Medical myths

Rational as I may be I sometimes engage in superstitious behaviors because of advice I have heard a long time ago and then stuck. For example, when I have a flu I usually overdose on C-vitamin. I believe that this piece of advice was made famous by Nobel prize winning scientist Linus Pauling who asserted that C-vitamin could cure the common cold. According to other sources that I trust more on this particular issue, such as Harriet Hall, also know as the "Skep Doc", a C-vitamin overdose will at best shorten the common cold for a day, and that is for people who do not eat a lot of C-vitamin in the first place (I am one of them why I may perhaps benefit somewhat), at worst a C-vitamin overdose can make you quite sick.

Two other behaviors which I sometimes engage in is drinking coca cola when my stomach is upset, and eating garlic when I have the common cold. Quick google searches did neither prove or disprove the efficiency of these two questionable treatments. Perhaps someone out there know something about it (in which case I hope you will share your knowledge).

What I really wanted to write about in this post is an article published in the British Medical Journal in which widespread myths, often reinforced by doctors were punctured. Some of these myths I believed in firmly until I saw the article. For example I have thought for a long time that reading in dim light is bad for your eyes. Now, becuase of this article, I know that there is no good evidence to back this claim. I had been wrong, but now I have changed my provisional world model to fit the new data (I stand corrected to put that more simply).

However, I am proud to say that I never bought into the myth that you only use 10% of your brain. Then again, I am a brain researcher so perhaps I cannot brag to much about this accomplishment. The idea, though popular in books such as Uri Geller's "Little Mind Power Book", is completely absurd. Would evolution allow 90% of our brain just sit there and do nothing, I think not. By the way, the claim can be easily disproved by sending a person into an FMRI and watch how the entire brain lights up which is an indication of energy expenditure (maybe with the exception of people like Uri Geller). Furthermore, in contrast to predictions of the "we only use 10% of our brain" hypothesis, removal of almost any part of the brain will result in clear symptoms,


The entire list of medical myths which are debunked in this nice article are as follows. Take a look at the article if you are not willing to take my word for it (there are nice references as well).

1. People should drink at least 2,5 litres of water per day
2. We only use 10% of our brains
3. Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
4. Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster and be coarser
5. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
6. Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
7. Mobile phones cause electromagnetic interference in hospitals

James Randi

This week I want to pay a tribute to a man that I admire very much, the skeptic James Randi (see picture) who will turn 81 in august. Randi, in a sense, is a man with two faces. First there is "The Amazing Randi", a world famous magician who has performed many seemingly impossible tricks. Among his achievements Randi is the holder of two world records. On one occasion Randi outperformed the infamous Harry Houdini when he spent 104 minutes in a sealed coffin on the bottom of a swimming pool. He earned his second entry into Guiness world records when he came out alive after having been frozen in a block of ice for 55 minutes. Does anyone know how this was done?

Magicians are of course interesting and fun, however, it is not magic skills that makes Randi unique. Like the just mentioned Houdini, James Randi is a skeptic. He has openly admitted that he has never performed any real magic in the supernatural sense. In other words, all the magical shows that we laymen find impossible or at least incomprehensible have merely been trickery. This of course begs the question of whether other people who seem to have similar magical talents are also just using tricks. My belief is that they are merely using tricks, and I have never encountered any evidence (excluding anecdotal stories) that has made me contemplate this. Interestingly Randi has once been accused of being a fraud in the opposite sense. Once when he performed a man claimed that Randi was in fact using psychic powers and that he is lying when he claims he is using trickery.

Nevertheless, our dear magician is perhaps most famous for his one million dollar paranormal challenge. James Randi has 1.000.000 dollars waiting in a bank account for anyone who can demonstrate that he/she has psychic/supernatural powers. Hundreds have tried but no one has succeeded until this day. Others, including the previously mentioned Houdini, and the Swedish organization Humanisterna have posed similar challenges. (Just recently, a psychic in Sweden failed a mutually agreed upon test, getting zero correct of a possible fifteen.)

Through the years James Randi has appeared on TV quite a few times. If you go to "You Tube" and search for James Randi you will find many interesting clips to watch. Alternatively, you can also go to his website, http://www.randi.org/, where there is a nice collection of multimedia as well as many interesting articles.

Below I have put together my own list of my favorite Randi multimedia including some personal comments. Enjoy!

Uri Geller and Peter Popoff. In this video Randi explains what he is doing and why he is doing it. Randi also shows how he exposed Uri Geller (see picture), the spoon bender phenomenon for what he really is, a fake (or perhaps he really just had a bad day). Finally he shows how Peter Popoff, a priest who makes miracles happen, was actually just using a wireless radio (Popoff went bankrupt a year after he had been exposed).

James Hydrick. James Hydrick, a 23 year old martial arts trained psychic, claims that he can turn pages the pages of a phone directory using his mental powers (and that we all can learn to do it). By using a simple control Randi shows that Hydrick is not using any psychic powers, but rather he is simply blowing. According to wikipedia, Hydrick has subsequently admitted that he was indeed a fraud, what a surprise…

Astrology. An entire class is given identical horoscopes and are asked to rate the accuracy. Everyone in the class rates the accuracy as being either four or five out of five.

Psychic surgery. In this video Randi performs, using only his bare hands, what looks like a very real surgery in order to show that no supernatural powers must be involved (as some others have suggested)

Homeopathy. This video is actually one of my favorites. Randi has a 15min lecture in which he explain the very odd principles of homeopathy. He also tells us about when he downed no less 64 tablets without being affected at all. This is despite the fact that that the cans say that you should call a poison doctor if you take 4 or so (I cannot remember the exact numbers).

Spoon bending. Randi shows us how he can bend a spoon using trickery. It looks just like when Uri Geller bends his spoons using his psychic powers, or perhaps Geller was also using trickery? You decide…

Medium discussion, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Randi is on Larry King live where he discusses an incident where the medium Sylvia Browne told the parents of an abducted child that their child was dead. The women who got the erroneous information from her spirits still claims to have psychic powers, she have accepted Randi challenge, but have still not actually done it. Afraid that she won't make it perhaps?

James Randi and a medium. In this video Randi exposes a medium by revealing a transcript in which the medium has given her client no less than 37 names, and asked him whether he feels there is any connection to any of these names. Statistically speaking it would be quite unlikely if the client had no connection to any of the names...

Applied Kinesiology. In this video James Randi, and a kinesiologist do a blind study, testing whether a particular chosen crystal make the test person stronger. If you are to believe the result in this particular test, the subject benefitted very much from rat poison, hmmm...

If anyone has any further multimedia tips I will watch them with much interest.