Pragmatist said:
Rolfe, you listening? What the h*ll is the IoB up to, certifying people like this?!
Wow, this thread is amazing!
I'm in awe of the detailed rebuttals people have taken the time to post to Roger's quite stunning pseudoscience. I'm also more than a little in awe of Roger's ability to pick up on small and slightly off-beat published papers and recruit them to his weird and wacky theories.
However, the science of it is academic. If this were merely an intellectual discussion about the possible causes of cancer, then it wouldn't matter in the slightest. Everyone is entitled to their theories, and it's by examining theories that the truth becomes known. However, Roger isn't just theorising, is he? He has something to sell. In fact he has a lot of things to sell. Despite the evidence for his theories being shaky to put it politely, and despite no apparent evidence of efficacy for their intended purpose of just about anything he sells, he's happy, nay extremely keen, to relieve you of your money.
Remember, when I asked for evidence that there was any way to tell whether water that had been on one of his magic coasters was in any way distinguishable from water (from the same source, implied) that hadn't, he replied by citing a study by Wu (yes, really!) alleging some sort of anthelmintic effect of magnetised water. Well, as a vet, you can probably imagine my credulity rating on that one. Sounds very like these dodgy papers the homoeopaths keep posting when challenged to prove that
they can tell their magic water from the stock solvent, that is, something which falls to bits the minute you look at it properly.
And while we're on the subject, Roger asserts that homoeopathy is valid medicine. That probably says about as much as we need to know about his level of understanding of this subject.
So I'm mainly worried about the quackery and the fraud going on. A bit less theorising and a bit more challenging the efficacy of the products he promotes might make an interesting change.
I was going to raise the question of the court case, but Roger has claimed he "doesn't remember". Been using your mobile too much lately, Roger?
Looking at the BBC's reporting of the case, this confirms that Roger brought a private prosecution against Mr. Morgan. The first day, the prosecution evidence, was reported. The second day, the BBC merely reported that the charges had been dismissed. This doesn't mean that all the evidence wasn't heard, I think we can take it that it was, only that the defence evidence was probably fairly short, and was probably accepted by the Bench fairly quickly, as the newsworthy point on day 2 was the verdict, which had already come in, not the details of the defence case.
So if anybody issued any new guidelines about warnings on mobile phones after this case was heard, we have no evidence at all to demonstrate that this was cause and effect. And indeed it would seem fairly unlikely, except insofar as if you stir up enough unfounded concern about something, some publicity-hungry politician is likely to introduce some sort of response as a move in the popularity stakes.
The interesting part is really, who was ordered to pay what costs? Roger knows that in this country, costs follow the event, so he who loses pays the costs of both sides. And this applies to private prosecutions under criminal law too. He was awfully anxious to tell us that he personally hadn't paid any costs, presumably hoping that we might infer from that that he won the case. But then he admitted that he had private backers who paid his costs for him (as the mobile phone manufacturers were prepared to support Mr. Morgan, and probably for the same reasons).
Have you remembered yet, Roger? Who was
legally liable for the Prosecution costs (yours)? You, wasn't it, irrespective of who actually came up with the money. And who was ordered to pay the Defence costs? That bit we haven't heard. Who paid Mr. Morgan's legal fees, Roger?
Don't you realise how your weaselling about this damages any credibility you might have had around here?
I'm also interested in the qualifications matter, which Pragmatist highlighted again.
It seems as if Roger's first degree was in Classics. Not very close to the biological sciences, really, and I'd be surprised if the courses awarded any cross-credits. However, immediately after gaining this degree he seems to have been accepted for a two-year course in some sort of biological sciences, hard to tell exactly what, and indeed in the early 1960s some of these subject designations were probably different from today. For example, I don't think "molecular biology" had even been invented as a subject that far back.
Roger tells us that he got an upper second in his Classics degree. Good for him. Upper second is creditable, in many subjects firsts are very hard to come by and you have to be genius level to aspire to one. However, he just says that he got a "second" in his biological course. Now why miss out the important bit? Was it a 2.2, Roger? Did you get a Desmond? (You need at least a 2.1 to be accepted for most postgraduate courses and degrees.)
Given Cambridge's odd degree system (I know something about this as I have a friend who has an MA in Physics from Oxford, which strikes me as wholly bizarre, funny, he works for a mobile phone company....), I'm prepared to believe that the biological science degree might be equivalent to a BSc, but having said that, the two-year duration of study seems peculiar given that he seems to have had no science credits prior to this point.
Whatever, a two-year course in some aspect of biological sciences, in 1960-62, doesn't strike me as hugely impressive, even if it was at Fen Poly.
We've heard about the Environmental Management MA, a modular degree from the University of Wales, collect the credits in your own time, looks very worthy, but none of it looks very much like providing the entrée to the Pasteur Institute or the Karolinska Institute or wherever.
Now the IoB stuff. I'd be the first to admit that membership of the IoB is much more who you know than what you know. So long as you have some sort of biological qualification, and can reasonably lay claim to have worked in the field for a few years (two, I think), and you can find a couple of existing members to put in a good word for you, well, welcome. They run little recruiting drives every now and again, asking members if they know anyone they work with who might like to join. And isn't that nice, you get some letters to stick after your name for no extra work, well, I've got them too but I don't have many illusions about how much ice they cut.
There's no doubt Roger could be made to look as if he had the qualifications they require for Membership status, and so long as nobody enquired to closely about just what he was up to and the plausibility of the theories he was spouting (and whether he was selling anything bogus), it probably got the nod all right.
If he's active in the IoB at local level in Wales, I'd be interested to know just how much the other members know about what he's up to. Since he seems to believe sincerely that he's right, and isn't hiding it, I'd imagine they do know. Why do they condone it? Don't know. Maybe he really does some work, and as we all know, someone prepared to work in a voluntary organisation isn't to be offended lightly. Do the PtB in the IoB know, however?
I wonder.
So here we have somebody with a couple of fairly low-down-the-food-chain qualifications that bear some relation to biological sciences, at least one of them obtained rather a long time in the past, and no postgraduate qualifications, and so far as we know no period of work in any academic or research institution other than his own establishment. And he thinks that his convoluted misinterpretations of old and selective literature have hit on the real cause of cancer, and an approach to treatment and/or prevention, that the people with many years of post-doctoral research work in top-grade institutes of learning have missed.
And he wants us to buy a magnetic coaster to put our drinking glasses on.
Yeah, right.
Rolfe.
BVMS (Glasgow), BSc (pure biochemistry, Glasgow), PhD (biochemistry of exercise, Glasgow), FIBiol, CBiol (I knew some people too), MRCVS (licence to practice that comes free with the BVMS). Just in case anybody was going to ask me.
Edited to add: The BSc was a 2.1, just for completeness.
All I need to know is that Mr Coghill is qualified in the area of expertise he is talking about, that his claims stand up to scrutiny with his peers; or, alternatively be provided with a qualified rebutall which also stands up to peer review. Mr Coghill has presented his evidence and his credentials. All I see in return is animated gifs, BIG RED BOLD TYPE, and the stamping of feet from a tiny* bunch of skepti-nerds who just haven't got the honour, integrity or humility to admit that they are wrong.
