There are two topics guaranteed to turn me off a science blog: intelligent design and homeopathy.

Ostensibly this is because I don’t think there’s much interesting debate to be had about either of those subjects. ID is bunk and homeopathic treatments (as opposed to alternative medicine treatments in general) are no better than placebos. I think that most people who have thought about it scientifically are already agreed on those points so what’s left to talk about in a science blog entry? Not much.

(I suspect that the real reason I dislike posts discussing ID or homeopathy might be that the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence to the contrary makes me feel sorry for them. I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for the underdog. The same thing happens if I’m sat in the pub and somebody brings up George Bush (he’s an idiot, should be shot, needs hanging etc.). I start thinking: poor George Bush! Surely he can’t be that bad. Perhaps people hate him now just because it’s fashionable to do so? If you cut him, does he not bleed?)

Brief educational interlude… check out the origins of the word underdog:

The origin of the word “underdog” comes from naval shipbuilding when the planks of wood were sawn for their construction. The logs of wood were placed over a pit on planks of wood called “dogs” (a bit like fire dogs). The senior sawsman stood on top of the plank and he was the overdog. The junior had to go into the pit and saw and of course he got covered in saw dust. He was the “underdog”.

it’s from wikipedia so it must be true .

Anyway, my point is that I don’t like blog posts about homeopathy so it takes a lot to make me write one. Something like this article from last week’s Observer, in fact. I am outraged on many levels and no longer feel sorry for the homeopathic underdog.

“Britain’s leading homeopathic hospital, supported by the Queen and the Prince of Wales, is facing crisis because the medical establishment is turning against the remedies used by tens of thousands of people every year.”

[…]

“The Queen, an advocate of homeopathy, alongside Catherine Zeta Jones and Sir Paul McCartney, always has 60 vials of alternative remedies in a leather carrier when she travels abroad in case she falls ill.”

Firstly: what?! Prince Charles, sure. He talks to plants and makes organic biscuits – but the Queen? I thought that she was better than that. There was me thinking that we had an enlightened, rational monarchy.

Secondly: I think that the article is * far too lenient* – bloody hippies. Michael Hanlon at the Daily Mail would have written the story up right. I wish they’d stop doing the random word bolding, too.

The thing that really annoyed me, though, was the revelation that some PCTs were funding treatments at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital to begin with. When I first moved to London I encountered the NHS postcode lottery: I had to stop taking a drug for my bad back because my PCT didn’t have the funds to pay for it (I got a letter explaining that they needed the money for cancer treatments instead – how do you argue with that? Maybe that’s their cunning strategy).

Was this because they were contributing to the homeopathic hospital’s £5.5m pound budget?

The Observer calls £5.5m a ‘a tiny sum by NHS standards’ but it would have done me and several thousand other patients nicely, thanks. Instead my quality of life suffered so that some homeopath could hand out 9,000 officially sanctioned glasses of water to Prince Charles and his ilk.

Bah. Make them go private.