B-Movie Medicine

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:47:52 +0000

We all know about movies that are so bad, they're good. But could the same thing apply to doctors?

As I described last week,

The Needle and the Damage (Not) Done

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:47:36 +0000

You may already have heard about Desiree Jennings.

If not, here's a summary, although for the full story you should consult

Real vs Placebo Coffee

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:50:48 +0000

Coffee contains caffeine, and as everyone knows, caffeine is a stimulant. We all know how a good cup of coffee wakes you up, makes you more alert, and helps you concentrate - thanks to caffeine.

One Pill Makes Your Libido Larger

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:00:23 +0000

It's every man's dream - a pill to make women want more sex. According to Boehringer Pharmaceuticals, that dream could be a reality in a few years, in the form of the strangely-named

Waterloo Road Bad Science

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:12:41 +0000

[BPSDB]Waterloo Road, the eponymous school in BBC 1’s drama/soap opera, with its disaster-prone staff and unruly students, seems to have managed until now without a science department. This changed with the Wednesday 11 November episode, which featured helpings of bad science and bad education.

Plot summary. A student nicks some laboratory alcohol and uses it to spike bottles of soft drinks, then sells the resultant ...

The Politics of Psychopharmacology

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:29:12 +0000

It's always nice when a local boy makes good in the big wide world. Many British neuroscientists and psychiatrists have been feeling rather proud this week following ...

A Momentary Lapse of Unreason

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:12:52 +0000

[BPSDB]Much to my surprise, Mike Adams the so-called ‘Health Ranger’ has almost managed to say something sensible when he condemns a dodgy nutritional claim by Kelloggs.

The claim made is that Cocoa Krispies (TM) “enhance immunity” because they have been fortified with vitamins. Now I would be the first to agree that adding vitamins to the average sugary breakfast cereal is the ...

On Sexed-Up Statistics

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:14:32 +0000

In yesterday's Guardian, Nick Davies, author of seemingly every British blogger's favourite book, Flat Earth News, delivered a pair of remarkable articles that confirmed him as one of the country's most important journalists.

Regulation Of Herbal Medicine

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:19:30 +0000

In the UK there has been a drive to add medical herbalists to the growing list of health practitioners subject to statutory regulation (SR). In fact this is government legislation we’re talking about, so the drive has been going ...

The Event. How Racist Are You?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:30:32 +0000

[BPSDB]This programme was a rerun of Jane Elliot’s famous experiment that demonstrated that “superiority” and “inferiority” of different groups is a social construct.

In brief: forty years ago, Elliot divided her class of (entirely white) schoolchildren into two groups based on eyecolour and then told them that blue-eyed children were inferior in every way to brown-eyed children. The children went along with this: the brown-eyed began looking down ...

Deconstructing the Placebo

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:05:54 +0000

Last month Wired, announced that

The emperor’s new gym

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:18:03 +0000

I have recently returned from an excellent holiday in sunny Spain. Predictably, my first Monday back at work was a bit of a trial. It was a training day to support the implementation of a new performance ...

MHRA cause Boots to remove homeopathic product and update website

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Back in July, Boots had been promoting Nelson's Sulphur 30c homeopathic remedies, alongside a pdf to download to help you choose which homeopathic product ...

Another thing Milgrom is wrong about

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:07:07 +0000

[BPSDB] So it seems that Lionel R. Milgrom's legal knowledge rivals his physics for ignorance, delusion, and disregard of reality:

All the while, speaking with a voice of (worthless) authority.

Destination: Advertising Revenue

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:41:52 +0000

[BPSDB] I get the sneaking suspicion that this may be it for the much laughed-at Destination Truth series. We were thinking that the show was done last season, especially after the long break between seasons, but when it mysteriously appeared out of the blue, it soon became painfully obvious that all is not well in the Destination Truth labs.

Show Me The Evidence, Please

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:42:41 +0000

[BPSDB]I previously wrote here on the Times OnLine’s slightly inaccurate description of the effect of ‘Health & Safety’ on school science practicals and illustrated my point with examples of supposedly banned experiments still performed at my school. One commenter pointed out that this was really just anecdotal evidence and countered with an anecdote of her own to the effect that practical work had decreased at the school attended by her ...

Totally Hypothetical Remedy? - MHRA introduce certification mark for herbal remedies.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:04:00 +0000

This is the new

Is Freud Back in Fashion? No.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:41:07 +0000

Freudian psychoanalysis is the key to treating ...

Irrational Beliefs As Blind Spots

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:23:06 +0000

I’d like to make something clear. I don’t think that religious believers or superstitious people are stupid. Far from it. In fact, contrary to what believers may feel, most atheists don’t think that religious people are stupid. They just think that they’re wrong about one particular thing.

Part of the reason this blog exists is my curiosity with the fact that intelligent people sometimes believe weird things. Intelligence doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that a person will ...

Statistically

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:18:03 +0000

"Statistically, airplane travel is safer than driving..." "Statistically, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than to..." "Statistically, the benefits outweigh the risks..."

David Herzog – Miracleman?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:55:33 +0000

[BPSDB]As far as I can tell, David Herzog is an independeant evangelist but his methods seem to be taken from the same book as those of the UCKG.

Take the article which appeared in the Friday 16 October issue of the Evening Standard for instance. They quote an attendee at one of his events as saying “He put two big baskets at the altar to put money into, so you would have to walk to the front where everyone would see who gave and who didn’t.” Similarly, the ...

Exploiting gullible South Africans (BPSDB)

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Over the past month or so I’ve published brief accounts of a series of what I’ve called mad ads. There’s a full list of links to the ones I’ve written up so far at the bottom of this article. These are mostly simple and naïve looking pamphlets handed out at traffic lights and stuffed into mail boxes. A few appear in the print media, and so far there’s also been one web site. All of them offer a range of treatments for genuine medical conditions (including diabetes, HIV infection, fertility, ...

Review: Mystery Quest

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:17:02 +0000

[BPSDB]Well, History Channel is at it again. I’ve already been openly critical of their first pseudo-science show Monster Quest and here they ...

The Times Gets It Slightly Wrong About Science Education

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:22:44 +0000

[BPSDB]Sometimes I think that the Press and I live in parallel universes. What else can explain the fact that they publish stuff as news that I know to be false? They even claim that stuff I do on a regular basis as part of my job as a school lab technician never actually happens.

Take this, the claim that interesting science experiments no longer happen in school ...

MAOis For Dummies (And British Pundits)

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:31:46 +0000

Allegedly, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown takes a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOi) antidepressant.

Lessons Learned? I Don’t Think So.

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:21:44 +0000

[BPSDB]
This post also appears on Lay Science.

Lord Drayson seems convinced that the media has learned the relevent lessons over the MMR debacle. At a conference of science journalists on 1 July he told delegates that lessons had been learned since MMR and repeats the assertion during a debate with Ben Goldacre here. Is he right to be so confident?

Daily Mail Continues Baseless Scaremongering

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:50:52 +0000

[BPSDB]I have previously covered the Daily Mail’s attempts to whip up fear over the HPV vaccine. When Natalie Morton tragically died shortly after receiving this vaccine, certain elements in the antivaxx movement must have thought Christmas had come early.

The Daily Mail led the charge with an appalling piece by David Martin which linked the vaccine and her death and gave huge prominence to Jackie Fletcher of JABS.

It turns out that Natalie Morton

Pretty Green Lies

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:02:00 +0000

The British government has a novel approach to public health advertising: flat-out, obvious lies. This is really the only way to describe this:

The message is ...

Water Woo

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:45:14 +0000

[BPSDB]We all know that homeopaths sell their ~~marks~~ patients sugar or water and claimm it contains the mystical memory of magical medicine. One Dr Batmanghelidj goes one step further and claims that water itself is a panacea. He is interviewed by Mike Adams, the self-styled “Health Ranger” here.

Batmangheldi promulgates the same myth as that beloved of the bottled water companies ...

A homeopathic refutation – part three

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:26:07 +0000

In the third part of my series examining an attempted refutation of the critics of homeopathy (Milgrom, 2009) I look at the claim that homeopathy has a serious scientific foundation.

"We are all individuals!" - The Comedy of Homeopathy

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Poking fun at homeopaths and those that follow the religion of homeopathy is an easy game: it's an 18th century quack medicine that requires laws of physics and ...

Greenpeace on Fusion

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:57:23 +0000

[BPSDB]In a debate about Greenpeace’s alleged predeliction for, shall we say, embellishing facts over on Bad Science, attention was drawn to this. Greenpeace oppose fusion research and think that the money being spent on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) would be better spent on renewable energy. That is their right but they do not help their case here.

First ...

Strontium Supplements

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:20:25 +0000

[BPSDB]The pill-pushers over at naturalnews are now telling us how wonderful strontium supplements are. This is a classical illustration of why you should not take health advice from supplement fans.

In her paean to the wonderfulness of strontium Melanie Grimes (apparantly an adjunct faculty member at Bastyr University. She’s also a homeopath – quite why she’s pushing supplements ...

A homeopathic refutation – part two

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:40:45 +0000

This post is the second in a series examining the claims made in a recent essay that seeks, in part, to refute common criticisms of homeopathy (Milgrom, 2009). I have already examined the empty assertions about evidence for clinically useful specific effects. Now, I would like to move on to examine an attempted refutation of claims that, “Homeopathy is ...

93% of Surveys are Meaningless

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:51:58 +0000
Over at Bad Science, Ben Goldacre ...

Predicting Antidepressant Response with EEG

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:48:37 +0000
One of the limitations of antidepressants is that they don't always work. Worse, they don't work in an unpredictable way. Some people benefit from some drugs, and others don't, but there's no way of knowing in advance what will happen in any particular case - or of telling which pill is right for which person.

As a result, drug treatment for depression generally involves starting with a cheap medication with relatively mild side-effects, and if that fails, moving onto a series of other drugs until one helps. But since it can take several weeks for any new drug to work, this can ...

YouGov're Having A Laugh

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:48:21 +0000
A few weeks back I wrote about the surveys-of-2,000-people which form a growing proportion of British news stories.

If Your Phone Doesn’t Get You, Your Microwave Will

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:54:36 +0000

[BPSDB]It is clearly time for scare stories about microwave radiation again. The “Body Matters” pages in the Monday 7 September issue (paper edition only. Not online for some reason) of the METRO carried a story by Yanar Alkayat headed “The hidden dangers in your pocket“. If that is not scary enough, alongside it is an X-ray photograph of someone using a mobile phone. The unspoken implication is that microwaves have similar effects to X rays, which is nonsense.

A homeopathic refutation – part one

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:02:39 +0000

Lionel Milgrom recently had an essay published defending homeopathy (

The Press and Public Health

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:11:59 +0000

[BPSDB]
What is driving the relentless antivax stance of Britain’s dead tree media and its onlone off-shoots? I ask because it seems to me that Fleet Street is becoming a menace to public health and I am assuming that spreading disease, misery and death does not appear on the mission statement of any newspaper. Although if it does they are complying with it brilliantly.

We have had ten years of the MMR hoax, which has concluded with a measles epidemic and mumps ...

Update on Glasgow Chiropractic

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:08:00 +0000
Back in July, I blogged on Glasgow Chiropractic's claims to cure asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, colic and period pains.

Following a complaint to the General ...

Simple Sums Stump Daily Mail Hacks

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:44:47 +0000

[BPSDB]
In their eagerness to bash public sector workers here, both the journalist and the sub-editor neglected to do some simple arithmetic that would have shown they were writing nonsense.

The text of the story says that in July Portsmouth Council’s 4,500 strong workforce spent 572 hours on Facebook.

There were 23 working days in July ...

Homeopath says what ….

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:44:47 +0000

A while ago^* I came across the British Homeopathic Dental Association (

SCENAR Data

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:18:38 +0000

[BPSDB]This site has regularly been visited by one Philip Porter who likes to trumpet the virtues of the SCENAR bioresonance device. Each time he does so I request evedence that the things actually work. Most recently, he came up with this. Unfortunately it does not really prove anything.

The first point that springs to my notice is that it is just a summary of results, saying how many treated were completely ...

Patrick Holford blogs cohort study which finds that “Multivitamin use was not related to total mortality”

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:32:19 +0000
[BPSDB] I was interested to see Holford blogging about Pocobelli et al’s recent article on “Use of supplements of multivitamins, vitamin C, and vitamin E in relation to mortality”. Holford reports the study as finding that “Multivitamin use cuts heart disease risk”. However, I have a number of concerns about Holford’s interpretation of this study: This is [...]

The “Health Ranger” On Nutrition

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:19:14 +0000

[BPSDB]Mike Adams, editor of NaturalNews and self-styled “Health Ranger” thinks we’re all ignorant when it comes to our health. He writes:-

“As an observer of human behavior, one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever witnessed is really smart people dying of diseases that are easily preventable through basic nutrition”

Basic nutrition is ...

The Neuroscience of Niceness

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:59:05 +0000

The Templeton Foundation is offering $4,000,000 to fund research into

Tell ‘em about the honey …

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:58:39 +0000

According to Annelie Whitfield, the ...

Science So What roundtable – join in the discussion

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:19:36 +0000
[BPSDB] Roundtable on the Science: So What? campaign. Post your comments and help make things better.

Naturopaths angry up the blood

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:49:49 +0000

You might have thought that the oxygen in your blood came from taking air into the lungs, which ...

Magic Smokescreen - homeopathy & cigarettes

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:02:00 +0000
Smoking is big business.

According to the Tobacco Manufacturers Association consumer spending on tobacco products in 2007 amounted to £12.6 billion. This led to tax revenue amounting to £9.9 billion - £8.0 billion in excise duty plus £1.9 billion in VAT.

Then there's the aftermath - according to Medical News Today, the global smoking cessation aids market is to reach $2.6 billion By 2010.

Quite the lucrative industry all in ...

Swine Flu Paranoia

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:41:32 +0000

[BPSDB]It would appear that there is more to Natural News than Louise Mclean’s homeopathy factoids. There’s this where the American anti-government paranoia combines with the antivaxxer mind set to produce ravings whose last tenuous connection with reality has been broken.

CNN apparantly reported that “the U.S military is gearing up to get ...

Science, Journalism, and Bug Spray

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:34:11 +0000
Watch out! The BBC report that -

Deet bug repellent 'toxic worry'
While The Telegraph are even more concerned -
Insect repellent Deet is bad for your nerves, claim scientists
This is in reference to

“The Genesis Enigma”

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:44:43 +0000

[BPSDB]In today’s METRO the 60 second interview is with Dr Andrew Parker who claims that the Genesis story matches the history of the Universe so accurately that it could only have been written with divine intervention. When I went to Sunday School I don’t recall them mentioning which verses outlined the creation of particles and nucleii but it’s been a while so I thought I would take a closer look. I’ll be working from the King James version.

Genesis ...

Fake medicine and AIDS denial are ‘charitable’

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:22:02 +0000
[BPSDB] Richard Wilson wrote this about a registered charity that is actively promoting AIDS denial. This reminded me that, last year, I wrote to the same Charity Commission to complain about Frontline Homeopathy, which collects funds to promote homeopathy as “as an effective, low cost primary health care system” in developing countries. I got this [...]

The Times and Hopkins allow Quinnell to plug Dore

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:24:31 +0000
[BPSDB] Quinnell plugs Dore in Times: ‘miracle cure endorsed by celeb’ stories may be more newsworthy than ‘miracle cure still doesn’t work’ stories. That is a pity.

Patenting Vitamins

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:59:10 +0000

[BPSDB]Nutritionists commonly complain that no research is done on vitamins because nobody can patent them and thus cannot make money out of them. The evidence, like so much connected with the nutrinistas, says something else.

One such is Patrick Holford and he makes the complaint again here. His own career is evidence that he is talking nonsense, he has done rather well out of selling ...

Joanna Blythman: Please Read the Data Appendices About Organic Food Before Conjuring ‘Cancerous Conspiracies’: Part 1

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:28:09 +0000
[BPSDB] Joanna Blythman and the Soil Association accuse the Food Standards Agency of ignoring the statistics in its own review for differences in nutrient levels between organic and conventionally produced food. We suggest, respectfully, that Blythman and the Soil Association are wrong and refer them to the original data.

Beware the spinal trap

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:29:34 +0000
Image via Wikipedia [BPSDB] Along with many other blogs and magazines, I am reproducing, below, Simon Singh’s article on chiropractic, which led to his being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. The full story can be found here. The point of the publication is to show support for Singh in his fighting the libel [...]

Dino/human FAIL!

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:49:09 +0000

[BPSDB]There’s only one word that describes July 17th feedback article from Ham’s idiot site– FAIL!

Expelled: the Music Video

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:23:16 +0000

PTET finds a video riff on the theme of Expelled (2008), made with images from Tom Weller’s classic Science Made Stupid (1985).

Monday BPSDB: Null Physics

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:40:49 +0000

A fellow named Terry Witt has been advertising his self-published book, Our Undiscovered Universe, in places like Discover magazine and Scientific American. Unfortunately, the ad pages aren’t exactly peer-reviewed, or even cross-checked with a nearby grad student; being ...

Quantum Woo, Part N

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:40:54 +0000

Time for a little BPSDB! The redoubtable Ben Goldacre has the dirt on Bill Nelson’s “QXCI machine,” a device for “bioenergetic health auditing,” a medical procedure well-known among specialists as an essential step in the surgical ...

The Strident and The Shrill

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:20:55 +0000

Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers had a lengthy, informal chat during the 2008 American Atheists conference in Minneapolis, and a recording of their conversation is now available on DVD and in the video tubes. They discuss the fight against pseudoscience as well as several interesting topics in good science.

BPSDB - The Skeptics' Aggregator | The Lay Scientist - Rational Thinking

B-Movie Medicine

The Needle and the Damage (Not) Done

Real vs Placebo Coffee

One Pill Makes Your Libido Larger

Waterloo Road Bad Science

The Politics of Psychopharmacology

A Momentary Lapse of Unreason

On Sexed-Up Statistics

Regulation Of Herbal Medicine

The Event. How Racist Are You?

Deconstructing the Placebo

The emperor’s new gym

MHRA cause Boots to remove homeopathic product and update website

Another thing Milgrom is wrong about

Destination: Advertising Revenue

Show Me The Evidence, Please

Totally Hypothetical Remedy? - MHRA introduce certification mark for herbal remedies.

Is Freud Back in Fashion? No.

Irrational Beliefs As Blind Spots

Statistically

David Herzog – Miracleman?

Exploiting gullible South Africans (BPSDB)

Review: Mystery Quest

The Times Gets It Slightly Wrong About Science Education

MAOis For Dummies (And British Pundits)

Lessons Learned? I Don’t Think So.

Daily Mail Continues Baseless Scaremongering

Pretty Green Lies

Water Woo

A homeopathic refutation – part three

"We are all individuals!" - The Comedy of Homeopathy

Greenpeace on Fusion

Strontium Supplements

A homeopathic refutation – part two

93% of Surveys are Meaningless

Predicting Antidepressant Response with EEG

YouGov're Having A Laugh

If Your Phone Doesn’t Get You, Your Microwave Will

A homeopathic refutation – part one

The Press and Public Health

Update on Glasgow Chiropractic

Simple Sums Stump Daily Mail Hacks

Homeopath says what ….

SCENAR Data

Patrick Holford blogs cohort study which finds that “Multivitamin use was not related to total mortality”

The “Health Ranger” On Nutrition

The Neuroscience of Niceness

Tell ‘em about the honey …

Science So What roundtable – join in the discussion

Naturopaths angry up the blood

Magic Smokescreen - homeopathy & cigarettes

Swine Flu Paranoia

Science, Journalism, and Bug Spray

“The Genesis Enigma”

Fake medicine and AIDS denial are ‘charitable’

The Times and Hopkins allow Quinnell to plug Dore

Patenting Vitamins

Joanna Blythman: Please Read the Data Appendices About Organic Food Before Conjuring ‘Cancerous Conspiracies’: Part 1

Beware the spinal trap

Dino/human FAIL!

Expelled: the Music Video

Monday BPSDB: Null Physics

Quantum Woo, Part N

The Strident and The Shrill