Science Journalism
The recent debate between Dr Ben Goldacre and Lord Drayson (video currently available here) has led to this blog post. I feel that media coverage of scientific research could be a lot better than it currently is. I also have one or two suggestions as to how it could be improved. Read the rest of this entry »
The “Baffled Boffins” Narrative
Recently, I wrote about a Daily Fail story (here – Scientists Red-Faced), in which the Fail reported that scientists were “red-faced as they admit they are baffled why people blush”. This was just one story depicting scientists in caricature. Ben Goldacre writes Read the rest of this entry »
My Bad Science Reading List
Well, first up are the Bad Science blogs. These people, in my opinion, are providing a public service in fighting against the ignorance and bullshit promoted by anti-vaccinationists, the mainstream media, and homeopaths with healer fantasies (among others). Issues as important as Aids in Africa and MMR vaccines in Britain are addressed by these bloggers. Then there are the books available online – from Trish Greenhalgh’s How to Read a Paper [free registration required] to Chalmers, Evans and Thornton’s Testing Treatments. [You can download this as a free PDF.] Read the rest of this entry »
The Ever-Accurate Mainstream Media on Detox
The Daily Telegraph have lost it. If you consider that they had it to lose, that is*. They have written a piece on “10 ways to detox in your garden” that refers to Ben Goldacre as being part of Sense about Science and states that Goldacre “says the liver will detox your body naturally with good lifelong diet and exercise habits. And the garden is the ideal place to start – and sustain – your new regime.” For the record, Goldacre has pointed out on his miniblog that he has “nothing to do with SaS. They’re alright, but I’m nowt to do with them.” It’s unclear where the journalist got this idea from, but fact-checking is clearly a thing of the past in the British Mainstream Media. Read the rest of this entry »
More Legal Chill – from Spine Cracking Chiropractors
Cool: badscience.net, holfordwatch.info and dcscience.net are all covering the latest woo legal chill. DC’s recent post Doctor Who? was an article he’d had published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Chiropractors naughtily using the appellation “Doctor”, there is a PDF of the NZMJ response here: classy, and I’ll quote one of my (and Holford Watch’s) favourite bits: “let’s hear your evidence not your legal muscle”. Something quite a few practitioners of Alternative Medicine should perhaps think about – legal chill and other threats.
This really is a tactic they deliberately use isn’t it? They can’t debate the evidence, so they bluster and threaten. Kudos to Professor Frizelle for an excellent response to yet more Altie bluster.
EDIT: more links – bone doctors, Norburyness, weak-minded, ignorant and superstitious.
