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UCL professor David Colquhoun |
My remedy for homeopathy degree
‘Dangerous anti-science’ course scrapped by university after professor’s attacks on his blog
GUIDO Fawkes, Derek Draper, and Damian McBride are three names that taught us bloggers aren’t just a sub-species of partisan nerds ranting in their underwear.
They wield real power. And if politicians can get scalped by the “blogocrats”, why not institutions too?
The University of Westminster has announced it has suspended recruitment to its homeopathy undergraduate degree, after a lengthy and time-consuming campaign by David Colquhoun, the University College London pharmacology professor behind the popular “Improbable Science” blog.
For almost five years, Professor Colquhoun has used his blog to attack the course – where at the end of three years students are awarded a Bachelor of Science degree – as little more than witchdoctory, “gobbledygook”, and “more like religion than science”.
The course teaches students the benefits of alternative medicines, claiming that malaria can be warded off without the need for anti-malarials and that ginger is a cure for menopausal bleeding.
Now it has emerged the University’s School of Integrated Health will not be offering the degree as part of its portfolio of courses.
They deny the decision has anything to do with Professor Colquhoun and his blog, insisting it is due to a shortage of students wanting to take the course.
Another course, Remedial Massage and Neuromuscular Therapy, has also been suspended. Between them the two courses recruited just 14 students last year.
Unsurprisingly, the man at the eye of the storm was quick to post his thoughts. Professor Colquhoun wrote: “They say that they have done it because of ‘poor recruitment’.
“It was purely a financial decision. Nothing to do with embarrassment. Gratifying though it is that recruits for the course are vanishing, that statement is pretty appalling.
“It says that the University of Westminster doesn’t care whether it’s nonsense, but only about whether they make money.”
The entry is the final chapter in a series of withering attacks on the university in which Professor Colquhoun posted slides from lectures which he called “dangerous nonsense”.
Commenting on the suspension, Professor Colquhoun said: “I don’t know how much I have to do with it, but I have been harassing them for years.
“I’d like to think I have played my part. All the empirical and theoretical evidence suggests the stuff they teach is dangerous nonsense.
“It’s not just not science, it’s anti-science.
“I hope this will be the end of a generation’s obsession with new-age cures.
“It started when the Beatles met the Maharaji, but now I feel it is subsiding.”
In a statement the University of Westminster said: “Following a review of the course portfolio in the university’s School of Integrated Health, recruitment has been suspended to the two undergraduate degrees in Homeopathy and Remedial Massage and Neuro- muscular Therapy.
“These two courses have struggled to remain viable, recruiting a combined total of 14 [full-time equivalent] students last year.
“The decision was taken at school level and endorsed by the university executive board on 24 March.
“The university will make provision for students already part way through these degrees to enable them to complete their courses.”
‘It’s total nonsense!’
Claims for homeopathic remedies that have been rubbished by Professor Colquhoun
•: Tarantula venom (Mygale Lasiodora) as a cure for depression –
Prof Colquhoun says:
“The involvement of spiders is pure imagination. No more than mystical gobbledygook”
• Potassium salts (Kali) as a sleeping remedy –
“Radioactive potassium is involved in automaticity? Total nonsense.”
• Discussing a Westminster course slide explaining symptoms “as constructive phenomena”, “not caused by the pathogenic agent”,
Prof Colquhoun says:
“So if you get tuberculosis it isn’t caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis? So you don’t need to do anything? This isn’t just nonsense. It’s dangerous nonsense.”
• Ginger as a treatment for “blood stasis in the uterus” or menopause –
“Ginger for bleeding. Anyone taught in this way could be a real danger to the public.”
• On a lecture on the merits of “Detox” –
“Surely everyone knows by now that detox is no more than a marketing word. Well not at the University of Westminster. They have a long handout that tells you all the usual myths and a few new ones.” |
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