Boris bungles bus crime stats

"There are lies, dammed lies and statistics," Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have said. Perhaps years from now the citation will be modified - "there are lies, dammed, lies, statistics and Boris Johnson," for the Mayor of London has once again demonstrated a poor grasp* of numbers relating to crime.

In his campaign literature for next year's Mayoral election, Boris claims that under his watch crime on buses has fallen 30% - an impressive statistic, but one that doesn't stand up to all that much scrutiny.

According to figures from Transport for London, analysed by Liberal Democrat Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee Caroline Pidgeon, any drop in the aggregate number of crimes on buses masks significant variation between boroughs - with 11 out of 32 London Boroughs reporting an increase in bus crimes.

Many of these boroughs experienced significant increases - bus crime in Southwark went up by 5.2%, in Merton by 9.4%, Tower Hamlets by 11.5% and Barking and Dagenham by a staggering 17.8%. You can take a look at the full statistics here, which include borough-by-borough and crime-type breakdowns as well as comparisons with previous years.

These stats show, of course, that in many places bus crime has dropped significantly - by over 20% year-on-year in some cases - but that it remains a serious and increasing problem for many passengers.

Boris has been in trouble before for his use of crime statistics - earlier in the year the the UK Statistical Authority felt moved to write to the Mayor, chastising him for making political use of crime statistics and warning that he risks eroding 'public trust in Government statistics.' Boris was asked by the UKSA's chairman Sir Michael Scholar to comply with their Code of Practice (he has refused) which says that official statistics should be presented without spin or political colour, and that Boris' press release trumpeting the drop in crime "was poor practice, and was damaging to public trust in the statistics produced by Transport for London."

There's another way in which Boris' use of the bus crime stats are a little naughty - as Guardian blogger Dave Hill points out, there had been a long-term trend towards a reduction in bus crime since before Boris took over the Mayoralty from Ken Livingstone, and that Boris' time in power is likely to have had little effect on that trend either way. For Boris to take credit for the fall in bus crime - where there has even been a fall - is stretching things somewhat.

Why am I blogging about the use of bus crime stats - why should this matter?

The public rightly pays a lot of attention to crime statistics - rightly or wrongly they give us a handle on how safe our neighbourhoods are, how likely we are to fall victim to a crime, how we decide to go home at night in some cases. Although we might not have a crime ready-reckoner to hand every time we board the Number 55, publication and reporting of crime statistics does impact on our behaviour, our psyche - it would be remiss of any politician or journalist to claim that our buses (or streets) were safer than they are just as it is for them to stoke our fear of crime by claiming the opposite.

For a geek like me (not a stats geek admittedly, I hardly know the difference between a Bonferoni post-hoc correction and a Mann Witney U...), the use of science and statistics in politics matters because I'd like to see public policy based on evidence - reliable, honestly presented evidence, not stats that are spun to make a particular case. I accept that politics and governance aren't as straightforward as mechanically implementing that which is statistically significant, but if we can't trust the numbers we read, whether or bus crime, drug use or the NHS, we can't evaluate whether public policy is based on anything other than dogma.

So this is why we need more transparent, honest reporting of crime stats from Boris and other politicians - because as things stand, all we have are lies, dammed lies and manipulated statistics.

The People of Ecuador have something in common with the People of Dorking, Surrey - oil, natural beauty and solidarity

Johann Hari, Independent journalist extraordinaire, has written extensively about the chilling impacts of man's disregard for his natural environment - impacts that range from disappearing polar ice caps to scrambles to capture scarce water and more. Yet we must hope that we can reverse the suicidal tendency of modern man to exploit every last resource no matter what the cost, and Johann writes about one such example from Ecuador - what's striking is the resemblance of Ecuador's stance to that seen closer to home - in leafy Surrey to be exact.

Johann reports that in a bid to fight the economic pressures to drill for $7bn worth of oil under the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, the rest of the world has been made an offer - pay half that much and the nation of Ecuador will resist the temptation to cash in on the oil and gas lying under one of the most diverse areas of life on Earth. Johann's account of this laudable struggle against the dominant economic narrative of our times - that short-term profit trumps sustainable development - is well worth a read - in particular if you read it alongside a related tale from Surrey.

Earlier this week planners at Surrey County Council considered whether to permit Europa Oil and Gas to drill for oil in a region of the County designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. They refused the planning application, which in itself represents a victory for protecting our environment over the headlong rush to squeeze every last drop of oil from the planet no matter what the consequences.

What makes the Surrey decision all the more impressive is that just a week ago, the Council's own report recommended that the application for an exploratory drill site be allowed - but following impassioned interventions from concerned citizens the planning committee voted 6-4 against the drilling - and in favour of protecting the land.

The drilling would have been for a matter of weeks, in order to determine whether further extraction was economically viable - allowing such drilling wouldn't have been unique, given that onshore exploratory drilling has been permitted in Sussex despite objections. Unless demand for fossil fuels, at home and abroad, abates significantly, such battles between oil companies and the people will become more frequent.

But Surrey County Council sided, whether knowingly or otherwise, with their Ecuadorian counterparts, in deciding that the environmental impact of economic activity cannot always be treated as an externality to be disregarded.

These seemingly unrelated stories, at opposite ends of the world, might just show the rest of the world how to resist the tempting call to 'Drill baby, drill,' - here's hoping!

#NHSreform, it's emphasis on 'patient choice' and testing unproven remedies

It's been a while (alright, it's been ages) since I blogged on anything vaguely bad-science related or scientific here, for which I apologise given that it was my original (self-appointed) remit to do so. Well, here goes...

Simon Singh raises an interesting question via Twitter - Why waste limited research funds on proven pseudoscience? The proven pseudoscience in question here is homeopathy, and Simon's enquiry stems from an Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled by every skeptic's favourite MP David Tredinnick. Tredinnick's Motion calls for public funding to facilitate research into this important area to ascertain the effectiveness of homeopathy. The Motion has since been amended by the intrepid Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert - Amendment 1820A1 in the previous link comprehensively refutes Mr. Tredinnick's premise and I hold out hope that more MPs will emerge as signatories to Julian's amendment than the 13 (to date) that support the Bulls$*t from Bosworth...

As it happens the funding of research into alternative therapies, homeopathy amongst them, was raised recently when I spoke at a political event (no wait, don't go...!) where I discussed the Government's reforms to the NHS - I was sharing the platform (or rather patio as we were in a beautiful garden in Hackney) with Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow MP.

I've written about the political side of the discussion over on Liberal Democrat Voice, but it was in the Question and Answer session that followed our discussion that alternative therapies, and research into their efficacy, was raised.

We were asked about whether there was any enthusiasm to run publicly-funded, properly controlled clinical trials into alternative therapies, given that in his talk Paul had intimated that with greater choice and freedom for commissioning General Practitioners (GPs), they would be more flexibility to prescribe a variety of interventions that 'the patient felt would help them recover.'

Turns out the questioner was posing an interesting variation on the theme of 'should we pay to find out whether sugar pills/sticking needles into meridians etc works, and should they be available on the NHS,' intimating that if critics of alternative therapies were so certain that things that have been used for aeons don't work, why not fund large-scale high-quality trials to sort the wheat from the chaff - to show what works and what doesn't?

Paul responded by reassuring us that whilst GP commissioners would be free to procure whatever services they saw fit, they would still face guidelines from NICE and the MHRA on what they could offer the patient - he also suggested that if healthcare was to become more outcomes-focussed, then there would be more scope for prescribing interventions that patients themselves reported as being beneficial.

This has been the standard Government line for some time now, which leaves much room for interpretation to say the least. What if a patient reports they feel better following a nice foot massage? Or by having hands waved over them? Perhaps patients would like to have wax candles stuck in various orifices? If they say it makes them feel better, who are we to argue? Roll-up, roll-up, for the great Alt-Med giveaway - Department of Health funding for anyone who can convince a patient with a self-limiting condition to fill in a questionnaire favourably...

Flippant jokes aside, the question about publicly funding research into homeopathy needs answering - or rather, the answers that exist need to be articulated more forcefully. I'd recommend reading Andy Lewis' take on such matters, who's written extensively about testing alternative therapies in patients - particularly with regards the ethical problems involved.

My answer to our interlocutor was two-fold. Firstly I said that in times of plenty, we would love to study as many therapies as possible as extensively as we could, so that the best treatment options were available to patients - indeed that's how evidence-based medicine proceeds - but that such studies must, above all else, pass elementary criteria for plausibility, prior evidence of efficacy (perhaps in animal studies), and be demonstrably safe - not only in themselves, but taken within the context of discouraging the use of established treatments. As many (if not most) so-called alternative therapies fall at these hurdles, it's hard to justify stufying them further at public expense.

Of course, I said, at a time when public funds are constrained - with the NHS facing its toughest financial settlement since its inception - it is deeply unethical to divert scarce funding to enquiries into questionable practices. Secondly, I suggested that contrary to opinion - expressed most strongly amongst proponents of quackery - that because there's little or no profit to to be made from alternative therapies, Big Pharma refuses to do good clinical studies and that therefore the government should do so instead. This simply isn't true on two fronts - the Alt Med industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and can be very profitable, and some good evidence does exist regarding the use of such therapies as homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture and so on - it's just that when the studies are of good quality, they inevitably give an answer that quacktitioners would rather not hear.

Indeed the gentleman interested in studies of alternative therapies was surprised to hear that enough evidence as to their efficacy exists to allow systematic meta-analyses - mostly by the Cochrane Collaboration, and mostly showing that Alt Med therapies simply don't work better than placebo. This suggests to me that although the scientific method has been used to investigate whether homeopathy and its like are effective, the results haven't trickled down into the vernacular.

In sum, then, I think I managed to argue against public funding of research into 'proven psuedoscience,' partly because it's already been shown to be rubbish and partly because further studies would be expensive and unethical.

I could go on for ever - I could emphasise that for journalists and bloggers to adequately inform the public about the lack of efficacy and outright dangers of some alternative medicine we need to have our libel laws radically reformed so we can write without fear of being silenced; I could lament the seemingly forcible retirement of the inestimable Professor Edzard Ernst, he who has dedicated an entire career to systematically evaluating the evidence for or against alternative therapies; I could even harp on about the tyranny of choice, whereby when confronted by a smorgarsboard of options we often fail to choose wisely based on what's good for us...

But I think it's best to leave the last word to musical genius Tim Minchin and his exposition of alternative medicine in the form of his beat poem Storm - where he rightly says, "You know what they call “alternative medicine”That’s been proved to work? Medicine.”

Libel Reform Coalition welcomes Government's draft Defamation bill as 'good step in the right direction,' calls on 'Parliament to go further in key areas.'

Yesterday saw the long-awaited publication of the Government's draft Defamation Bill, with the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke MP recognising that

the increased threat of costly libel actions has begun to have a chilling effect on scientific and academic debate, and investigative journalism.

The Bill, which includes many of the substantial provisions called for by the Libel Reform Coalition last week, was welcomed by free speech campaigners as 'a great starting point’ to ensure the first overhaul of our archaic libel laws.'

Amongst the provisions successfully campaigned for are:

· Easier ‘strike out’ of trivial or inappropriate claims by raising the threshold of harm before a libel action can proceed

· A curtailment of ‘libel tourism’ with a stronger requirement to justify bringing a claim in this jurisdiction for claimants domiciled abroad

· A more effective and clearer defence of truth (justification)

· New clearer and wider statutory defence of honest opinion (fair comment)

· Extension of statutory qualified privilege to benefit NGOs and scientific conferences

· The introduction of a single publication rule with a one year cut

The Ministry of Justice also announced a major consultation exercise to complement the Bill, running from today until June 10th 2011, to canvass opinion on several key issues not tackled in the draft legislation. These include vital issues relating to whether corporations should be allowed to sue for libel, , and whether internet service providers will continue to be held liable for comments made through them.

The consultation exercise serves to demonstrate that although the draft legislation is an excellent start on the path towards a truly liberal defamation law, there remains work to be done before English and Welsh libel law is up to date, fair and capable of fostering open discourse. The Libel Reform Coalition will continue to press for the law, when eventually passed in a years' time, to be just that.

What do we want? Libel reform! When do we want it? Now! (or, as soon as the applicable Parliamentary procedures have been observed...)

Later today, scientists, authors, comedians and journalists will gather in Parliament to lend their support to the Libel Reform Coalition's blueprint for the protection of free speech, setting out their priorities for libel laws that no longer stifle debate. I set out below a summary of how we've reached this stage.

The campaign to reform our unjust and illiberal libel laws has achieved a great deal to date; in just under two years, we've gone from raising awareness of cases such as Simon Singh's, which demonstrate all to clearly the need to defend fair comment, to seeing manifesto commitments on libel reform from all three major political parties at the last election.

As the evidence builds that our libel laws really do threaten legitimate public discourse on matters of public interest, the momentum behind the campaign has increased significantly in recent months, with a number of significant developments - not least of which was the publication of Lord Lester's draft Defamation Bill. The Coalition Government responded to Lord Lester's Bill by committing to publishing its draft legislation to be put before Parliament - a significant achievement, showing that Lord McNally and others in government truly are committed to reforming our libel laws for the better.

We understand that after a significant consultation the Government is due to publish its legislation at some point next week - in anticipation of that publication, the Libel Reform Coalition will later today release a blueprint for libel reform, setting out our priorities for reform. At the launch of this blueprint, entitled What should a defamation bill contain?, supporters of the Campaign will tell MPs that "public interest should be at the heart of the new defamation bill," and that, in the words of Sense about Science Director Tracey Brown, "The current laws work best for bullies. The new law must work best for the citizen."

The blueprint is designed to set out what the Libel Reform Coalition wishes to see in the Government's legislation; as Dr. Evan Harris from the Campaign said,

"From writers to scientists and from journalists to editors, those who love free speech want next week's Government's draft defamation bill to match the contents of our blue-print and if fails to do so will be urging MPs and peers to amend it".

The Parliamentary launch of the blueprint will be followed by an opportunity for supporters to put their concerns to MPs.

Commenting on the blueprint's release, Director of English PEN said, "PEN's members have been calling for reform for more than 70 years. It's time to finish the job that EM Forster began in 1938."

As I'm lucky enough to be attending the launch, I'll update this post with photos and news later.

Health Secretary Lansley appears to have U-turned on price competition in NHS

According to the Health Service Journal, the Government has performed a significant volte face regarding its reform to the National Health Service - it appears healthcare providers will not be able to compete with NHS services on price.

Under the original proposals, outlined in the Equity and Excellence White Paper, independent sector providers would have been permitted to compete for business with NHS Trusts on the basis of price (they are currently restricted to competing on quality). According to the HSJ, the reforms have been watered down to prevent price competition. The following is from the HSJ article:

The government has performed a significant U-turn on allowing price competition between NHS trusts and independent providers.

A letter to senior staff from NHS chief executive David Nicholson today said there was “no question of introducing price competition” – contradicting the Health Bill which refers to the tariff being only “a maximum price for that service”. 

Ministers have spoken about encouraging competition on price. But a senior Department of Health source told HSJ ministers had “changed their minds” on its dangers, although they added the real test was whether or not they changed the wording in the Health Bill. 

Last month Sir David told the Commons Public Accounts Committee price competition would be “extremely dangerous” without strong safeguards to protect quality. 

The DH now plans to develop guidance which will make clear offering NHS services below the national tariff will only be permitted in exceptional circumstances and subject to approval by strategic health authorities or their sucessor bodies.

Whilst the turnaround would be a welcome recognition of the dangers of sparking a 'race-to-the-bottom' with private providers cutting costs to secure commissioning contracts, the details remain to be determined - crucially, we await the Department of Health's definition of the 'exceptional circumstances' under which services may be offered at rates below the national tariff.


[Hat-tip to Alex Marsh (SodanAlexM on Twitter) who alerted me to this story].

Got a spare £50m? Fernando Torres or regenerative medicine - your choice...!

I'm more than aware that in writing a blogpost comparing extravagant expenditure by football clubs to the money needed to support vital medical research I may make comparing apples and oranges feel like, well comparing apples and apples, but here goes nonetheless - forgive my rather tortured premise if you may...

As the January transfer market in football players came to a close, two dramatic signings caught the spotlight - firstly, Andy Carroll moved from Newcastle United to Liverpool for a (then) British record transfer fee of £35 million - not to be out-done, Chelsea promptly smashed that record by signing Liverpool's Fernando Torres for £50 million.

I don't plan to discuss the merits of the player transfers themselves - much... I can't resist the temptation to question the pricing of the two Carroll and Torres; the former is injured, is talented but surely isn't more valuable to his new owners than the explosive David Villa is to Barcelona, and has a chequered off-field temperament; and the latter has had a terrible 12 months, failing to impress in Spain's World Cup triumph and scoring just nine goals in this lacklustre season thus far.

Regardless of whether Liverpool and Chelsea overpaid for their particular new acquisitions, the question that occurs to me is whether any footballer can truly be "worth" £50 million (or £50,000,000 - writing it out makes it hurt more...). Undoubtedly they "cost" that much, it's a question of whether they're worth it...

I ask because the £50 million figure also made another appearance in the news this week, albeit in a different context. The Twittersphere informed me that the British Heart Foundation has launched a new appeal, in support of research into encouraging regeneration of heart muscle following injury from heart attack.

The appeal aims to raise £50 million so the BHF can fund ground-breaking research into why the human heart fails to regenerate muscle cells following ischaemic injury (i.e. cell death after being starved of oxygen), whereas the heart muscle of lower animals such as the zebrafish does its own repair job.

Clearly the aim is to understand the mechanisms behind regeneration of heart muscle in organisms like zebrafish, and to try and devise treatments for oxygen-starved human heart tissue using either by activating repair pathways which we may have but don't use, or by delivering stem cells to the heart and hoping they develop into mature, functioning muscle cells that replace the injured tissue.

The latter is a much-explored option, with encouraging reports from early clinical studies using adult-derived bone-marrow stem cells - and more recent trials have shown that not only is the injection of such stem cells well-tolerated, but that it can lead to improvements in clinically relevant outcome measures such as the volume of blood pumped by the heart at each beat (ejection fraction).

Exploring mechanisms of tissue regeneration in lower animals is not exactly a surefire way of developing new treatments for human diseases that involve cell death - it has been known for decades that salamanders regenerate limbs following injury, but little progress has been made in translating that knowledge into treatments for patients - to date at least.

And yet the BHF's appeal strikes a chord not only with its undoubted ambition, but with its solid scientific basis too - there is little doubt that an increased knowledge of the developmental and regenerative pathways in zebrafish, pufferfish (Fugu), salamanders and all sorts of other organisms will shed light on whether humans retains a capacity to repair our own heart muscles, and if so then how we can tap into said capacity.

As the recent Science is Vital campaign showed so successfully, even blue-skies research with little predictable benefit is of immense value - which is even more true of research of the sort that the BHF aims to back with their new campaign as it could well lead to a much-needed treatment for conditions that are both life-threatening and increasing in prevalence. Such research needs to be backed by public and private funding, as it has the potential not only to push back the boundaries of human understanding but to improve the quality of lives of millions of people.

Which brings us back neatly to Fernando Torres. I'm not suggesting that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich should have spent his oligarchical spoils on fulfilling the BHF's appeal in full (well, perhaps I am after all...), it's just that his extravagance on the Spanish striker throws the appeal into sharp relief -  I wonder if those fortunate enough to have hearts healthy enough to power a top career in professional football appreciate just how little of their collective 'net worth' in the transfer market would adequately fund leading-edge research for those suffering from the burden of disease.

The two lots of £50 million - one spent on a footballer, the other needed to pay for medical research -   demonstrates neatly that we as a society have the wherewithal to fund quality research into matters of life and death, but sometimes our priorities can be somewhat muddled...