Earlier this evening I stumbed across the minutes of the meetings of the Cranial Forum, a body set up in 1999 to look at voluntary self-regulation in craniosacral therapy, a form of alternative medicine whose practitioners believe manipulation of the spine and skull can treat various ailments.
In recent months they have been debating affiliation with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, the government-funded alternative medicine regulator dubbed "OfQuack" by critics. Browsing through the relevant minutes, I found something rather interesting.
Earlier this year, Tony Brooks and 'Le Canard Noir' of Quackometer used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a document from the Department of Health, detailing the number of practitioners that the CNHC had managed to sign up by the end of April. The total figure stood at 232, of whom 194 were massage therapists (the remainder being nutritionists). In addition the document provided projections drawn up by the CNHC, which predicted that they would have 607 members by the end of May.
Throughout the spring and summer, the Cranial Forum have been firing off requests to the CNHC for further information, as they contemplate whether to align with the regulator. The responses of the CNHC have been recorded in the minutes of various meetings of the Forum, in April, June and July.
This is where things start to get interesting, for in the minutes dated April 6th, under a section entitled "Update from CNHC", we find the following (my emphasis):
"Three hundred massage practitioners are already registered and more are expected. The aromatherapy register will open on the 5th May. Nutrition is in the process of agreeing their registration process but it is taking time."
And in the minutes of their June meeting, they relate the following information from the CNHC:
"Four hundred massage practitioners are already registered and six hundred are awaiting processing which has been delayed by a computer glitch. The aromatherapy register will open on the 5th May."
So let's get this clear:
1) At some point prior to April 6th, the CNHC told the Cranial Forum that they had already signed up 300 massage therapists.
2) At some point prior to May 5th, the CNHC told the Cranial Forum that they had already signed up 400 massage therapists, and were in the middle of processing 600 further applicants - 1,000 in total.
3) At the end of April the CNHC told the Department of Health that they had signed up only 194 massage therapists, and projected a total of around 600 members in all professions by the end of May.
These figures simply do not match in any way.
The figure that the CNHC gave the Cranial Forum at the start of April was at least 55% higher than the official number they reported to the DoH. And for the figures given to the Forum in May to be accurate, the CNHC would have had to have received over eight hundred applications in the space of a few days, and to have conveniently experienced their "computer glitch" in the same period.
This discrepancy is documented fact, and the CNHC have some very serious questions to answer regarding how they managed to give two completely different figures to the government and to a fellow alternative medicine body.
But as well as the figures reported to the Department, it's possible to count the number of practitioners yourself by searching the electronic register on their website. (Hat tips to Alan Henness and Simon Perry who have been compiling these figures.) Doing so produces 928 results as of October 17th. At the ends of September and August the figures were 797 and 607 respectively. Going back to the end of July, 528 members were listed.
This is curious, given that the CNHC informed the Cranial Forum prior to the end of July that "the CNHC has 1,000 registrants."
One can only assume that is has taken them three months to add the missing 400+ names to the online register. Perhaps they should divert some of their PR budget to hiring a better typist?
At some point, the Department of Health will make the official figures for July available to the public under the Freedom Of Information Act. The CNHC already have some explaining to do; but if the DoH figures for July are as far from the figure given to the Cranial Forum as we think they will be, then the fall-out could be catastrophic.
Update - Massaging the Figures:
Alan Henness has very kindly provided a graph of the number of massage therapists registered by the CNHC over the last several months, as recorded on their online registry. Note that we still don't appear to have seen the 1,000 massagers promised back in May. That's quite some computer glitch.
For more background on the CNHC see - Tags:OfQuack.
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Ooooh! You are mean!
I don't see why this is so complicated. They use alternative math. It is to mathematical accuracy as alternative medicine is to healing - completely unrelated.
Good grief. This could be very embarrassing. However, the CNHC don't seem to have been too worried by their previous record of number-fudging and retroactive editing of press releases.
It may be that they are just beyond embarrassment.
@Sean Ellis: "It may be that they are just beyond embarrassment."
The difference this time, imho, is that until now it's just been a question of "CNHC say one thing, the skeptics disagree." With the Cranial Forum and the FOIA documents combined, we have documented evidence that - for whatever reason - the CNHC gave wildly inaccurate figures to an alternative medicine body they were trying to, er, woo regarding their success or lack of. Given the skepticism we've already seen in the alt med community to the CNHC, this could seriously undermine their reputation among alt-med practitioners in a way that our previous critticisms were unlikely to do. But we'll see...
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Just to point out that this is the Cranial Forum's suggestion of what the CNHC has told them, ie it could be that the CF got the numbers wrong, when communicating them to their board.
Also, Im sure it gives you great pleasure in being 'cheeky' or 'oh so anti-establishment' by using the ofquack logo, but, do try to respect others' copyright; I am guessing the CNHC knows better that to respond to your disregard for the law by enforcing the removal of that logo from your articles.
Just to point out that this is the Cranial Forum's suggestion of what
the CNHC has told them, ie it could be that the CF got the numbers
wrong, when communicating them to their board.
If it were once, perhaps, but it seems rather unlikely they would have gotten the numbers wrong every single time they reported them...
I am guessing the CNHC knows better that to respond to your disregard
for the law by enforcing the removal of that logo from your articles.
Legally I very much doubt they'd have a leg to stand on. The irony would be quite amusing though, given their difficulties with the kitemark fiasco.
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Anonymous X is apparently under the impression that the CNHC not only refers to itself as "OfQuack", but has gone to the trouble of designing an OfQuack logo as well.
No Sean, I know very well who has, based on a (Im assuming) copyrighted logo (ie the 'proper' cnhc logo), an act in breach, I think, to the whole idea of 'copyright' and ownership of logos etc.
Martin, as I said, displaying a malicious take of a copyrighted logo, is, I would imagine, not very nice. I do recall the kitemark 'fiasko'; they used the word although it is owned by the BSi or whoever, you notified the BSi, they told the cnhc they shouldnt use it, and they stopped doing so; easy.
Copyright law not relevant.
I don't believe that copyright law would apply in this case. The OfQuack logo is neither a direct copy nor a transformative work of the CNHC logo. I'm not even sure that it uses the same font.
Even something like trademark legislation would probably founder since it is (a) an obvious parody and (b) does not mention the original "product" at all.
You may have a point that the nickname "OfQuack" is mildly insolent, but it serves to remind everyone that the CNHC should not be taken seriously as a regulator since their own rules explicitly make clear that there is no standard for efficacy or even basic safety of the treatments that they endorse.
You piqued my interest.
Even the rather strict Schweppes decision by Judge Falconer in 1984 restricted itself to a narrow interpretation of the law on parody as legitimate usage, namely whether the parody work reproduced "a substantial part of the plaintiff's work". I think it would be difficult to argue that the OfQuack logo reproduces any unique elements of the CNHC logo.
So although I am not a lawyer by any means (all right, I admit I can read patentese) I think this is a red herring. Quite an interesting one - I now know a lot more about parody in trademark law than I did - but a red herring nonetheless.
Back to the case in point, though. Anonymous X doesn't seem to be worried that a Government sponsored regulatory body is reporting two different sets of figures.
sorry for delay, thanks Sean. Im no lawyer and dont intend to become one either (well, I did toy with the idea of patent lawyer). Anyway, I thought maybe the cranial forum got their figures wrong, rather than then cnhc.