Gambling Systems (Extra Soapbox)

This week on the Just Skeptics podcast we were joined by Rick Owen, who talked at great length about common fallacies encountered whilst gambling. He was kind enough to write this accompanying piece for us:


On my guest slot on episode 2 of the Just Skeptics podcast I talk about gambling superstitions and scam systems. Without repeating the podcast spot (you'll have to listen to it), I thought I would expand on a couple of points and include some weblinks.

You can see the free roulette system here. In the podcast I talk about the Martingale system, wherein your stake is doubled after each loss (on 1 to 1 odds like a coin-toss). The problem is that exponential growth gets very big very quickly. If you have infinite money you should be okay. The system on the website is actually a split Martingale system, or Labouchère system : a more gradual increase in stakes, but still doomed. These systems are especially risky in real casinos where each table has a minimum and maximum bet, so you will quickly run up against the table maximum and your system will crash.

Podcast - Just Skeptics Episode 1

We've finally got our podcast off the ground, and we'd suggest you listen to it!

Every week we'll be discussing a handful of skeptical or scientific news stories, and then we'll let our rotating guest host get on a soapbox and rant about a topic of his or her choosing.

This week we're joined by guest host Allan Callister as we cover the wierd and wonderful world of acu-pressure, celebrate the closure of the Prince Foundation and admit to being incredibly smug.

When the courts Singh out.

The majority of skeptics and science fans in the UK have eagerly been watching the court case between Dr. Simon Singh and The British Chiropractic Association(BCA) and more recently the court of appeal battle. The case started when Dr. Singh wrote a column on the 19th of April 2008. In the column Singh expressed opinions that the BCA were not inclined to like. Mainly the line;

"The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."

The BCA were super pissed off that Dr. Singh wrote "...happily promotes bogus treatments." and I'm pretty sure that the "...not a jot of evidence." didn't tickle their fancy either. After reading this the BCA did whatever any normal, rational and sane person would do. Instead of fighting with their words and proving their point, using science to show up Dr. Singh, they spoke to their lawyers and then sued seven bells of shit out of him for having an opinion that has the cheek of, as so far, been supported absolutely by the scientific evidence.

10:23 in Manchester

At 10:23am on January 30th, more than three hundred homeopathy sceptics nationwide took part in a mass homeopathic 'overdose' in protest at Boots' continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them. The Greater Manchester Skeptics were proud to organise the Manchester overdose. Here is that event, recorded by the award-winning documentary film-maker Angela Byrne:

Puppy Dogs & Cancer Kids - The poor state of "evidence" for Homeopathy

I have to admit that sometimes we skeptics do leave ourselves open to reproach by being sceptical about subjects just because it seems pretty obvious to us how crazy the notion is.  Now this in itself is hardly sceptical, and is at best lazy and at worst arrogant.  Today I feel little better about this after reading through reams of blogs on the subject of the 10²³ Campaign reminding me that it’s just not realistic to expect individuals to sift through massive piles of peer-reviewed articles, written using medical, scientific, or statistical jargon, before they decide how best to treat their malaise.  That is indeed why we should be able to look to those with proven scientific or medical knowledge to guide us, such as doctors, scientists, and pharmacists.

Unfortunately, this means that I have put myself back on the hook.  I am a scientist.  I love science, and I love trawling through good papers with strong data, showing a really novel story.  I think (if I had been a scientist when it came out) I would have found Jacques Benveniste’s  Nature article proposing the molecular memory of water¹ extremely exciting, even with the foreboding editorial advice from then-editor John Maddox².  This is exactly the kind of article that you want to be proved right; imagine, water with molecular memory! It just doesn’t make sense, and that is why it would have been truly amazing.  Just think of all the scientists thought absurd in their time, only to be proved right. Yes, the world is round! No, the earth is not the center of the solar system!