Homeopathy: A drop in the ocean

At 10:23 am on January 30th, several hundred sceptics across the country are planning on taking part in a staged homeopathic ‘overdose’ to prove the ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies and try and stop Boots selling them. Unfortunately, it will do nothing of the sort.

Now, I’m obviously not saying that there’s anything special about homeopathic treatments. There’s no decent evidence that taking infinitely diluted amounts of a substance which may cause effects similar to the symptoms you’re trying to treat is going to have any specific medical benefits over a placebo and no particularly logical reason to imagine that it should, but trying to show that in this sort of stunt is unlikely to to actually change anyone’s mind. Let’s look at some reasons why:

A homeopathic ’straw man’

Homeopaths can simply say that a test of this sort proves nothing. It’s not the volume of tablets you take, it’s the frequency of the dosage.
To quote one homeopathic site

A homeopathic remedy acts as a signal which energizes or stimulates the body’s healing power… a sick person (is)very much in tune or sensitive to the correct remedy and only a minute stimulus from the correct signal (or remedy) is required…For the same reason, it is not possible to take an overdose of homeopathic remedies.

So, an overdose isn’t going to do you any harm (well, obviously), but the failure of everyone to collapse isn’t going to change any homeopath believers minds as you’re not doing it properly. They’ll probably just use it as an example of how safe homeopathic remedies are, compared to conventional treatments. Neither are claims like ‘it’s been proven not to work‘ on the front page of the 1023 organisation’s site going to help.. The real position is contained in their open letter to Boots ‘the best and most rigorous scientific research concludes that homeopathy offers no therapeutic effect beyond placebo’.  The placebo effect is a powerful one, so to someone who has seen benefits from homeopathy, they aren’t going to care if they would have got the same benefits from a properly presented Smartie, they just care that they got better. It’s no good telling them ‘it’s been proven not to work‘, they have direct experiences to the contrary.

Why Boots?

Boots are a business. They sell homeopathic pills because some people want to buy them. It’s as simple as that. They make no claims as to whether they work or not. You’d be better off looking harshly about the claims they do make about anti-wrinkle creams but they’re very good at ducking press on that subject too. They’ll be quite happy to sit on the fence on this one. They might even be getting more stock in to fulfill the needs of overdosing sceptics.  There are far more deserving targets out there and singling out a single high-street supplier doesn’t make sense to me.  I have heard the claims that they are the main source of pharmaceutical advice for many people, but it’s been a long time since Boots was just a chemist.

Playing with medicines is a bad idea – even ‘alternative’ ones

Obviously the worst that’s going to happen to the 1023 volunteers is a potential head rush from the sugar in the pills, but not all alternative medicines are harmless. Some Chinese remedies involve potentially toxic ingredients and shouldn’t be misused.  Again, it’s highly unlikely that someone is going to read about this stunt and take an overdose of something which can actually do them harm, but if they do, you can rely on the Daily Mail to find them and establish that all sceptics are evil.

It’s just a media stunt

Now this is something I’m sure even the 1023 organisers would agree with. They’ve already managed to get a fair bit of press attention but it’s going to be of the Blue Monday type, in the news briefly for a day or so and then fade into the obscurity of other such wacky popular science stories. The trouble is by over simplifying an issue, particularly over simplifying the views of your opponents, you make your arguments easy to dismiss.  I appreciate that sometimes a media show is what it takes to get your story covered, but is just getting yourselves in the paper for the day before you’re replaced by a cow on a roof the sole aim of the campaign?

I would have preferred any homeopathic campaign to concentrate on educating people that they shouldn’t be used to treat serious conditions, such as malaria or cancer, rather than Boots who make no such claims, and if you want to actually try and change people’s minds, organise your own double-blind study of homeopathy. That surely would have been a better use of the publicity, to gain possible volunteers. Get Ben Goldacre to tell us how to do it properly and then you have firm evidence to base your opinions on, not just show-boating.

[Edit: Just as a quick follow up, judging by the following quote it looks like they are even buying the stuff at Boots. Ah, blessed irony..

Secured most of what we need for #ten23. Unbelievable, some remedies are sold out at Boots online & instore...

]

Image credit: Snap® CC Licenced

Politicians have always been slightly schizophrenic on drugs; coming down hard on illegal drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and marijuana, while continuing the status quo when it comes to legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, irrespective of the actual risk factors involved with each, but they are seldom forced to acknowledge publicly that their policies are often based purely on personal hunches rather than any sort of investigative study. In the last few weeks they’ve not only chosen to ignore advice from their own advisory body on drugs, but also an education study which recommended that formal learning in school should be put back till children are six.

Now, I wouldn’t claim to say that politicians should be forced to accept the recommendations of their advisers, but if these groups are set up to contain the people who are the experts in their particular fields, it would seem prudent to at least consider their recommendations and have a well reasoned argument why they shouldn’t be accepted. Governments are more than happy to point to advisory decisions which they happen to agree with, but if you’re just going to dismiss the ones you don’t, then why have them at all? I don’t believe that it is asking too much for us to expect our leaders to allow us to take educated decisions with evidence and for the media to present that evidence to us.

At the heart of this discussion is a complicated balance between assessing the physical harm that an individual drug can cause to an individual, the wider social harm which can result from use of the drug and the ‘Daily Mail’ factor – how likely is changing your view on the issue to upset the tabloid press. This is clearly a difficult equation to resolve, but it does no-one any favours to try and pretend that all of those issues aren’t there.
Politicians currently like to emphasize the personal danger of drug taking, but they’re actually more worried about the social harms which can result. That’s why, when someone like David Nutt stands up and points out valid inconsistencies in their policies, they get very edgy as they don’t trust us, the public, to weigh up the evidence and take what they think is the right decision.

This isn’t a trial of the ‘reputation of science‘ as AN Wilson in the Daily Mail would like us to believe. It’s also not a battle between rationality and political thought. What it is, is yet another call for our politicians to be more open about why they are making decisions. If you have made a personal choice to ignore scientific recommendations on a particular issue then say so, but admit that it is a personal choice, not one based on evidence. People may agree with you, they may not and ultimately they will decide on election day.
Once you’ve made that decision however, don’t blame scientists for doing what they are trained to do and certainly don’t claim, as AN Wilson does, that they cannot abide being contradicted. Scientists are happy to be contradicted, providing you have evidence to back up your claims and will even be known to change their minds.
The same doesn’t generally apply to politicians.

[Footnote: I can't be alone in thinking that Professor Nutt should immediately add 'Arrogant God of Certainty' to his business cards]

[Footnote 3: Any media-savvy politician should realise immediately that headlines which can feature the words 'Professor' Nutt' and 'Sack' are going to hit the front page of any paper, irrespective of the story]

It’s obviously a fairly standard chain warning of the type which many of us see far too many of every day, but I found it interesting as it’s a good example of how reports are often a mixture of truth and fallacies, rarely black and white.

Before I go to the email itself, I should point out that I am nowhere near being a doctor, having no chemical or medical knowledge whatsoever and any research I have done is limited purely to the power of Google and a bit of background reading. I also believe that the email below takes a far too simplistic view of a complicated issue. The decision on whether or not to get vaccinated should balance the very real risks involved in contracting the disease against any risks which might result from vaccination. As usual, your GP is going to be the best person to get advice from.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the email. I’ve added my own comments inline.

Hello
You are in my address book (no apologies for that) and this is a one time email with important information you may not know.
Today, 21st October, the swine flu vaccine will be rolled out in mass across the UK. Here is the declared ingredient list for the UK version of the vaccine, Pandermix.

You can view an official view of the ingredients online. The listing below seems to be broadly correct – ignoring the commentary on their consequences.

THE INGREDIENTS (PANDEMRIX VACCINE)

THE RECIPE
Adjuvent: Squalene 10.68mg (Linked to Guillane Barre (Gulf War) syndrome and illegal in the UK)

As far as I can see Squalene isn’t illegal in the UK. It’s been used in vaccines given to over 40 million people in Europe as of 2009. It has been linked to Guillane Barre syndrome in a single study (although even that only found an increased level of Squalene antibodies), but larger and better designed studies have found no such link.

Alpha-Tocopherol 11.86mg
Polysorbate 80 (Tween)4.86mg

OTHER INGREDIENTS

Octoxinol 10 (this is a contraceptive)

It could well be, it also seems to be in face-cream and lots of other things too. I think it’s just an emulsifier.

Sodium Chloride
Disodium Phospate
Potassium dihydrogen Phospate
Potassium Chloride
Magnesium Chloride
Thiomersol (MERCURY) (strongly linked to autistim spectrum neurological disorders, and removed from all other vaccines in the UK since 2003)

Thiomersol has not been removed from all other vaccines in the UK since 2003 (as far as I can see). It’s being phased out of childhood vaccines but the World Health Organisation has concluded that there is no evidence of toxicity from thiomersal in vaccines. Yes, it does contain mercury, but it’s not just mercury. There’s also not very much there. Each dose contains 5 ?grams. That’s 0.000001 grams, about 0.002% of the dose.

Water for Injections

SAFETY CONCERNS

Neurodegenerative and Autoimmune Illness

There is much resistance in the scientific community to its use at this stage, not least as it has been rushed into production amidst accusations of carelessness if not downright negligence. Baxter International, one of the companies supplying the UK, are themselves currently the subject criminal charges after having distributed 72 kgs of swine flu vaccine tainted with Live H5N1 or Avian Flu.

There do seem to be concerns on the speed of the testing process. On the other hand, the argument is that is isn’t different in any material way from normal flu vaccines. Baxter did distribute contaminated vaccine earlier this year. I can’t find anything which says they are subject to criminal charges though. Also, Baxter manufacture Celvapan, one of the alternative vaccines. Pandemrix is made by GSK, so I don’t even know that Baxter are involved in Pandemrix distribution.

Currently, more than 60% of UK medical professionals have said they will not be taking it.

There was a poll which showed that, but that was for a variety of reasons. Many health professionals also don’t take the standard annual flu jabs.
It was also not 60% saying they wouldn’t take it: 29% said they would not choose to have the vaccine and 29% said they were unsure whether or not they would. 71.3% said they were “concerned that the vaccine has not yet been through sufficient trials to guarantee safety”. Half – 50.4% – said they “believe that swine flu is too mild to justify taking the vaccine”.

In Germany, chancellor Merkl last week announced that although the ordinary population will get a version similar to ours, the cabinet and other high ranking officials will get a very different one.

True – but your opinion of ‘very different’ may differ. She did announce that essential workers would receive the Celvapan vaccine, rather than Pandemrix. Celvapan apparently has fewer side-effects than Pandemrix as it contains an entire dead virus, as opposed to sections of the virus boosted by an Adjuvent which is contained within Pandemrix. The presence of the adjuvent stimulates a stronger response in the patient, hence the increased side-effects. Both vaccines are approved for use in the EU however and subsequently Chancellor Merkl has stated that she will also receive Pandemrix.

Incidentally, Celvapan is manufactured by Baxter (see above).

The government has granted companies supplying the vaccines, immunity from prosecution for any adverse reactions.
And people in those companies have said that they will not be taking the vaccine.

True? No idea. There are no references in the email and I can’t find any independent source for those statements.

The swine flu vaccine programme represents a gigantic financial opportunity for these companies.
In these times of financial hardship, is it perhaps an opportunity that could outweigh issues of safety and efficacy?

I’d say that an outbreak would represent more of a financial opportunity personally. I’m not quite sure how news reporting of dangerous vaccines causing lots of problems once used would help those companies either.

Before agreeing to an untested and potentially dangerous substance being put into your body, or those of your children, do some research.

Now, that bit I’d agree with. The general advice from medical professionals is in favour of vaccination for those in danger and people have been dying from the virus, but there are some valid points hidden within the one-sided view presented above. Incidentally, the standard flu shot has been shown to prevent influenza in about 70%-90% of healthy persons younger than age 65 years.

Know more about the issue? Able to identify sources for some of the claims I haven’t been able to track down? Please comment!

However, before everyone gets too self-congratulatory, does any of this brief flirtation with online interest ever actually change anything? True, right now, lots of people who had probably never even heard of Trifigura will now be reading up on the dumping story, but, come tomorrow or next week, how many will still remember much about it? The bloggers will chalk up a victory and in this case the gagging order was actually lifted, but this is still an on-going case and nothing will have actually changed. Still, it’s early, so perhaps I’m just being a killjoy. Let’s look at the last big Twitter victory.

Search for Iran Elections Twitter on Google and you’ll get over three and a half million hits. Back in June the media was awash with stories of new media driven change. The Washington Post were talking about A Twitter Revolution and the US state department even asked that Twitter server maintenance was postponed to allow the tweets to keep flowing. For a week or so, the eyes of the world were on Iran. People coloured their avatars green to show solidarity with the Iranian protesters. Everyone was an expert in Iranian politics and sneering disapprovingly at Iranian election statistics with suspicious eyes. Twitter had spoken. The election was fraudulent and President Ahmadinejad, seeing his follower count dropping wildly and hardly anyone ‘Digg’ing him, did the decent thing and resigned.

Oh wait, no he didn’t. In fact nothing really changed in Iran as a result of all the Tweeting. There are still protests, many of the leading reformists are still in jail, but we’ve moved on.

Still, that’s a large complicated issue. Surely Twitter could have an affect in it’s own technical back yard?

Back in February, the New Zealand government proposed a new law which allowed ISPs to remove Internet connectivity from any user if they were believed to be infringing copyright, purely on accusation. The internet again was up in arms and many users blacked-out their Twitter avatars and MySpace pages in protest. Amazingly, that may have even had an effect and the law was scrapped. Chalk one up to Twitter? Well no, all that was actually agreed was the law would be looked at again and it seems like the new version may still contain the controversial Internet Termination Clause. Whether or not the rewrite is any better than the original and is protested once more remains to be seen, but it’s difficult to see the cause as job done quite yet.

Sites like Twitter are excellent for catching a wave and occasionally rallying a large number of people behind a cause, but it’s yet to become the force for social change that it’s being made out to be. Real issues sadly aren’t resolved in an afternoon and a normally more complicated than 140 characters. If social media is really going to make the impact that it could, then we all need to keep an eye on the issues which we find important and persue them, not just jump on while it’s in the news and let it quietly die. Nag your MP, pester the mainstream media and ask the annoying questions, not just when the issue is in the news, but repeatedly. It’s only by proving that we can stay interested in an issue that change happens, otherwise people will just wait till the dust settles and everything will stay the same.

Am I wrong? Has Twitter really changed the world? Leave a comment and let me know where it’s made a lasting difference.

Freedom of speech issue?  In my opinion, no.  Amazon is a private company and so are perfectly entitled to list titles in any way they see fit.  They can discriminate against whoever they like if they want to.  In any case, they are still selling gay and lesbian literature and they’re certainly not the only online book retailer.  If you don’t like their listing policy, shop somewhere else.

If you want something to get upset about, get upset about internet censorship, over zealous government legislation of pornography or just about Jacqui Smith, but online, non-taxpayer funded organisations can do what they like.  If they lose custom, chances are they’ll change their policy back, but please, online petitions?

If you really want to tackle this issue, go watch This Film is Not Yet Rated and then go and complain to the MPAA about their policy of rating equivalent gay and lesbian sexual scenes more strictly than their heterosexual equivalents.  Unlike Amazon, they do impose an effective monopoly on movie screenings in the US and so are far more deserving of your condemnation.  That looks like censorship to me.  Not showing book selections to people who probably aren’t going to buy them anyway just isn’t.

To remind you, the new slogans are:

From the Christian Party:

“There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.”

The Russian Orthodox Church have:

There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life.

And, the Trinitarian Bible Society go with:

“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God – Psalm 53.1?

I hadn’t seen occurrences of the Russian Orthodox advert in the wild in the UK and I knew from previous investigation that quotes in adverts don’t fall foul of the ASA’s requirements that:

Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation.

as the quote is a genuine quote from the Bible no matter how insulting.

However, to me, the Christian Party message seemed to completely fall foul of the above clause.  They are making a definate statement that God exists, without even hiding behind a weaselly ‘probably’ so that means they need documentary evidence right?

Apparently not.  I wrote a letter of complaint about the advert to the ASA and got the following letter back:

ASA Letter

Dear Mr Brookland,

YOUR COMPLAINT: THE CHRISTIAN PARTY

It turns out that The Christian Party is a political party so I’m sorry to tell you that we’re unable to deal with the specific issues you raise:  we’re unable to investigate complaints about advertising which aims to influence voters in elections or referendums.  To do so would be to interfere with the democratic process.  (The relevant clauses in our Code are 12.1 and 12.2 and you can find the Code at www.cap.org.uk).

The ASA Council has already seen the ad and confirmed that because its primary purpose is to  promote The Christian Party, it is electioneering material and therefore exempt from our Code.

You may be aware that there were similar bus ads appearing for the Trinitarian Bible Society (which stated ”The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Psalm 53.1”) and the Russian Orthodox Church (which stated ”There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life”).  The ASA Council assessed these ads but concluded that both were likely to be seen as simply reflecting the opinions of the advertisers and were unlikely to mislead readers.  Although we will not be pursuing your complaint, thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

Jodie Parsons

Complaints Executive

I know what the slogan for my new political party’s going to be:

There ARE Gods, so do what I say or Ammit will eat you!

She remarks in a letter to The Guardian yesterday:

I know of no community in the country that has yet to join the crusade of some in the Conservative party for fewer CCTV cameras.  Quite the reverse.

Actually trying to parse that sentence makes my head hurt.

[Blatently nicked from The Register but I can't resist Jacqui Smith stories]

An Australian church has decided that the recent bushfires in Victoria, which I’ll remind you, have killed at least 160 people with the death toll still rising, weren’t the result of arsonists, as the current news reports might have you believe.

No, they were the result of God removing his conditional protection from the State after they decriminalised abortion.

He (Pastor Danny Nalliah) said these bushfires have come as a result of the incendiary abortion laws which decimate life in the womb.

“In my dream I saw fire everywhere with flames burning very high and uncontrollably. With this I woke up from my dream with the interpretation as the following words came to me in a flash from the Spirit of God.

That His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.”

What God feels about the innocent people who have died in the fires presumably wasn’t revealed to the Pastor.  But there is hope, he reports from the Bible:

“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

So, just bow down and admit you’re wrong and I’ll call off the fire.  Gee thanks.

I rather suspect that relying on the help of the fire and support services is probably a more reliable solution.  Interestingly, the Ministry is offering to distribute collected goods to help the relief effort too, which you’d think would be acting against God’s will in their eyes.  Still, I guess as long as you preach at the same time it’s probably ok.

What I’d find more worrying if I was Australian, is that both the government treasurer, Peter Costello and their PM, John Howard, have previous associations with the pastor, although Peter Costello has distanced himself from the God’s punishment theory.

It’s deeply disturbing to me that leaders of any group should try and use a national disaster such as this to try and gain publicity and support for their cause, whether religious or otherwise.  Hopefully painting their god as some sort of super-villian raining fire on his enemies will only serve to turn people off their organisation.  No-one likes a bully after all.

Incidentally, if you’d like to help the Red Cross disaster relief campaign in Australia, you can submit donations online

“There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.”

Printed and phrased to look very similar to the atheist advert

There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Even down to font and colouring.  So close in fact that I wondered whether the photo was just generated using the atheist bus slogan generator.  Photo-shopped the picture might be at the moment, but it surely will get more interesting when the ASA start to receive complaints.  Remember, Christian Voice previously lodged an objection to the original atheist advertisment and then proclaimed that:

The FSM will launch their adverts soon

‘If the ASA had thought the humanists could provide evidence for their claim, they would have asked them for it. As they know there is no evidence for the proposition that ‘there is probably no God’, they have let their secularist friends off the hook. ‘I debated this issue secularists five times in recent days, and despite repeated challenges, they could not once come up with anything to back up their claim that there is ‘probably no God’.

I’m now really looking forward to seeing the evidence to support the new Christian Party slogan.  You note that they didn’t even go for a hedge of ‘probably‘, so it’s presumably a cut-and-dried put up, or shut up statement.  Strikes me than anything short of divine manifestation in the witness box, ‘I pledge to tell the truth, so help me me‘, isn’t going to cut it to back up that statement.

The Russian Orthadox Church are displaying a similar lack of originality with the slogan:

There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life.

I wonder if the Humanist Society should feel flattered at how much everyone liked their phrasing, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all

Finally, the Trinitarian Bible Society are just dropping to the level of the school-yard.

“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God – Psalm 53.1″

They’re cunningly avoiding the substantiation requirement of the ASA with that one, by just quoting the Bible, but surely that’s far more insulting than the atheist message?

Just to confirm who’s firmly grabbed the high ground in this discussion, the British Humanist Association released the following comments:

We entirely support free expression and freedom of belief, and so fully support the right of these Christian groups to place their ads on buses. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Of course, there are differences between the Atheist Bus ads and the new Christian ones and I want to take this opportunity to reflect them.

Our ads were a response to ads run by jesussaid.org whose website promised an eternity of hellfire for non-Christians. Our response message, suggested by comedy writer Ariane Sherine was intended to be reassuring, telling people not to worry and enjoy life, as there was probably no god and so no cause to fear an eternity of hellfire.

Our ads were funded entirely by thousands of individual donors who gave small amounts in an outpouring of popular support for the positive message. The ads now launched in response to our response are funded by organisations or wealthy individuals.

Our ads were positive and peaceful. They didn’t say, for example, that religious people were ‘fools’, unlike one of the response ads being run, which says that “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”

Our ads were undogmatic and funny, with the addition of the ‘probably’ in line with the continuing openness of humanists to new evidence and in an echo of previous funny ads, like the Carlsberg ad which stated that it was ‘probably the best lager in the world’.  The new ads are dogmatic and declaratory, leaving no room for reason and debate.

Of course, these groups are free to express themselves as they choose. Our ads encouraged people to think for themselves and I am convinced that they will continue to do so.

Image from the Atheist Bus Slogan generator, based on an original photo © John Worth

Hear anything, or just random gurgling?

The audio in the clip above seems to crop up in a number of children’s toys.

It’s used in the Fisher Price Real Loving Mommy Cuddle and Coo doll for example and in the Baby Pals game on the Nintendo DS.

Now, what if I told you that apparently these toys are being used to promote Islamic fundamentalism and Satanism (yes, two religious beliefs for the price of one)  Confused?

Listen to the sample again,  only this time listen out for the phrases; Satan is King and Islam is the light.

Did you hear them this time?  Personally, I’m struggling to hear Satan is king, but I can sort of hear Islam is the light at a bit of a stretch, now that I’m listening for it.  It’s that last clause that’s important, now that I’m listening for it.

The human brain is a pattern matching machine, particularly when it comes to things like language.  You’ve probably seen TV reports for example where people with strong accents are interviewed and presented with subtitles in case what they say is difficult to understand.  With the subtitles you can understand them easily and might well wonder why they bothered with them, but next time it happens try covering them up.  Suddenly what you could understand before is a lot harder to make out.

The phrases above were both spotted in different toys by the same US woman, Rachel Jones.  Now, who knows what triggered her hearing the phrase the first time, but once primed for it she could easily pick it up again and tell others, priming them to hear it too.  Hearing phrases in random static isn’t a new phenomenon, it even has a psychological term to describe it, Auditory pareidolia.  The same phenomenon leads some people to hear the voices of spirits in random static, or satanic messages in rock music.

Unlike backmasking where phrases are intentionally added, these are all just misfires of the pattern recognition abilities of the brain trying to make sense of sounds where none exists.  Provide a context for that sense and the urge to interpret it becomes even stronger but the phrases still aren’t really there, you just think they are.

Alternatively a secret cabal of Satanists and Islamists have put aside their differences, infiltrated the highest levels of the toy and game industry and are breeding a league of subliminally controlled child drones to do their evil bidding.  I’ll let you decide which is more likely.

Incidentally, I’d be interested in hearing in the comments whether or not you heard the phrases in the gurgling before or after you read what you were supposed to hear (or even heard anything else!)

Audio: © Mattel