The Henry Spink Foundation

I'd never heard of The Henry Spink Foundation, but John L Dixon retweeted this from Alan Henness, and now I have:

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOT FELICITY KENDALL!!!! http://bit.ly/9X9rJW #dreamsshattered

I set off to find out a little more. I read a little. I came across a list of therapies*. I ticked off Homeopathy, Chiropractic, and one of my favourites, Craniosacral Osteopathy from a mental list of quackery. I haven't and don't intend to read all of it. There may be some good and useful information about some good and useful therapies in amongst the bullshit. The trouble is that I already know from just five minutes perusing, that I can't trust it.

I picked something I'd never heard of from the list that they call the 'information centre'. I chose The Tomatis Method. In the second paragraph. I read:

According to Dr Tomatis this happens when muscles are not working properly and through auditory stimulation it is possible to retrain the muscles of the inner ear so that it can function without distortion.

Hang on, I thought. Muscles of the inner ear ? My anatomical knowledge comes from what I've picked up from watching Your Life In Their Hands, going to Body Worlds, playing Bones Lite, being slightly in love with Dr Alice Roberts and doing a 60 point level 2 Technology of Music unit with the Open University.

The OU course had a bit about the ear, but I didn't recall anything about muscles of the inner ear. It seemed a bit unlikely. I can wiggle my pinnae a bit, so I know we have vestigial muscles associated with the outer ear. I know we can attenuate our hearing by manipulating the ossicles, which sounds as though muscles are involved. Muscles in the cochlear seem a bit unlikely though.

So I googled. I found this kind of thing : EAR. Intra-inner-ear-musculature was conspicuous by its absence.

Next step, look up The Tomatis Method. The Official site says something different:

…listening will be disturbed when there is a dysfunction of the two muscles located in the middle ear whose role is to enable the precise and harmonious integration of acoustic information into the inner ear, and from there to the brain…

I don't want to go into the Tomatis Method in any detail. The rest of the information given by The Henry Spink Foundation suggests that it's nonsense. The point I'm trying to make is that if someone like me, a half-arsed lay anatomist with really quite rudimentary knowledge can spot a mistake like this in about 5 minutes, proper smart qualified people should be able to rip it to shreds. More worrying though is that gullible, desperate, less inquisitive people might buy into this kind of nonsense and line the pockets of these charlatans.

[Note: if there's actual evidence of the efficacy of the Tomatis Method, that would pass the scrutiny of a proper professional, like Ben Goldacre, say, I'll happily write another post singing its praises]

[* John has since called the lista real "Woo's Woo" of AltMed treatments". Genius!]