The Skeptics are coming to town!

In particular, the next New Zealand Skeptic's conference will be held in Wellington over Sept 25-27 (just before the school holidays) at the Kingsgate Hotel. At last my laziness will pay off, and I can go to a local conference!

And because this post would be rather short, I'll repost their message about ear-candling:

Chris Laidlaw gave an hour of his National Radio Sunday show to natural health remedies, with a 20-minute informercial to a Wellington naturopath, including an ear candling session with the reporter.

The naturopath used the standard explanation that putting a candle in the ear and lighting it creates a vaccum to suck ear wax out. They did this and the credulous reporter was duly impressed by the "teaspoon" (!) of wax extracted and apparently reported clearer hearing.

He clearly wasn't aware that not only does ear candling NOT produce any vacuum (this has been tested) but even if it could, the negative pressure needed to pull wax from the canal would have to be so powerful that it would rupture the eardrum in the process!

Laidlaw used the candling episode in his programme promos, but neither he nor his intrepid reporter appeared to do any basic research on the topic or raise any questions about it. It's not hard to find out that not only does ear candling NOT work, but it can be downright harmful:

A 1996 survey of 144 ear, nose, and throat physicians, found that 14 had seen patients who had been harmed by ear candling, including at least 13 cases of external burns, 7 cases of ear canal obstruction with candle wax, and 1 perforated eardrum. Alaska Fire Marshall Gary L. Powell reported two instances of significant fires associated with ear candling., one of which led to the user's death.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/candling.html

No doubt there will be people who will see such uncritical reporting
as indicative that this natural remedy is worth the candle...

The rest of the show was more interesting, and you can catch it here.

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