Indian Snake Oil

Pratik Kanjilal in a piece today on Hindustan Times claims that “British doctors looking to ban homeopathy is positively medieval” and wants a “healthy agnosticism to replace scientific fundamentalism”. I do not understand how Pratik defines agnosticism versus fundamentalism. But I would think that it is better to be fundamentalist about the truth of a claim rather than to be agnostic. The pertinent question here is does homeopathy cure a specific disease or not? The answer can either be a Yes or a No. If someone is determined to answer that question with a Yes or a No, does that mean he is a fundamentalist. I suppose then that to Pratik Kanjilal Copernicus, Magellan, Galilleo would also be guilty of scientific fundamentalism. How much better to sit around and say “It could be true, it could also be false, how can we ever know” than to actually look for the answer and destroy the precious fantasies of millions of people who believe in a myth. Pratik is guilty of being no more than an apologist for hoemopaths the world over.

The fundamental illogic of his position goes even deeper. He claims that:

Homeopathy’s benifits are unproven because they can’t be tested by the method of science. Even the most diligently designed double blind test must fail in one count. Science requires a valid experiment to be replicable. If Aconite 30 cures the sinusitis of Andy West of Tintagel, it must identically cure Judy North of Inverness. However, homeopaths go by clusters of symptoms rather the names of diseases. And, rejecting the egalitarianism of mainstream medicine, they believe that Andy and Judy are different people and should be treated differently. How do you design an experiment to accommodate that difference?

Arey yaar. You cannot treat a cluster of symptoms or a symptom. You can only treat the underlying disease. If homeopathy works on curing only symptoms it needs to be banned just for that fact. But Pratik Kanjilal displays his thoughtlessness even more blindingly. How dare scientists insist that Aconite 30 must cure sinusitis in all patients. It may cure it for Judy. But it might not for Andy. It all depends on your luck and your horoscope.

The fundamental premise of medicine is that patients suffer from an underlying disease which is the same across patients. Which is why you can have medicine to cure or control malaria, hypertension, aneamia. You can have medicine that either cures a disease (which is a name given to an set of symptoms produced by an underlying pathology) or does not. To quote Jared Diamond “You have medicine that works. Or does not. There is no alternative medicine” You cannot have medicine which can cure herpes for Dhawan from Delhi but not for Sandra from Santa Cruz. Well you can. But then, either Sandra does not suffer from herpes or the medicine given to Sandra does not cure herpes. Either way Sandra has paid for some medicine she hopes would cure her medical condition, because the person who sold her the medicine promised her that. And the medicine did not work. This is exactly the problem with homeopathy. Let me put that into perspective. How about an LCD TV that might work for you or might not. Pay me some money, take the LCD TV back home and it might work. Or not. If it does good for you. If not. Sorry. You were just not lucky pal. Would there not be a consumer court case? Wouldn’t you quickly check if the manufacturer of those LCD TVs adhered to some quality standard? When we won’t tolerate such low standards for our TV sets, why tolerate such low standards for life saving medicines?

There are other parts of the column that are even scarier:

Many patients turn to alternative schools when mainstream medicine fails and leaves them facing chronic disability and pain, or the inscrutable mystery of death. Unless homeopathy is unequivocally proven to be quackery, which is not the case, it is irresponsible of doctors to bar access to it

Again the illogic of the above lines are crazy. Unless a homeopathic drug can be proven to effectively treat the disease of what use is it? Plastic has no medicinal value as a drug. Let us say a person is suffering from cancer and the doctors have told him that he has exactly six months to live. What would you say to me if I were to sell Plastic to this person. What would you call me if I told him “Hey it might cure cancer. It might not. Some doctor somewhere reported it cured it for him. I prefer to remain agnostic. It could or it could not. I prefer not to find the answer since then I might be called a fundamentalist.” What would be the difference if I were to sell this plastic to the cancer patient from a tent on the roads of Gurgaon with a sign outside saying “Neel bhabha ke Himalay se jadi bhootian” (The mendicant Neel’s shrubs and herbs from Himalayas dispensary) or from an office in plush Sector 42, wearing a white coat?

The other equally stupid claim made by Pratik Kanjilal is this:

Homeopathy is routinely denounced because no one knows how it works. But a physician should be asking a simpler question: does it work for my patient? The doctor’s cure is to offer a cure, or at least a comfort. Ruminations about its scientific basis come later.

Brilliant. Would you want a doctor, who decides to give you a tablet that can cure your liver but might paralyse both your leg. No, you wouldn’t. You would want your doctor to think through all the possible ramifications of a course of action. Will it cure only that specific disease. Will it cause any side reactions. However according to Pratik Kanjilal, it doesn’t matter. You went in with a problem about the liver and the doctor should try and cure your liver problem, what’s the loss of a couple of legs to do with it. Or offer you comfort. Not just crazy. But extreme lunacy.

Having tired of plying the readers of Hindustan Times with these little nuggets of bad logic, Pratik now becomes increasingly irrational. Homeopathy he asserts

uses statistical shorthand like ‘miasm’ and ‘psora’ to cluster people and their symptoms into groups, which are mapped to cures. If one banned it, one should also consider banning other disciplines founded on statistics. Economics, a notoriously erratic discipline, immediately comes to mind. Should one ban economics? Maybe.

Statistics is a tool. I can quote statistics all I want, but if I claim that Australia is close to the North Pole I would still be wrong. The problem here is that just because homeopathy uses statistics it does not become correct, no more than a man wearing a white lab coat can become a doctor. But I guess these subtle distinctions are rather lost in the black hole of illogic that are Pratik’s arguments.

And to finish off the piece here’s this little flourish from Pratik

And by the way, did I mention that Queen Elizabeth II has a personal homeopath? Maybe I forgot. Yeah, maybe. I love that word.

Queen Elizabeth II also has twenty personal pets who all exclusively happen to be corgi dogs. So? When has Queen Elizabeth II been the last word on medicine or a registered medical practitioner? The Queen is free to have a personal homeopath, or snort drugs. That is entirely her personal choice. Whether it gets labelled as medicine will require just a bit more evidence than that.

Tata Teleservices and Service from Hell

I had a Tata Internet Connection. Which I disconnected on December 2008. Approximately half an hour back I had a call from a certain Mr. R.C Choudhary who claims to work at Tiz Hazari Court as an “LDC”. He claimed that I have a court case filed against me by a Mr. Sanjeeb Kumar who he claimed was a lawyer representing Tata Tele Services. To say the tone of Mr. R.C Choudary was rude was to say the least. After threatening to have me in court he asked me to contact Mr. Sanjeeb Kumar. Sanjeeb asked me to file the outstanding amount immediately at a Tata Indicom Outlet within one hour if I did not want a court case filed against me.
I walked upto a Tata Indicom outlet and payed the requested amount in full. However when I looked into the details it appears that:

1. I have not used the account post December
2. My request in December to close the account has not been noted down and not been followed through

This despite the fact that I have filed the application in writing and attached a copy of my PAN card. I still have a xerox of the closing letter I handed in on December. Tata Teleservices has through sheer stupidity or malice not closed my account and has continued to bill me rental for the next four months. To top it all of, neither was this rental bill forwarded to my email id, and the call center people who used to bug me every month haven’t bothered to explain why I have an outstanding charge.

The icing on the cake was to have two people call you up in the middle of a working day and threaten you with a court case for non payment of dues. I have just talked to a Mr. Ashish Chakraborty who has promised me that the payment I made would be refunded through a non-usage waiver and the constant irritation that is the Tata Indicom Call Service would also be halted immediately. Thank you so much Mr. Ashish! I am happy. However you have just broken the cardinal rule of customer service. Never piss of a customer before placating him. I have had to waste half a productive day in office, I had to endure your call center people for three months, all thanks to a mistake which you neither have the courtesy or the good grace to accept. I certainlly would not like to recommend a Tata Indicom connection to anyone if this is the current level of service were to continue.

I have put down the names and numbers of the jokers for future reference here. I don’t know if these guys are actually associated with any legal firm or are just paid for muscle hired by Tata Indicom. In any case if you do get a call from any of these numbers do feel free to tell them what idiots they are:

Mr. Sanjeeb Kumar: 9654771421

Mr. R.C Choudhary: 9871203912

Shit List

Its twelve in the night and I am in the communal nest that is the office. Alpha male walked right past me as I was working. And did not wave, or smile or even for courtesy’s sake even ask me about my health. Yeah! I have made the shit list of the alpha male too.

Customer Questions

How do you kill a session in Apache?

Yes. You are outsourcing your core business operations to a group of brown mealy mouthed monkeys across seven seas. But “How do you kill a session in Apache?”. Shouldn’t you be more worried about the Taliban, Governance or something else.

Nut cases.

Customer Visits

Salesbaboon: We do DRP exercises every month

OrangeOrangutanCustomer: Really

Salesbaboon: Really. Some of these are not even exercises but real DRP tests

[Silverback goes Sigh!]

OrangeOrangutanCustomer: What do you mean.

[There are two possibilities now. The sales baboon can confess that we bomb our delivery centers every once every two weeks or we don't and someone else bombs our delivery center every two weeks]

Salesbaboon: See. Our process are so strong and our value additions are so good.

Sales. Redefine reality