I've just seen a tweet and blog post from the Public Domain Review with self-portraits from 1790 showing the artist (Joseph Ducreux) pulling a series of unusual faces.
With their odd combination of directness, ambiguity, and exaggerated expression Joseph Ducreux's unorthodox self-portraits received a mixed reception in their day, but a strong and curious rebirth in the age of social media and the all-powerful meme —https://t.co/1LkyiRJ4WNpic.twitter.com/TVwjttcInd
It reminded me that I don't seem to have drawn together (in blog post form) the notions I occasionally have about Facial Expressions through History. I think this concept popped into my head after seeing an Emma Stone gif in my timeline in which she pulls quite a face. It turns out there are quite a few gifs of her being facially expressive :)
It struck me that I couldn't imagine someone making such a face in the 1500s. That might just be a failure of my own imagination and of course those expressions might not have been included in any art that survives. Facial expressions are an outward sign of what's going on in our heads and it seems reasonable to assume that a case could be made in either direction - either we're not that different from people living hundreds of years ago, so we'd pull the same faces, or the environment in which modern people and previous people lived isn't comparable and the facial expressions 'available' to people would differ (and difficult to prove).
Having seen Ducreux's paintings (perhaps 1790 is not that long ago) I'm moving towards 'failure of my imagination', but it still feels as if people would have conducted themselves, and what their faces were doing, very differently in the past. A lot of reaction gifs are reasonably performative, I wonder if people bothered with that sort of thing as much in the 1500s.
Coincidentally where I work, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), has its very own Centre for the History of the Emotions, so every so often I see if they have anything on facial expressions of yore ;)
I tend to notice people's facial expressions and wonder if they'd have pulled that face in the Umpteenth century ;) https://t.co/XWtHoaKKfZ
Agreed - great i/view. "There’s often a debate about how people expressed emotion, whether they expressed it. There’s a contemporary register and there’s a period register." - I often wonder about people's facial expressions & gestures from previous decades / centuries! :) https://t.co/VkwLt3XAl7
Eg Emma Stone has some amazing and funny expressions and I struggle to imagine someone from a few centuries ago pulling some of those faces (maybe they did, perhaps the fault is my imagination!).
Also, I wonder *where* this debate about how ppl expressed emotion takes place...? pic.twitter.com/PgB8WuxVzA
Summary: in addition to writing
nonsense on Twitter about incels Alan Freestone has been investigated by Trading
Standards for claiming to cure autism with homeopathy and CEASE therapy.
The post below includes links to articles in The Times and The
Telegraph about his claims, and to his listing on a page of people
referred for their persistent misleading claims to Trading Standards by the Advertising Standards Authority.
I've added a bit at the end about homeopathy societies in the UK. Two have since publicly distanced themselves from his statements.
Update: his awful tweet was taken down on 14 August between 22:56 and 23:14pm. I can be that accurate as I sent a tweet when I got home bemoaning that it was still up then it disappeared, so I sent another. I've added a copy below.
This post is for the benefit of people following up on Alan Freestone's particularly bad tweet from Friday 13 August 2021, in response to the horrendous incident in Plymouth. He muted me (and presumably others) several years ago after I / we challenged him on his claims to treat / cure autism using CEASE therapy and homeopathy.
Pic 1. Tweet from Alan Freestone sent on 7 June 2018 (still live at time of writing) which says "Jo, your endless attempts to try & stifle positive homeopathy stories are very telling. You attempt to use social media to suppress views you disagree with. That's not an ethical past time. You should reflect on that. P.S. I have cured autism. I'll continue to cure autism."
This tweet is still up. Quite surprised. He's added a few more in similar vein, some bleating about how badly received his intended nuance-ing was. pic.twitter.com/Gk67lBLGzt
Pic 2., Pic 3. w are screenshots which were taken 11 hours apart, Pic 4. (embedded Tweet) was taken at 23:56 on 14 August. These are all copies of the same tweet (sent on 13 August 2021 and still live at time of writing) which says said "I hope the women of Plymouth collectively take some responsibility for this. Misandry & the anti-man rhetoric from teachers causes incels. Young men without hope, without a path, without anything meaninfgul to strive for become dangerous to the societies around them." The earlier screenshot shows 1.5k replies, 890 retweets ( and 15 likes, the later one has 3.1k replies, 1.8, retweets and 49 likes. At time of writing his tweet has 28 retweets and 1,865 quote tweets.
Not surprisingly he's received a remarkable amount of pushback in the replies to the tweet which you can find indirectly here (until he wisely deletes it, but screenshots will remain).
In early 2019 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) took compliance action on at least three homeopaths claiming to treat autism with homeopathy / CEASE therapy and referred them to Trading Standards (TS) in November, one (Paula Lattimer) has now made their marketing material compliant but Alan Freestone and Carolyn Stevens are still on the list. The ASA wrote a post in March 2019 outlining their position on CEASE "Why so-called CEASE Therapy claims to 'cure' autism really have to stop".
Here is the list of Trading Standards Referrals (you'll need to scroll down and click 'see more' to see everyone that the ASA has referred to TS). I don't know if Trading Standards are still investigating him or if the pandemic has made that harder.
Pic 5. shows the list of homeopaths who've been referred to Trading Standards, two are still making misleading claims.
"...claims to have treated 1,185 autistic patients with remedies such as carcinosinum, made from cancerous breast tissue; lyssin, made with rabid dog saliva; and medorrhinum, made from the discharge of a man with gonorrhoea." Note that you can buy these products (which are HEAVILY diluted you'll be relieved to hear!) from Helios UK, see the links.
In November that year he, along with another homeopath, were caught by an undercover reporter for The Telegraph (see video below) offering advice to a parent (reporter) about how to evade vaccination and what to do about schools requiring children to be vaccinated (fib, basically): "Homeopaths warning mothers not to have children vaccinated, investigation reveals". The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) expressed concern that consumers were buying dangerous unauthorised treatments from him but I don't know if any further investigation was made.
Additional info on homeopathic societies in the UK Several people on the thread created from Alan's tweet have CCed in the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) or asked if he's a member. Alan is not a member of the SoH and to the best of my knowledge I don't think he has ever been. I also don't think he's a member of Homeopathy UK (formerly known as the British Homeopathic Association, BHA) but I think he used to be a member of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH) but I don't think he is now. 'Homeopath' is not a protected term in the UK so anyone can call themselves that and can "practise" without being registered. There is a fourth society, the Faculty of Homeopathy, which is reserved for qualified healthcare professionals (hcp) who have also trained in homeopathy. As he's not a doctor or allied hcp he wouldn't be able to join that one anyway.
Update 1: The Society of Homeopaths (he's not a member) have distanced themselves from Freestone's statements, the same also appears on their Facebook page.
Update 3: (Fri 24 Sep 2021) - I've just noticed that HINT's Steering Committee met to discuss the matter on 17 August and decided that as the tweet was made in a 'personal capacity' that was the end of the matter.
HINT previously published (April 2019)a guide for its members advising them not to worry to much about letters from the ASA (May 2018, made public March 2019) which told them to "make no direct or implied efficacy claims for CEASE therapy".
Further reading * The Society of Homeopaths, and the issues with regulating healthcare in the UK (6 August 2021) By Michael Marshall (project director of The Good Thinking Society, writing in The Skeptic - the PSA suspended the SoH's accreditation in January 2021 and, presumably unable to address the problems (and citing cost), the SoH later withdrew from the accredited register scheme in July 2021.
Really? No, Really? podcast with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden
Really? No, Really is good fun, its launch was timed beautifully for me finishing my Seinfeld binge :) Click pic above for their YouTube channel or links below for audio only, or any podcast app will do.
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