was testing the presidential waters, however, his government was being shamefully unaccountable to constituents who were concerned about their water supply. The city of Flint switched its primary water source from Lake Huron, through Detroit’s system, to the Flint River in April 2014. Approved by an emergency manager appointed by the governor, the move was supposed to save the beleaguered city millions of dollars. But residents soon began reporting tap water that appeared discolored, smelled rotten, and caused kids to break out in rashes. Today, Flint has become a nightmarish example of how misguided austerity policies can literally poison the public.

The article continues to explain this by mentioning the moronic "let's get rid of the government"-zealots:

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacles to desperately needed public investments are politicians like Snyder who conflate “accountability” with austerity. For Republican technocrats in particular, more accountability almost always means less spending on government programs that help ensure the public good.

But of course, we are not allowed to know the details of the decision making process. Unlike scientists who are unrelentingly harassed in the name of transparancy by agents of Big Industry, otherwise known as politicians. Take the case of using politics to sabotage science in order to serve Global Warming denialism:

If you don’t like a particular scientific study, attack the scientists who produced it. It’s a tried and true method of manufacturing controversy around inconvenient scientific analysis. And now, Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is using the sledgehammer of a congressional subpoena to bully National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists for their research on climate change.

I cannot help but think of the following article:

Coal subsidies are costing US and Australian taxpayers billions of dollars a year, according to a new report.

It continues by citing Tim Buckley, who worked on the report:

“Any discussion of cost competitiveness of renewable energy and energy efficiency needs to take into account the decades of extensive subsidies evident for the coal industry and that, in many cases, remain in place today.”

Another example of reality-challenged action is Michigan no longer requiring the use of helmets for motorists:

In the three years after Michigan repealed a mandatory motorcycle helmet law, deaths and head injuries among bikers rose sharply, according to a recent study.

Deaths at the scene of the crash more than quadrupled, while deaths in the hospital tripled for motorcyclists. Head injuries have increased overall, and more of them are severe, the researchers report in the American Journal of Surgery

Then we have the odious example of white terrorists in Oregon. A situation hinted at in a report deemed unacceptable by ideologues:

Daryl Johnson, a former analyst for the Department of Homeland Security, wasn’t surprised when Ammon Bundy and his group of right-wing gunmen took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. His office was responsible for the famous 2009 report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” which suggested right-wing groups would be an emerging domestic terror threat if left unchecked.

However, the report, which was published in the fraught political climate shortly after the first inauguration of Barack Obama, created outrage amongst Republicans and right-wing media outlets, and the political pushback resulted in the burying of the report, an apology from DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, and the eventual closure of Johnson’s office.

Then we have the blooming Big Brother industry attemting to mandate the software industry to grant automatic (without the need for any court of law), and unrestricted access through so-called backdoors to our information. Again, against the advise of those more knowledgable:

The Dutch government has released a statement in which it says that "it is currently not desirable to take restricting legal measures concerning the development, availability and use of encryption within the Netherlands." It also notes that forcing companies to add backdoors to their products and services would have "undesirable consequences for the security of communicated and stored information," since "digital systems can become vulnerable to criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence services."

President Obama, increasingly annøyed with repeated gunmassacres in the US announced he intends to unilaterally implement some restriction on the spread of killing machines among people needing to assert their manhood. The obligatory gun fetishists are increasingly seperated from reason, to the point of them opposing even saint Ron:

... in 1991, former president Ronald Reagan wrote an op-ed endorsing federal gun control legislation; in 2016, Obama’s proposed to do less on gun control than even Reagan wanted is seen by Reagan-worshipping Republicans as unconscionable tyranny. 

Maybe Richard Feynman can help us interpret politicalese more reliable and reality-based.

Update 1:
Regarding the dubious handling of water poisoned with lead in Flint:

Water authorities across the US are systematically distorting water tests to downplay the amount of lead in samples, risking a dangerous spread of the toxic water crisis that has gripped Flint, documents seen by the Guardian show.

        ........................................................................................................

..................  the issue of misleading test results was widespread. “There is no way that Flint is a one-off,” [Lambrinidou] (a senior environmental scientist at the department of health) said.“There are many ways to game the system. In Flint, they went to test neighbourhoods where they knew didn’t have a problem. You can also flush the water to get rid of the lead. If you flush it before sampling, the problem will go away.

“The EPA has completely turned its gaze away from this. There is no robust oversight here, the only oversight is from the people getting hurt. Families who get hurt, such as in Flint, are the overseers. It’s an horrendous situation. The system is absolutely failing.”

The Centers for Disease Control is very clear about lead’s impacts on children. The agency emphasises that lead has no biological function in humans, and even the smallest exposure can developmentally impair children.

Not entirely safeguarding the publics health.

Update 2:
David Gorski has a good analysis of the unfortunate choices made resulting in the poisoning of Flint:

For those of you who haven’t heard of it yet, the Flint water crisis refers to the ongoing contamination of the tap water in Flint, MI with unacceptably high levels of lead that resulted from change in its water supply nearly two years ago to Flint River water.

 His conclusion hints at the root cause:

Now we will now be forced to use science-based medicine to treat potentially thousands of children for lead poisoning and science to try to fix the problems caused by this colossal failure of science-based public policy. Worse, it’s still going on, as The Guardian just reported on Friday that water authorities across the US are systematically distorting water tests to downplay the amount of lead in samples.

As I think about that, seeing the Governor throwing mid-level bureaucrats under the bus and other politicians saying that the Flint water crisis is a hoax does not give me confidence in how this crisis will ultimately turn out or that the aging infrastructure that allows such a catastrophe to occur will be fixed any time soon.

There is more out there for those interested in the Flint disaster. ProPublica has a podcast about what caused the problem, who dropped the ball, and what happens next. Or, try Mother Jones, which uses the deteriorating health of LeeAnne Walters and her family to tell the underlying story. And, then there is Dah Wiki.

Politics vs. Reality

My view on countries is that they are nothing more than oversized companies, shops if you will. We all agree that running a company boils down to being a good manager. One has to ensure there are enough resources, cheese, or toilet paper. In case of illness make sure there is a replacement. The primary goal being the survival of the enterprise. Case in point, opening a restaurant is not the same as knowing how to run it. The reason is you have to understand what the best course of action is to be a restaurateur, not which menu fits your personal believe system.

In the same vein to adequately run a country one must differentiate between ideology and verifiable reality. Just like rational people emphasise the need to adhere to science in medicine we should not ignore the wider effects denialism (more here) has on society.

The audacity with which politicians blatantly posit fact-free "facts" is both impressive as it is disheartening. Stranger still is the observation the general public lets them get away with that. Evidence critical thinking skills should be part of our educational system. Although, it might not be as simple as introducing accurate information to correct reality-challenged opinions, enter the backfire effect (PDF).

Thinking of examples is easy, one can mention the follwing falsehoods, that remain "unresolved" controversies to this day. In light of the numerous stories refuting their premise voters remain annoyingly loyal adherents to these peddlers of humbug, a result that to me is utterly unpalatable.

Global Warming
Confronted with all the scientific evidence supporting the position the earth is warming and humans are part of the cause, special interest groups have reacted with an assault on the science and have been able to make us believe there still is doubt, doubt which politicians use to sabotage necessary reforms.

In short, politicians keep repeating the factually incorrect claim that the science is not settled.

To make things worst AP has decided that calling people who deny the science "denier" is no longer allowed. Yet again proof of journalism refusing to report facts.

Capitalism
We all know how the free market has made us all extremely happy. The notion that government is out to prevent us all from making money has led to deregulation. Luckily, the removal of laws preventing some to become obscenely rich has made our lives alot easier. 

Part of protecting our right to make money the world has envisioned a free trade agreement (TTIP) presented as a solution to our economic woes to come. My biggest problem with it is the lack of transparancy. Meaning: nobody, except the lucky few, are allowed to see what this agreement entails. Because of that many have voiced opposition, even observed it threatens democracy itself. How? I see you think. Should a country enact laws which might impact expected revenue, (think smoking, food, cars, et cetera), the affected company may sue the country in what in essence is a secret court: the National sovereignty and investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS), more here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Many fear this will be an incentive not to enact consumer protective laws. Which, if you are VW, is a good thing.     

Another truism among monetary wizards is the notion that reducing taxes on the rich, paired with lower wages/increased taxes on the rest of us plebs, stimulates the economy, better known as trickle down economics. 


Too Big to Fail, and Jail 
After convincing politicians to remove our protections against a financial collaps, completely unexpected the world was on the brink of disaster as the economy crashed. To avert the end of times politicians decided to rescue the financial world because it was impossible to let them go bankrupt.

The concept "too big to fail" is something I do not subscribe to. But, as I have no background in economics, I will not force my opinion upon you. So, conceding the premise the logical next step is to reduce the size of our financial institutions and update their ethics. This is something politicians have refused to mandate. In addition to that we have seen a reluctance to either investigate or sufficiently punish widespread criminal behaviour.


Guncontrol
This is aimed at politicians that refuse to acknowledge reality surrounding the unlimited availability of murder tools. Despite impressive results of curtailing gun ownership in other countries. But ideology, and hysteria, trump common sense, and emperical data showing gun control works. Worse, because of politics we are no longer allowed to even collect and analyse data pertaining to gun violence.  

Terrorism

Following the attacks on the US of A in 2001 politicians claimed this attack, WMD and support of international terrorism meant they had to invade Iraq. While already evident before the invasion those politicians ignored the evidence refuting those claims which simultaneously pointed to the actual culprit.

Even today we fail to recognise our role in creating Islamic State by destabilising the region and supporting one of the worst regimes around today. The entire notion that "war" is the solution to complicated sectarian conflicts is risible. Strangely enough we are shocked when this non-diplomatic approach to solving global challenges causes another catastrophe. Needless to say, nobody ever remembers how things got started, or how human rights are just bargaining chips. Worse still, after history has proven you do not know what you are talking about we happily listen to your insights yet again.

Coincidentally, the inflated fear of those "men with beards and funny names" has opened up opportunities for those interested in making some money and those that feel civil liberties are overrated anyway. Which most of us think is just fine.

For years I have wondered how it is that politicians are able to make a plethora of incorrect statements without the possibility of correcting them. Looking at the rest of society I notice all the jobs I am aware off have some kind of quality control. For whatever reason politics knows no such system. Despite the tedious political debates presented as such we have no objective means of steering the political process back to reality.

Would it not be great if we finally get to implement measures to save the planet and thereby ourselves, or if we stop wasting resources on solving problems that do not exist?

What if we implement some quality control measures to check whether politicians espouse reality-based opinions. The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking seems like a good place to start. We can steal some of his suggestions and turn those into the following: 

1. Politicians must be able to say whatever they want. They should be able to make any suggestion, propose or block any law, make any claim they want.
2. Following their suggestions (to implement, or block, policy/law) it should be mandatory to show evidence of a) the need for this proposal/its refusal, b) the proposal has the claimed effect, c) the claimed effect outweighs the expected negative impact.
3. For the purpose of ascertaining the available facts politicians themselves are not considered experts in the field. 
4. The evidence shown can not be "I strongly believe," or "god said so," but has to be based on a review by an independent expert in the relevant field. This expert has to a) share with us the mainstream view among the relevant experts, b) state that in case of any discrepancy between the politicians statement and communis opinio among these experts this is entirely reasonable and reflects an actual debate among experts, c) in case of politicians withholding  such studies they are obliged to mention the result and reason behind not mentioning it.
5. In the absence of verifiable evidence politicians are obligated to either withdraw their suggestions/comments or admit they are only sharing their private opinion and that layman opinion is more important than evaluation by people with real knowledge: otherwise known as experts.
6. Any proposal based on non-expert guestimation shall be publicly presented as make believe or truthiness. 
7. Akin to nearly every other profession I would suggest accountability in case of policy that can not be reconciled with expert opinion, or lacks reasonable arguments to ignore the patently fallacious solution presented.

Yes, I realise we now get into Through-the-Looking-glass territory:

• How do we know The Truth, because there is not an absolute Truth
• As such everything is merely opinion, we have freedom of opinion, ergo: who are we to differentiate between opinions?

The asnswer is: we employ a system that optimises the objectivity of politics and minimises ideological influences. Just as we are used to in the rest of society: think regulations for the automotive industry, hospitals, construction industry, your local restaurant, hotel, et cetera.

Anyway, the goal is to make visible that politics is not seldom based on wishful thinking if not good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors. Who knows, it might even reduce political disputes as it limits the possibility to abuse reality without getting corrected.

Feel free to augment/amend my proposal in comments.


Update: Unfortunately we have an oportunity to see whether politicians are willing to choose society over ideology. What will the response be to Obama pleading:

"Obama appealed to voters to elect politicians committed to strengthening gun control and to gun owners to ask themselves whether organisations such as the National Rifle Association, which pour large amounts of money into lobbying against restrictions, are really serving the interests of those who use weapons for sport and hunting."

Obama also asked to compare the effects of gun violence and terrorism.

 Will politicians choose the facts-based approach? Not holding my breath.

Pay no attention to the man behind the screen

One of the most frustrating things to me is the absolute inability, or is it unwillingness, of journalists to recognise what the story they report is about. This is the theme of this blog: I try to encourage people to seek out information and always question what is being told, i.e. "what basis is there for these claims?" Unfortunately people are easily misled, and information presented by journalists is inherently unreliable. The most recent example of what is wrong with our ability to ascertain the facts is the publication by Wikileaks of documents that are embarrasing to the US. As usual the incompetent and obfuscating characteristics of the media, that are supposed to adequately inform us, engage in their typical method of protecting those in power.

As always, the intrepid reporter notices those juicy bits about Julian Assange's life. Which, regardless of the topic, generate more stories than the initial disclosure of fraudulent, criminal or misleading behaviour by the powerful. Commenting on the media's interest in diverting attention with ad hominems Greenwald remarked:

... what I do know -- as John Cole notes -- is this:  as soon as Scott Ritter began telling the truth about Iraqi WMDs, he was publicly smeared with allegations of sexual improprieties.  As soon as Eliot Spitzer began posing a real threat to Wall Street criminals, a massive and strange federal investigation was launched over nothing more than routine acts of consensual adult prostitution, ending his career (and the threat he posed to oligarchs).  And now, the day after Julian Assange is responsible for one of the largest leaks in history, an arrest warrant issues that sharply curtails his movement and makes his detention highly likely.

While all this titellating stuff is unfolding The New York Times is still unable to call torture torture. As Greenwald reports that:

the NYT in its article on brutal detainee abuse steadfastly avoids using the word "torture" to describe what was done, consistent with its U.S.-Government-serving formal policy of refusing to use that word where U.S. policy is involved.  By stark contrast, virtually every other media account uses that term to describe the heinous abuse of detainees chronicled by this leak, the only term that accurately applies:  see The Guardian ("American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes"); BBC (US "ignored Iraq torture"); Politico ("a devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture by the Iraqi army").  BoingBoing appropriately mocks the NYT's increasingly humiliating no-"torture" policy by creating a euphemism-generator.

The role of the media as defender of the powerful is evidenced by the reaction to these documents. Greenwald compares it to the response by Nixon to the Pentagon Papers and notes:

Predictably, just as happened with Ellsberg, there is now a major, coordinated effort underway to smear WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, and to malign his mental health -- all as a means of distracting attention away from these highly disturbing revelations and to impede the ability of WikiLeaks to further expose government secrets and wrongdoing with its leaks.  But now, the smear campaign is led not by Executive Branch officials, but by members of the establishment media.  As the intelligence community reporter Tim Shorrock wrote today on Twitter:  "When Dan Ellsberg leaked [the] Pentagon Papers, Nixon's henchmen tried to destroy his reputation. Today w/Wikileaks & Assange, media does the job."

And commenting on statements by Howard Kurtz maligning Assange:

You will never, ever hear people like Kurtz, or John Burns, using these kinds of disparaging insults for any American political or military official with actual power -- not even (especially not) the ones whose "delusions" about Saddam's nuclear clouds and team of mad chemical scientists and alliances with Al Qaeda caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and human suffering and misery on an unimaginable scale.  As Burns explained, with those people:  "You build up a kind of trust. It's not explicit, it's just there. And my feeling is that it’s the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report."

In what I consider a surreal reaction The Guardian reports that:

A Fox News contributor and former state department adviser has accused WikiLeaks of conducting "political warfare against the US" and called for those behind the whistleblowing website to be declared "enemy combatants" so they can be subjected to "non-judicial actions".

Apparently free speech applies only to those in power. Then there is the article The Washington Post and WikiLeaks, by Scott Horton, which details some significant revelations such as:

... the disclosure of a Fragmentary Order (“Frago”) authorizing soldiers not to investigate cases of torture that do not involve coalition forces is extremely important. It counts as evidence of high-level policy to countenance war crimes and violations of the prohibition on torture, which requires not only investigation but also intervention. Recall this astonishing exchange that occurred between Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace at a DOD press conference in November 2005. Pace stated “it is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it…” Rumsfeld interrupted and contradicted him, but Pace stood his ground. He was reciting well anchored military doctrine. He was also overruled by Rumsfeld.

Responding to the "blood on his hands"-meme, Horton said:

When pressed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary Gates was forced to admit that these claims were hyperbole—“the leak… did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods.” Gates went on to acknowledge that there was no evidence of any informant being killed or threatened or even requesting protection as a result of the WikiLeaks publications. Why then has the Post editorial page decided to ape agitprop that the Pentagon itself has all but retracted? Maybe they don’t read their own paper.

He continues:

After looking through the latest WikiLeaks document dump, she writes that she is now persuaded that “top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world.” Tellingly, her piece appears not in the Post but in the Daily Beast, and she’s supplemented it with a detailed review of the documents involved at Foreign Policy.

The possible benefits of what we have learned so far are summarised by Kevin Jon Heller, while Johann Hari stresses its importance. In light of that consider the response to evidence of possible war crimes, or the destruction of evidence regarding the torture regime. For some very important reason investigating, let alone prosecuting, those involved did not generate the amount of zeal we now experience towards Assange whose alleged crime constitutes of fascilitation of publishing information detrimental to those used to being beyond (judicial) scrutiny. Wikileaks has brought the ever present propaganda into the sunlight. That, of course, cannot stand. Hence the hysterical legal and rhetorical response. Interestingly, those opposing Wikileaks face the Gordian knot of how to prosecute Assange without criminalising journalism alltogether.

The game of politics, as evidenced above, is comparable to, and dependent on, the anti-science movement. For both accurate and factual information is anathema to their ideological and egocentric position. Once the spread of misinformation, if not lies, is exposed like magicians they lose their lure. It should therefore come as no surprise that both groups abhor transparancy and reject accountability. Since the main stream media no longer adhere to what Lord Northcliffe said:

"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising."

any organisation exposing those that take advantage of us, by insisting we should stay uninformed and vehemently try to convince us we should ignore the man behind the curtain, has my support.