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!

The objections put against his theories haven’t changed that much since he first published the Origin of Species back in 1859 and many of them arise from the same misinterpretation of Darwin’s words.  Let’s take Leifchild’s review in the Athenaeum from November 19th 1859.

He initially claims that an intelligent man would reason:

Natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

A misunderstanding which I’ve heard argued from religious objectors to the principle of evolution even today.

If a monkey has become a man, what may not a man become?

The last time I was talking about evolution, those very points came up, 150 years or so later.  If we’ve been evolving all this time, why aren’t we perfect yet?

I’ll come back to that, but let’s continue with Leifchild’s objections.  He goes on to say:

We might fairly expect to find in the fossiliferous rocks not a few proofs of the former existence of the numerous intermediate links between distinct specific forms if the proposed theory be true.  We do not find them, many will allege, because they never existed….Palaeontology, however, has not yet revealed any such finely graduated organic scale, and it is not logical to assume that it ever will.

Which sounds very like the arguments of Harun Yahya (to pick a name at random) today:

If such animals had really existed, there would have been millions, even billions, of them. More importantly, the remains of these creatures should be present in the fossil record. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than that of present animal species, and their remains should be found all over the world

Leifchild’s not finished with fossils though:

There is positively hostile testimony from the rocks to be confronted.  Whole groups of species suddenly and abruptly appear in certain formations and seem at once to contradict any theory of transmutation of species.  Either than fact or the theory must be overturned.

Why aren’t there fish-birds, or short necked giraffes, or beaked reptiles we are asked?

Finally, he jumps in with the argument which basically sums up most of the objections of the American’s polled:

Why construct another elaborate theory to exclude Deity from renewed acts of creation?  Why not at once admit that new species were introduced by the Creative energy of the Onmipotent.  Why not accept direct interference, rather than evolutions of law, and needlessly indirect or remote action?

It seems to me that the arguments against Darwin’s theory haven’t changed that much in the last 150 years.  However, this is where science has the advantage – we have the benefits of 150 years worth of experimentation, theorising, testing and confirmation to build on.  We can accept criticisms and drawbacks to theories, even welcome them as harbingers of a more complete theory.  Ok, so let’s turn that scientific juggernaut to bear – how much have we added to Darwin’s theory in the last 150 years?

Well, for starters, we’ve discovered a mechanism for evolution to work.  The science of genetics has shown us how small changes in the pattern of our DNA and RNA can have large effects on our bodies and possibly even behaviours.  We’ve also discovered how those traits can be passed on to our children and why features are generally distinct rather than blended.  Darwin could only speculate.  We’ve seen evolution in action as viruses acquire resistance to antibiotic strains.  Darwin could only theorise based on evidence.

So, let’s see where we are with respect to the above criticisms.

Let’s start with the so-called ‘Cambrian Explosion’ and the gaps in the fossil record.  It worried Darwin that the fossil record seems to indicate that virtually all major animal species appeared in a short interval at the beginning of the Cambrian period, starting around 530 million years ago, with fossils of the so-called major phyla (animals which share the same basic body plan, for want of a proper explanation) appearing in a period or around 5 to 10 million years after that (figures according to Gould).

However, recent studies are beginning to find evidence of pre-Cambrian ancestors for some species, pushing back their divergence point to before the ‘explosion’.   In addition, not every evolutionary change will generate fossil evidence.  Fossilisation isn’t going to preserve the soft-fleshy bits of any animal’s body so any evolutionary change which wasn’t affecting the hard body structure of creatures won’t be seen.  It may also be that for much of the pre-Cambrian era there simply weren’t that many animals around, or those that were were scattered in small sparse geographically separate groups.

Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University remarks:

Does this course of events create a problem for Darwinism, even for evolution? I do not think so. In particular, the search for any sort of trigger may be to misunderstand the problem. Rather than invoking an almost endless litany of possibilities, among which some of the more popular include the invention of a Hox gene, eyes, cell signalling, extracellular matrix, nerve cells, armour, guts and so on, it may be more useful to regard this event as the natural and inevitable result of the continuing evolution of a planetary system that shows cumulative and irreversible bio-geochemical changes. As and when the conditions are appropriate, the opportunism and flexibility of the evolutionary process will exert itself.

So, when new opportunities for life emerged in the Cambrian era, there was naturally an explosion of newly successful plans to exploit it.

Ok, but why don’t we see transitional animals in the fossil record?  Where are the bird lizards and the short necked giraffes?

Here’s where we need to consider how new species are likely to evolve.  Let’s take a group of lizards.  Any mutations from the standard ‘lizard model’ are likely to be bred out as long as the mutated children remain in the group.  Now let’s assume that our group becomes split into two, by say a mountain range or a river.  Separated by a geological boundary it is likely that the two groups may evolve differently.  Changes in one will not necessarily be represented by changes in the other and so, over a long period of time, they will differ enough to become separate species.   We can see this in action with shrews today.  Mongolian shrews cannot interbreed with Spanish shrews, even though there may be a continual chain of interbreeding shrews running between the two.

Now rejoin the groups.  If you look at the fossil record for the original site it will appear than a new species has appeared practically overnight, with no intermediate changes visible

If the two ends of the chain then remerge, or the two groups of lizards span the river, then we will start to see jumps in the fossil record they leave behind, as if a new species has suddenly appeared, ready made.  If one species out competes the other, you then see the other disappear, having been replaced.  That doesn’t mean that they made a massive evolutionary jump, merely that they evolved seperately in another location.

We also need a feeling for the amount of time which can pass over the period which a paleontologist would consider instantaneous.  The American geneticist Ledyard Stebbins considers the example of a mouse which gains an evolutionary advantage in each generation by being very slightly bigger.  Ignoring any other factors, such as the cost of growing in size, how long would it take before the mouse became the size of an elephant?  Picking a very small value for weight increase with each generation, so small that it wouldn’t be measurable by human observers, he calculated that it would take about 12,000 generations of mice before they reached elephantine sizes.  If you assume each generation lasts 5 years, that’s a 60,000 year timespan to go from mouse to elephant.  That period is too small to be measured by the standard techniques of dating the fossil record.

Our mouse to elephant jump would appear to be instantaneous.

The other objections are far easier to dismiss.  Next on the list, “If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys and why aren’t we perfect yet?“.  The first part is easy, man didn’t evolve from monkeys, we both share a common ancestor who wasn’t either.  Both men and monkeys have evolved enough to propagate their genes onto their offspring in their own respective fields.  Put a monkey in a city or a man with no equipment in a jungle and neither will perform that well.  We’re adapted to meet the requirements for survival in our environment and no more. Any additional changes which don’t provide an evolutionary advantage in the short term will disappear and, importantly each step towards those changes must also provide an evolutionary advantage too.  We might think it would be handy to still have tails, for example, but if the cost, in extra energy expended and food required, doesn’t exceed the benefit, or it doesn’t help us have children then it won’t happen.  Moreover, even if a tail would be an advantage, if any of the steps required to create one create a disadvantage then it still won’t happen.

Evolution doesn’t operate with an end goal in mind.  It’s not working towards perfection, saintliness, immortality or anything else, it’s completely blind to the consequence of change.  Unsuccessful changes die out, successful ones continue, not through foresight or design, but through the harsh realities of life and death.  As humans we’ve been able to manipulate our environments and mitigate some of the harsher faces of natural selection, but it’s still running, whether we like it or not.

Finally, the religious argument.  This is one we can dismiss even if there was no other evidence at all for evolution.  Darwin’s theory, combined with the latest advances in genetics, provide a mechanism whereby complexity can emerge from simplicity.  It’s elegance is that it can start from the most basic building blocks for life and provide a route which creates the world around us in all its magnificence and horror.  All religious creation stories start from complexity, a creator of some description which inevitably is more complicated than the things being created, and move down to simpler things like us.  That explains nothing.  You’ve just explained the creation of a complicated thing, the natural living world, by assuming the existence of an even more complicated thing, a creator god.  You’ve made the problem worse!

But anyway, it’s time I got back to the point of this post which has gone on far longer than I’d planned!  What is the problem then with Darwinism?

We need to be careful not to just limit ourselves to quoting Darwin when defending evolution.  If we do then we are in danger of simply replacing one dogmatic theory with another.  The whole reason that scientific endeavour is always going to be superior to religious dogma is that it holds within it the possibility that it might be wrong, that there could be a better, more encompassing theory which might explain more about the world that the current.  Darwinism has held up well, but its strength comes from its scientific background, a background which evolves his theory as new facts emerge.  Unlike religious faith which never changes, even in the light of new evidence, scientific theories can adapt, become more explanatory and of more use to us in understanding the world.  A survival of the fittest of their own.

The Young Charles Darwin

Picture the bearded figure from the standard paintings.  He begins to study the Galapagos tortoises, perhaps noticing that some varieties have a saddle-like shape to their shells, whereas others on different islands don’t.  Alternatively of course, he just decides that it would be good fun to sneak up on them and have a ride:

The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking close behind them. I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead. I frequently got on their backs, and then, upon giving a few raps on the hinder part of the shell, they would rise up and walk away;—but I found it very difficult to keep my balance.

The general approach seemed to be to eat most of the potential specimens, to the extent that ’staying out of Charles Darwin’s way’ was probably a pretty good survival strategy.  Take the armadillo for instance:

we were obliged to be content with a frugal meal on an armadillo which we had shot by the way. The flesh of this animal has, indeed, an agreeable taste, resembling fowl, but is very fat

Or the puma

I was suddenly struck with horror at thinking that I was eating one of the favourite dishes of the country, namely, a half-formed calf, long before its proper time of birth. It turned out to be Puma; the meat is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste

The tortoises didn’t get away with just being ridden either:

While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely upon tortoise-meat. The breastplate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), with the flesh attached to it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is very indifferent.

Oh, and just in case you’re thinking that he stuck to merely eating animals unimportant to his records, I refer you to the Lesser Rhea

When at the Rio Negro, in Northern Patagonia, I repeatedly heard the Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz Petise.

He found one eventually, after eating most of it:

The bird was cooked and eaten before my memory returned. Fortunately the head, neck, legs, wings, many of the larger feathers, and a large part of the skin, had been preserved.

Preserved for his sandwiches in the morning presumably.

Darwin's Notebook

What isn’t mentioned is the pre-edited title of his most famous work was ‘The Origin of Species and 1001 Ways to Cook Them‘, or ‘Our tasty ancestors, an evolutionary journey into yummyness‘ .

Cooking tips aside, it’s an interesting exhibit, although the placement of the live iguana as an example of animals which didn’t live on the Galapagos, seemed a bit unnecessary.  I’ll let the Horned Frog slide though (I like frogs).

It covers the famous voyage of the Beagle, examples from his notebooks, including the first sketch of the familiar tree structure of animal classification.  It then shows a reproduction of his study, complete with wheeled chair to save getting up and various animal skeletons to show similarities in bone structure and development.  It finishes with a brief look at some of the controversies which surrounded his theory which, ironically, seems to be more challenged these days than it was at the time!

Give it a look, but remember to take some lunch with you, you might come out feeling peckish and I think they’d object if you tried to eat the iguana.

I summarised the shortlist earlier, but they’ve gone for the practical but dull smash out the windows, let down the tyres, dump the fuel and load the front with rocks option.

If you ask me, some of the other entries that didn’t make the shortless look much more imaginative though, even if perhaps not actually practical!

It looks like they had:  grapples made from venetian blinds and clothing, ball and chain efforts with boulders (I’m not quite sure what’s going on with that one!), unfortunate team members impaled on the front of the bus and even the use of other dimensions (meta material?) to pick from.

Personally I think they should have gone for the making nitric and hydrochloric acid from their explosives and urine option (they are the Royal Society of Chemistry after all) but that only came in fourth.

The final ranking was:

• Winner:  Smash windows, dump fuel and let down tyres
• Runner-Up:   Melting the road

and in no particular order:

• Loading up with rocks
• Sending people to the front
• Explosive urine combo to melt gold

Michael Caine revealed the original plan from the script was to switch on the engine and burn off the petrol from the tank until the reduced weight allowed the coach to right itself, but the Royal Society of Chemistry was interested in seeing if there were any better ideas out there.  They issued a challenge to see if anyone could come up with any other solutions to how the gang might have escaped safely with the gold.

This week, they published their shortlist of the five top solutions.

They are, in short:

• Smashing the glass from the windows, draining the fuel tank and letting the tyres down
• Loading up the back with rocks
• Dissolving the gold with acid made from the explosives in the coach and their urine
• Melting the asphalt on the road so the bus would stick to it
• Moving further to the front of the coach to allow someone to go forward and pull the gold back

The official winner is announced on Friday.  Incidentally, use of helicopters as a solution was explicitly banned.

Now, you’ve probably seen this before (I certainly have) but most places I’ve seen it in the past don’t bother to explain what’s going on.

What’s happening is a process known as chromatic adaptation. If you expose your eyes to a single colour for a period of time, they eventually lose saturation of that colour, causing the complementary colours to appear as an illusionary image when you look away. Basically your brain starts to over-compensate for the saturated colours, so when they’re not there any more the image you see swings too far the other way, into the complements of those colours until you change your focus point.
The colours surrounding the black dot in the image above form the complements (opposites) for the correct colours for the photo, so when they are taken away the over-compensation makes the picture look as though it is in colour.

The same thing on a simpler level is going on in the image below (look at it for 30 seconds and then look at something white).

I don’t know the original sources for either of the pictures incidentally, but I picked them up from My Confined Space and Cool Optical Illusions.