Teapots, Dilutions and Infrasound: The Negative Proof Conundrum

We can't prove negatives. If I tell you that there's a teapot orbiting Earth, and you can't provide evidence that there isn't, it doesn't mean that I'm right, or that there's a 50/50 chance that I'm right. The philosopher Bertrand Russell used this celestial teapot as an example of the 'burden of proof' - those making a claim need to support that claim with evidence. It's not incumbent on critics to produce evidence of the opposite.

Two groups promoting claims in the world of medicine had their theories assessed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC): homeopaths and anti-wind groups. The NHMRC found no evidence to support their claims.

This absence of evidence was twisted into vindication, rather than incrimination. This is due to the common misunderstanding that if there is no evidence for something, the probabilities of that claim either being correct or incorrect are precisely equal.

Homeopathy

'Homoeopathy' is based around the idea that water has a 'memory', and consequently, you can treat someone using absurdly tiny amounts of whatever it is that caused their ailment ("like cures like"). The quantity of active ingredient in homeopathic products is insanely small.

In homeopathy, the smaller the quantity of the active ingredient, the more potent the medicine is said to be. This is bonkers.
Source: http://www.ritecare.com/homeopathic/guide_potency.asp

Last week, the NHMRC released an evidence review examining the efficacy of homeopathy, which found that:

"There is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for treating health conditions" 

The Australian Homeopathic Association (AHA) responded in an interview on ABC News 24 - you can watch the full thing here, but one remark was quite relevant. The head of the AHA said the following, when asked about the NHMRC report on homeopathy:

“What I think you could fairly say is that what the NHMRC have presented does not say that homeopathy does not work or cannot work, but that the evidence might not be particularly strong in certain areas, or that their might not be enough of it”

Wind Turbine Syndrome 

A similar NHMRC evidence review into wind farms and health was released a few weeks back. They state: 

"There is no reliable or consistent evidence that wind farms directly cause adverse health effects in humans"

This matches the results of a 2010 evidence review that did essentially the same thing. In a letter to the then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, CEO of the 'Waubra Foundation' Sarah Laurie wrote: 

"The current CEO of the NHMRC, Professor Warwick Anderson made it clear there was a concern, in his oral evidence to the Senate Inquiry, on 31st March 2011. He stated “we do not say that there are no ill effects”, and acknowledged that there was very little existing evidence, and that the absence of evidence did not mean there was not a problem.

Why the inaction, when families are being forced from their homes, or elderly pensioners are left to “rot”?"

It's a line held firm by anti-wind groups. An absence of evidence is no barrier to claiming that wind turbines are things to fear, as stated again in this interview, after the release of yet another report, this one by the South Australian EPA, clearing wind farms of health impacts (emphasis mine):

"TIMOTHY MCDONALD: But I guess - you just made the claim that country people are being harmed by these wind farms, but at the same time you're saying that the research isn't there to show one way or the other. I'm just trying to reconcile those two points. 

SARAH LAURIE: Well they're reporting serious harm to their doctors. Their doctors are reporting harm, their psychologists are reporting harm. The individuals are reporting harm to a series of Senate inquiries and nothing is being done.

The fact that it's not getting in the peer reviewed published journals doesn't mean the harm isn't happening."

Some Claims Really Need Evidence

You can make any claim you want. But some claims need to be backed with evidence. If, for instance, you travel to a community considering a wind farm development, and you tell them that the wind farm is going to give them autism, one might expect there to be strong evidence in support of that claim, rather a simple absence of evidence against it.

Or, if someone with cancer needs treatment, and you tell them that magic water will heal them, simply throwing up your hands and saying 'welp, there's no evidence I'm wrong!' doesn't cut it.

Be Clear About The Burden of Proof

An irksome feature of the NHMRC's report into wind farms and health was the exclusion of social and psychological issues.

There's no consideration of the impact of lobby groups that exist outside academia or the medical profession, and consequently, aren't bound by the need for evidence. It's hard to skirt around the fact that despite there being no evidence for homeopathy or 'wind turbine syndrome', both claims have incredible cut-through, due largely to the fact that people accept those claims based on value systems and world-view, rather than quantity of evidence.

This might be something the NHMRC could consider in the future. It's inevitable that an established and quantified absence of evidence is no barrier to people travelling to a town and trying to instil fear of wind energy, or other people trying to sell magic water as a cure for cancer.

Why not understand and pre-empt this, when trying to arm the community against misinformation? 

The Legal History of Wind Energy Health Fears

In the past five years, a phenomenon known as 'wind turbine syndrome' has suffocated and stifled rational discourse around the deployment of wind farms. It's based on the assertion that inaudible sound emissions from wind turbines are responsible for an incredible spread of symptoms, at large distances.

It's been shown, clearly, that low-frequency sound levels from operational wind turbines are much lower than you'd find in a CBD or in a rural environment. Professor Simon Chapman, from the University of Sydney, showed in a study that out of an estimated population of 32,000 living with five kilometres of wind farms, there were ~124 people who had complained of health or noise impacts from wind farms.

There have been 20 evidence reviews, by government, industry and research bodies, to assess whether there's enough scientific research out there to suggest that the symptoms stated by residents are caused by wind turbines - each found no positive evidence. Recently, the Australian Medical Association released a position statement, saying the same.

Despite a pointed lack of evidence for 'wind turbine syndrome', the issue has grown to become a central component of campaigns run in communities against wind energy, boosted by anti-wind groups that travel to towns to bolster health fears. Anecdotal evidence is the focus, as stated in this meeting held by a group opposed to a nearby wind farm development:



The barrister in the video is explicit about what it takes for a successful legal challenge to a wind farm - as much anecdotal evidence as you can muster:

"That experience is in itself, evidence. If you dragged in thirty people from Waubra, twenty from Waterloo and put them in a court room, to talk about the loss and the suffering, it will support a claim to obtain an injunction against any wind farm being proposed"

A recent post by energy blogger Mike Barnard examined a thorough history of the times this health issue has been considered by the courts, around the world. He crawled legal databases, found more than 150 decisions, and examined 47 of which had addressed noise or health issues from those proposed wind farms. 46 of those found no evidence that the proposals would damage humans or animals living nearby.



Mike's list of 47 court cases is interesting. Firstly, it's worth noting that all of the countries are English speaking. Despite a large installed capacity in European countries, the issue seems nearly non-existent. Mike did search European countries, but acknowledges that language might have been an issue with the search.



There was also a distinct increase in the issue being raised in the courts after the publication of a book called 'Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Natural Experiment' by a paediatrician named Nina Pierpont - the wife of an anti-wind activist in the US. It was published in late 2009.

In the NHMRC's latest evidence review, they excluded it from their report, listing it under the "Article is not a study" section.



Australia's distribution is interesting. Victoria comprises the bulk of cases that considered the health issue. Every time the health issue was tested in Australian courts, they found no evidence to support the claim that 'wind turbine syndrome' should make us fearful of wind farms.



It's unlikely that having claims assessed and debunked by health bodies and tested in a variety of courts in several different countries will put a dent in the motivation of groups that travel to communities, with the hope of convincing people that they ought to feel visceral fear.

Thanks to Mike's analysis, it's interesting to see how the publication of a single report, not peer-reviewed or published in any journal, can give birth to a mythical syndrome expressed through the court battles detailed in the timeline below, and the imperviousness of this 'syndrome' to demands for evidence.